Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

47 reviews

homestylereads's review against another edition

emotional informative sad slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia and Racism

Moderate: Suicide, Mass/school shootings, and Suicide attempt

maggiefae's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Homophobia, Racism, Sexual content, Suicide, Transphobia, Violence, Grief, Mass/school shootings, and Colonisation

sydapel's review against another edition

challenging reflective sad slow-paced

4.75

I feel totally unmoored by this book. The writing is profoundly and intimately reflective, almost volatile in the pace it takes, swinging from rage to sorrow to longing to adoration so quickly. Belcourt speaks so profoundly about queerness, indigenous oppression in the Americas and his personal journey as a writer in these spaces. This is one of those books that requires slow reading and forces you to take a step back. The subject matter is difficult at times, but the number of quotes that will stay with me make it worth it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Colonisation

Moderate: Homophobia, Transphobia, and Mass/school shootings

Minor: Suicide and Suicide attempt

dominic_t's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

This book is really great and thought-provoking. His prose is beautiful and dense. I found some of it hard to wrap my head around, and I wish I had read this with other people so I could discuss it and understand more of it. He shows really clearly that the colonization of Canada has never stopped, even though white settlers pretend that colonization is all in the past. He discusses Indigenous trauma, resistance, and joy, and his writing is beautiful. This isn't an easy read, but it is worth it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Racism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Transphobia, Suicide attempt, and Colonisation

Moderate: Murder

Trauma, residential schools

jessie_h's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

This is one of those essay collections that I will stick be thinking about for a while. There is a lot in this collection to unpack and it was so beautifully written. Belcourt leans on his poetic background to tell parts of his story via essays and poems which results in an emotional sucker punch of a memoir. He touches on topics like queerness, indigeneity, sexuality, queer/NDN joy and hope, and colonialism and does so with a vulnerability and honesty. I want to read more from this author in the future.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Colonisation

Moderate: Sexual content, Grief, and Cultural appropriation

Minor: Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Violence, and Murder

readingwithkaitlyn's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Colonisation

Minor: Infidelity, Rape, and Transphobia

strrygo's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

4.75

eviscerated 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime, Homophobia, Racism, and Colonisation

amboyer's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Homophobia

maeverose's review against another edition

The writing is beautiful but yet again, I don’t understand it. I tried to keep reading because it’s short but I’m really not getting much from it and I feel dumb so… dnfing unfortunately.

Here are some quotes that I liked though:

“In the museum of political depression, in its tidied halls, books of the sort I want to write are banned, for they are against the world that birthed the writer. Books that emerge from a banned way of thinking, that pry open space to live otherwise in an uninhabitable world, lie open in hospitals and university dorms and community libraries but rarely in an institution governed by a pessimism of the future and a romance of the present.”

“Loneliness is a kind of dysphoria with the world.”

“I have a phobia of the police. How could I trust he who disavowed personhood to instead be a gun? He who is bullets rather than an organism capable of nurturance? To be a gun is to be against life. I want to be for life and to be against that which is against life.”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Racism, Police brutality, Murder, and Colonisation

Minor: Homophobia and Infidelity

biab00's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

The governing thesis of my book would be that we aren’t noble people and therefore the fact of our living is something to be ashamed of. The question I’d ask: What might it look like for NDNs to refuse life in the wake of all that’s happened to us in a country in which we’re social experiments before all else?

I choose this quote to put in the review, but to be fair there are so many beautiful ones that it was hard to choose one. 
This book is so poetic and aaaaa I don't even have words to describe it. 
If you are a fan of Siken and Ocean Vuong I definitely recommend this one.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Suicide, Murder, and Colonisation