A History of My Brief Body

Product Description

Lambda Literary Award, Finalist / “A Best Book of 2020” ―Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, CBC, Globe and Mail, Largehearted Boy.
“Stunning… Happiness, this beautiful book says, is the ultimate act of resistance.” ―Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah MagazineThe youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.
For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.
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.

Review

* 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, Finalist.
* A Best Book of 2020 ―Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, CBC, Globe and Mail, Largehearted Boy.
“Belcourt, a member of the Driftpile Cree Nation, is impressive. He writes about the intersection of queerness and Indigenous life in poems and essays.”―Elena Nicolaou, O, The Oprah Magazine, “31 Native American Authors to Read Right Now”
“Through his new collection of essays, A History of My Brief Body, I have come to view Billy-Ray as a trusted intellectual and scholar, a prolific creative, and a necessary voice of resistance.”―Layli Long Soldier, BOMB
“In his endeavor to honor the reality of Indigenous pain while also remaining steadfastly committed to queer Indigenous joy and utopic futures, Billy-Ray Belcourt has written an incomparable book full of emotion, analysis and poetic beauty.”―Kai Minosh Pyle, Star Tribune
“A rallying cry for freedom. The ongoingness of resilience demands a manifesto, and here it is: ‘Joy is art is an ethics of Resistance.'”—Kristen Millares Young, The Washington Post
“A History of My Brief Body is a breathtaking literary rebellion against the brutalization and simplification of NDN existence, establishing as resistance joy in creativity and its ability to invent worlds.”―Samantha Zaboski, Shelf Awareness, starred review
“A History of My Brief Body is a complex, nuanced, and stunningly written collection. Belcourt accompanies the reader, sometimes as a friend, sometimes with academia as if he is the approachable teacher at college I never really had. His work is important and comes to us when we need it desperately.”―Liam Anthony, Independent Book Review
“A magnificent memoir of queer sexuality and intimacy, of the impact of intergenerational trauma towards Indigenous peoples, of grief and survival. This slim book is a powerhouse of intelligent, beautiful brutally honesty writing.”―Kate Hill, Bookalong, Instagram
“From a native queer experience, Belcourt extends what it means to live in a state, to surpass the body’s defined frame, and to practice emoting as transcendence.”—Kara Laurene Pernicano, Full Stop
“In a novelistic series of queer essays and texts, Billy-Ray Belcourt reflects on the complexities o