A review by poenaestante
Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz

challenging dark emotional slow-paced

5.0

This is a searching and fearless portrait of a terrifying, thrilling, and oddly beautiful time. Wojnarowicz kept staring where others winced and looked away. He also walked down the alleys other's avoided, and recorded what he saw and how he felt, not with cool remove but with a deep sense of belonging to these funky, dirty, drug-infested, and queer spaces --- spaces where he could be free. The central question he pleads us to answer from the beyond the grave is whether the oppressive suffering is necessarily bound up with the human condition or if there exists some possibility for it to lift.
Rest In Power, David. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Suicide, Child abuse, Addiction, Toxic friendship, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Confinement, Violence, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Incest, Drug use, Animal cruelty, Pedophilia, Animal death, Suicide attempt, Sexual content, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Self harm, Physical abuse, Death, and Blood