A History of My Brief Body

Billy Ray is my new favorite young essayist. This is an incredible work. The constellation of thinkers that they write alongside with is totally exciting. I needed all this put into words as a queer brown person. I needed to have my horizons expanded by this book. You can be theoretical and poetic at the same time. I will be buying Belcourt's other books. I love the interviews I've listened to as well. Every single page was an event. Belcourt is droppin' BARS.

Beautiful book, great seller!

4.5 starsThis a beautifully written memoir consisting of a collection of poems and essays. The author submerges the reader into his world as a queer, indigenous person of Canada. He conveys his life experiences in such a raw, personal way that it will swallow the reader up in its honesty and wide range of emotions. Each passage is more thought provoking than the last. This is a must read!Thank you to Libro.fm for an advanced listening copy.

I enjoyed this book. I would definitely recommend this book. It was interesting to read about his life.

I really think Belcourt is going to be a great writer, but not quite yet. I value his vulnerability, honesty, and raw talent. But he often became fairly self-indulgent and would describe things in a dramatic or esoteric (often both) way which seemingly was aimed at elevating his message but this ironically made him seem very young, hurting his credibility. I really do look forward to hearing more from this author with a little more experience and hopefully a lot more austerity.

This book is incredibly well-written and is unlike anything I've ever read. Billy-Ray Bettancourt is a true new queer voice in literature. Highly recommended read

Anyone who asks someone " if they are clean" in respect to STDs has no respect from me and is ignorant. I read samples of the book and this was a turn off. Maybe the rest is good, I just can't respect ignorance.

Sadly this one just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t a fan of the writing style. It was very wordy and confusing to me. I couldn’t follow the first chapter so DNF at 7%.

Belcourt is such a promising writer, but this book frustrated me. I liked his poetry for what the place it claims, but the jagged and confessional aspects of it are not to my taste as a reader. Those aspects are, however, things I often value in memoir, so I was excited by this work. And there is no doubt they're well-represented here, and that his sincerity in everything he writes is profound. The serious problems for me were with form. A major one is that he has does not seem to have found an artistically sound way to incorporate critical theory into the text. Philosophy is cool, personal experience is hot: it takes elegance to bridge them, but too often Belcourt writes in a spliced-up, collage mode, with the seams showing. The gold-standard for this type of work is Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, a justly lauded book. Another element that troubled me was the continuous study of sexual being. Say what you like, but it's always a tricky subject to pull off gracefully. I fully respect that radical honesty, warts and all, is a meaningful and important act of testimony, and that it works both to break silence and to dissolve reductive misrepresentation. My problem is that, stylistically, much of these sections felt repetitive, chatty, somehow self-searching without carrying back riches. In the beginning Belcourt apologizes to his Kokum that she may not understand what he is saying because of its form, but to trust that he must say it the way he does. I may be too much of a stickler, but this book feels like it could have taken many, many more passes at refinement and reduction without losing the meaning or the voice. It is a tightly-wound book, but not exactly very solid. The good thing is that Belcourt is still so young, and that so much needs to be done. I think he can do it, but he may need a few ruthless editors whom he deeply disagrees with first.

It is a really personal and raw story that provides a important look into the impact of colonialism and racism on our everyday lives and relationships as indigenous people. It is really a fantastic book. I read it in one day for a class I am in but it was well written so it was easy to.

C'était un cadeau pour ma belle-sœur et elle a adoré le livre !

Not a like for me. His writing is not my taste. Too wordy