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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.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status
Non-fiction Main TBD (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available

"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.

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