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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
A poetic journey showcasing the absolute madness and wonder which makes up Terese Mailhot's life. A dip into a deep pond which only grows in impact and power as the story progresses. The beginning felt slow, and sad. Each word was hard hitting. But as Mailhot comes into herself the story takes off and I had a hard time putting the book down. A great read and situates the reader well into the disproportionate hardships of Indigenous women. The burden of choice, children, lack of choice, love and mental illness.
People came along and they grace your life and they make it extraordinary (36)
I don't think that I am lonely. I think that I am starved and maybe ravenous for the very thing you withhold from me (42)
I am upset to stay here longer than expected, but I think I like these walls. It feels artificial but good (43)
The parts of what makes me a good person is that I can be struck by emotion (45)
I am unravelling in the dark kitchen… I am incorrigible when I’m like this. (45)
“Every Christmas… my mother locked herself in her room to cry…I can’t remember a single present I ever received… I [now] lock myself away as she does. Some things seem too perfectly awful” (46)
“I slouched and inhaled shorter breaths to take up less space around you” (97) WHY do this. This rips my heart out. Why are women, why are people made to feel less than? No one should make you feel this way. How are we driven to this behaviour
“When did I become enough for you and what was the distinction? It would help to know what makes me worthwhile, and what doesn’t” (98)
--> why why why does a woman's worth or perceived worth depend on another person's opinion? And that of a man? This is such a perfect example of loss of autonomy and lack of self respect to even see it happening
“My heart has an extra chamber now, I am more fragile than you know” (102)
“Pain is faster than light, and I wish people would not fault me for things I can’t forget or explain” (99)
“I made the active choice that my son and I were real. I held him, he fit well on my hips. He became expressive… (100)
>She chose her son, agency, autonomy
“Native women walk alone from the dances of our youth into homes they don’t know for the chance to be away” (106)
→ the next sentence reads they are troubled by nothing but also “walk into cars”, so it feels oxymoronic of course, they have troubles maybe at higher rates too. Disproportionate exposure to hardship and a lack of sympathy from societal structures.
P109 - are we bound to repeat the failures of our parents? Or will their actions tilt us towards differently worse actions with their own set of consequences? Terese doesn’t want to give her sons the same experience she had. She wants to be present. Not dependent on a man. But will having no father also harm her sons? It seems like one of those decisions which is impossible to know right away. You only realize the consequences one to two to five years into setting the actions into motion.
In Salish culture, “mountains were stories before they were mountains. Things were created by story. The words were conjurers, and ideas were our mothers”. (110)
“I was a part of a continuum against erasure, I told myself, my body felt stronger when I embraced it” (116)
“If there was no fall, there would not have been an incarnation. To ascend there must be a dark, a descent.” (126)
I don't know how to review this, because it's not a book for me. It's a book for Indigenous women, written by an Indigenous woman, who writes about many things a non Indigenous woman wouldn't necessarily "get".
While this is more along the lines of what I expect a memoir to be in content (searingly honest, brutal in it's unrelenting details, and emotionally raw), the writing was disjointed and it did not read like a memoir because of it.
I struggled with the obvious thing a person from outside a culture struggles with: I couldn't relate. Writing style aside, I had sympathy, but it did feel exceptionally tragic and sad at times to the point that, as a reader, I felt like a voyeur. It was fascinating but not the kind of read you feel good about.
I only loved one essay - The Leaving Deficit. Wow. Talk about talent. It was gorgeous. I was disappointed that the best chapter was the 8th chapter out of 11.
All of her imagery and metaphors and descriptions are beautifully written. There are lines in this book that took my breath away, made me sit up and pay attention. And this was during the chapters I didn't like. But other times I zoned out. The essays were coherent in some places and confusing in others.
I think it would be best to say, this book is so far outside of my lane. I'm giving it 3 stars but it should probably be more like 2.5. Don't know if I would recommend
While this is more along the lines of what I expect a memoir to be in content (searingly honest, brutal in it's unrelenting details, and emotionally raw), the writing was disjointed and it did not read like a memoir because of it.
I struggled with the obvious thing a person from outside a culture struggles with: I couldn't relate. Writing style aside, I had sympathy, but it did feel exceptionally tragic and sad at times to the point that, as a reader, I felt like a voyeur. It was fascinating but not the kind of read you feel good about.
I only loved one essay - The Leaving Deficit. Wow. Talk about talent. It was gorgeous. I was disappointed that the best chapter was the 8th chapter out of 11.
All of her imagery and metaphors and descriptions are beautifully written. There are lines in this book that took my breath away, made me sit up and pay attention. And this was during the chapters I didn't like. But other times I zoned out. The essays were coherent in some places and confusing in others.
I think it would be best to say, this book is so far outside of my lane. I'm giving it 3 stars but it should probably be more like 2.5. Don't know if I would recommend
I had a really hard time connecting with the narrator for the audiobook, and I think I would’ve enjoyed this more if I’d been reading it myself. Regardless, the content was incredible. It’s honest, and I think that’s high praise for memoir and trauma.
challenging
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
beautiful, raw writing: “I’d like this letter to be ashamed and wild like me, and I’d like to know you read it and wanted me more.”
Difficult and dark emotions and experiences—much is packed into the hundred and some pages: “It’s too ugly–to speak this story. It sounds like a beggar. How could misfortune follow me so well, and why did I choose it every time?”
It’s a slim book easily read in one sitting, but you may want to take your time with this one and revisit and reflect on sentences and passages and understand how Mailhot processes her lifetime of shortcomings, trauma, pain into self-worth:
"I never understood her commitment to living well. It seems innate that I am fucked up. I think I have the blood memory of my neurotic ancestors and their vices. Her work seems as important as my work, to acknowledge that some of my people slept in, and wasted their lives, and were gluttonous."
2024 PopSugar Reading Challenge #15: A book recommended by a librarian.
Ultimate Book Riot Reading Challenge #144: Read a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author.
I picked this up at a small bookseller on a summer day, then read it in a morning, ignoring the world around me and the guests in my house, unable to come up for air from under the weight of it. It’s devastating, beautiful, and I was shook up for days.
I think it’s difficult to assign a star rating to this memoir. The writing style was a bit difficult for me to get into as it’s poetic and dreamy in some places. But the writing is emotionally raw and very powerful.
"I told my father that a bird is just a bird. A mother is a tangible thing. Making Indian women inhuman is a problem for me. We've become too symbolic and never real enough." - Heart Berries, Terese Marie Mailhot
Following her hospitalization for a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II, Terese Marie Mailhot begins to write her way through the dysfunction of her childhood, the perpetual angst of her on-again off-again relationship, and the destabilization of mental illness. The result is a sparse memoir where each poetic line bursts with pain, memory, and discovery, often at the same time.
Read this with a notebook close at hand. Mailhot's prose is stunning, cracking through layers of sentimentality and symbolism to a dark core of shameful truths about herself and her past. How does one talk about giving birth just as your older son is being taken away by the court? What words can be put to the patterns of hospitalization and release, leaving and returning to and leaving a relationship, becoming pregnant once more and being engulfed once more by madness? What does it mean to write your way through your grief about your mother's death, only to discover how deeply your father has hurt you? Mailhot approaches these unspeakable questions with piercing honesty and, eventually, some sense of acceptance.
Pair with: The Collected Schizophrenias (for a first person account of living with mental illness) or There There (for a story made up of Native voices)
Following her hospitalization for a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II, Terese Marie Mailhot begins to write her way through the dysfunction of her childhood, the perpetual angst of her on-again off-again relationship, and the destabilization of mental illness. The result is a sparse memoir where each poetic line bursts with pain, memory, and discovery, often at the same time.
Read this with a notebook close at hand. Mailhot's prose is stunning, cracking through layers of sentimentality and symbolism to a dark core of shameful truths about herself and her past. How does one talk about giving birth just as your older son is being taken away by the court? What words can be put to the patterns of hospitalization and release, leaving and returning to and leaving a relationship, becoming pregnant once more and being engulfed once more by madness? What does it mean to write your way through your grief about your mother's death, only to discover how deeply your father has hurt you? Mailhot approaches these unspeakable questions with piercing honesty and, eventually, some sense of acceptance.
Pair with: The Collected Schizophrenias (for a first person account of living with mental illness) or There There (for a story made up of Native voices)
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Chaotic—there is much to be learned from her story, but the structure of the story was chaotic & challenging to read
PopSugar Reading Challenge: A Book from a Celebrity Book Club (Emma Watson's)
I devoured this book. The prose is so delicious, the author's voice so compelling. The beauty of the language kept me reading more than the "story," but I was so engaged that I really wanted more explanation of the different characters and their role in the author's life. It's quite spare, which only increased my longing.
Terese Marie Mailhot writes from the perspective of a Native woman who grapples with bipolar disorder, abuse, and addiction -- a much needed "own voices" account.
I devoured this book. The prose is so delicious, the author's voice so compelling. The beauty of the language kept me reading more than the "story," but I was so engaged that I really wanted more explanation of the different characters and their role in the author's life. It's quite spare, which only increased my longing.
Terese Marie Mailhot writes from the perspective of a Native woman who grapples with bipolar disorder, abuse, and addiction -- a much needed "own voices" account.