Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - A History of My Brief Body

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

36 reviews

becksusername's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

4.0

This book was anything but simple. Belcourt is obviously a poet, and in these essays makes many hard-hitting points about life as an indigenous queer person in Canada with lots of big words I had to look up, startling metaphors, and round-about storytelling. It was a lot to process and there were many quotes I wrote down to think about more. Even so, I'm sure a lot of his meaning will have gone over my head.

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pawpaw's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0

To call Belcourt's memoir "inspiring" or "emotional" feels like an insult; the level of his writing is indescribably rich, refreshing, complex, and needed. I would quote some of his most poignant lines, but that'd ruin the experience of coming across them naturally.

Don't get me wrong: sometimes I rolled my eyes because of how much he used the word "ontological," and he can come off as pretentious, but so be it. With everything that he's been forced to deal with, with everything he's achieved? He's allowed to come off as a bit arrogant at times.

If you're triggered by suicide, sexual assault, murder, and the institutionalized destruction of Indigenous peoples, please tread carefully. That being said, this book is vital, and well beyond worth it.

Please remember that there are many other Indigenous and queer voices. If you choose to listen to this one, don't stop there.

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jhatrick's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

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kiaragennaro's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective fast-paced

4.25

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vigil's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.75

this is a very personal book, deeply entrenched in his own experience that makes it difficult to rate.

billy-ray belcourt has a very strong and specific command of language, (in a way that likely intentional, judging by a later entry) that is enticing but also difficult to comprehend due its strong roots in academia. he has a very immersive writing style that transports you directly into his brain, for better or for worse.

for personal enjoyment, it’s a 3 star, but i respect the author and what he’s doing with this collection that i bumped it up to a 4.75.

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emma_b_rhodes's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

Poetic, theoretical, experimental. Queers genre. Really excellent. I marked so many pages and keep going back to it.

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marabdelmageed's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Truly one of the best pieces of work I have ever read. I will reread this, and then reread it again -- I know that I still have so much to gain, so much to learn, so much to appreciate from this work.

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