Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

36 reviews

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

honeyvoiced's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Sexual content, and Colonisation

Minor: Mass/school shootings and Murder

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

balfies's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

This lyrical, intricate memoir of queer Cree resistance made me weep. It also made me want to write poetry again.

Belcourt uses language to charter unnavigable oceans of queer and NDN experience within a capitalist white supremacist heteropatriarchy. 

Feel like I'm a bug on a forest floor with my mouth open in nutrient rich dirt, there's so much going on in this. If you're a fan of Ocean Vuong or Ellen van Neerven this is a must.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Homophobia, Racism, Sexual content, Suicide, Violence, Grief, Murder, and Colonisation

lilypad537's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Racism, Suicide, Mass/school shootings, and Colonisation

nibs's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

4.5

Belcourt's writing is so beautiful & precise & eloquent. I felt & learnt a lot about his experiences as an NDN queer man. 
I wrote down so many quotes because the writing is so beautiful. Learning about the specifics of Canadian colonialism (and thinking about how that compares to Australian colonialism), being in a body the state wants consumed. But also so much content on loneliness and queerness in a broader sense of community, collectivity and vulnerability as well, and how that intersects and interacts with his NDNness. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Sexual content, and Colonisation

Moderate: Homophobia, Sexual assault, and Suicidal thoughts

spinesinaline's review against another edition

challenging reflective medium-paced

3.75

I'd like to reread this one to fully grasp all that the author is offering. This is presented as a mix of poetry and prose in a very loose memoir style. I’m looking forward to reading more by Belcourt across his multiple genres.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Racism, Sexual content, and Colonisation

littlecat's review against another edition

dark reflective

2.0

The rating is much more about my reading expierince of this book then a value of it cause the prose was the kind of dense style that I had a hard time reading, there are concepts I encountered  already  ( “Books of the sort I want to write are banned, for they are against the world that birthed the writer.”) that  I like tried to mental hold onto to understand the book but - it felt too unfocused for it to work for me, the constant quoting of others just made me want to read someone else and the general bleak tone (which he of course is entitled to! just wasnt for me). 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Genocide, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racism, Rape, Sexual content, Suicide, Transphobia, Police brutality, Mass/school shootings, and Colonisation