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A history of my brief body / Billy-Ray Belcourt.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublication details: Columbus : Two Dollar Radio, 2020. Description: 140 pages ; 20 cmISBN:
  • 9781937512934
Subject(s): Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • 814/.6 23
  • 897/.323 23
LOC classification:
  • PR9199.4.B448 Z46 2020
Contents:
Preface : a letter to Nôhkom -- Introduction : A short theoretical note -- An NDN boyhood -- A history of my brief body -- Futuromania -- Gay: 8 scenes -- Loneliness in the age of Grindr -- Fragments from a half-existence -- An alphabet of longing -- Robert -- Notes from an archive of injuries -- Please keep loving : reflections on unlivability -- Fatal naming rituals -- To hang our grief up to dry.
Summary: "Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray's writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us"--Amazon.

"An earlier version of 'Fatal Naming Rituals' was published in Hazlitt in 2018. 'Notes from an Archive of Injuries' was published in the Winter 2020 issue of Prairie Fire."--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 133-140).

Preface : a letter to Nôhkom -- Introduction : A short theoretical note -- An NDN boyhood -- A history of my brief body -- Futuromania -- Gay: 8 scenes -- Loneliness in the age of Grindr -- Fragments from a half-existence -- An alphabet of longing -- Robert -- Notes from an archive of injuries -- Please keep loving : reflections on unlivability -- Fatal naming rituals -- To hang our grief up to dry.

"Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray's writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us"--Amazon.