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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
This was an outstanding book to read! In all actuality I give it a 4.5 out of 5. Heart Berries is a book that I will have to come back to again to fully process everything. I think Mailhot’s writing style/voice was intriguing and definitely a unique one but also rings out so loud as forceful you can’t ignore it. This made me really think and I appreciate that.
This story resonates with how I feel as woman, minority, and exploited person. Her voice is one that isn't common in dominate culture and one I needed to hear.
While I can appreciate the writer’s poetic prose and writing abilities, I found the relentless heaviness of the subject matter to be one note. There was nary a reprieve for the constant anguish of mental health and obsession over her partner. I would be open to reading more of the authors work that was not memoir.
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
sad
slow-paced
The afterword was fantastic in this book.
"I have every trauma to pull from to justify my fear that you don't really love me. You come back to the door to explain how you choose me everyday; I only respond with questions. 'Then why did you leave me in the hospital? What has changed since then besides my pregnancy?' I really want to know and you can't explain, so I can't feel safe. I can hear my aunt's voice telling me that if my security depends on a man's words or action, I've lost sight of my power."
"I have every trauma to pull from to justify my fear that you don't really love me. You come back to the door to explain how you choose me everyday; I only respond with questions. 'Then why did you leave me in the hospital? What has changed since then besides my pregnancy?' I really want to know and you can't explain, so I can't feel safe. I can hear my aunt's voice telling me that if my security depends on a man's words or action, I've lost sight of my power."
this memoir relied heavily on analogy, metaphor, and imagery rather than a timeline which made the flow both fascinating and confusing at points. this is t the sort of memoir where you feel like you get really close to the author; it’s the kind like “in the dream house” where you learn about life events through learning how the author feels about them rather than a re-telling of something that happened. my favorite quotes were actually from the post script, which technically wasn’t written by the author but here they are anyway:
“i wanted to give my life art because no one had given my experience the framework it deserved—as complex, more than raw, or brutal, or familiar, or a stereotype”
“it feels colonized to say i ‘explore’ or ‘discover,’ but what other word could i own?”
“where are we? where we have always been. where are you?”
i think what resonated with me the most is the internal conflict that arises when in an intimate relationship with a white person as a POC. i won’t argue that that is a crux of this book—or that mailhot’s experience is at all generalizable—so much as other, more significant traumas, but i was surprised by how much i’ve seen similar questions/concerns about power in my own life. that’s something i’ll laud about this book—despite how sweeping, whimsical, urgent, abrasive, and stark it can be, i could find a way to see myself in it, and perhaps other readers can too. wouldn’t say it’s a favorite of memoirs i’ve read but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad one
“i wanted to give my life art because no one had given my experience the framework it deserved—as complex, more than raw, or brutal, or familiar, or a stereotype”
“it feels colonized to say i ‘explore’ or ‘discover,’ but what other word could i own?”
“where are we? where we have always been. where are you?”
i think what resonated with me the most is the internal conflict that arises when in an intimate relationship with a white person as a POC. i won’t argue that that is a crux of this book—or that mailhot’s experience is at all generalizable—so much as other, more significant traumas, but i was surprised by how much i’ve seen similar questions/concerns about power in my own life. that’s something i’ll laud about this book—despite how sweeping, whimsical, urgent, abrasive, and stark it can be, i could find a way to see myself in it, and perhaps other readers can too. wouldn’t say it’s a favorite of memoirs i’ve read but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad one
Compulsively readable, achingly beautiful in parts, and - as the name implies - wholly heartfelt, this is a novel that I essentially read in one night. Most of the prose is dedicated towards Casey, her lover, and it is in this prose and these agonizing and longing reflections that the writing really sings.
Towards the end, the direction seems to go a bit askance, and it loses much of the narrative and meaningfully introspective flow that give it its power. But overall, this was a thought-provoking and worthwhile read that demanded I reorient the way I look at certain stories. In that sense, it was successful.
Towards the end, the direction seems to go a bit askance, and it loses much of the narrative and meaningfully introspective flow that give it its power. But overall, this was a thought-provoking and worthwhile read that demanded I reorient the way I look at certain stories. In that sense, it was successful.