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Heart Berries, by Terese Marie Mailhot (2018 🇨🇦)
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Premise: An unflinchingly honest memoir about growing up and living with abuse and mental illness while Indigenous

Review: This memoir takes a no holds barred # approach and I think is much better for it. Mailhot bares all here, in all her intelligence and education and all her trauma, illness, and heartbreak. Cont.

“Nobody wants to know why Indian women leave or where they go. Our bodies walk across the highway from the dances of our youth into missing narratives without strobe lights or sweet drinks in our small purses, or the talk of leaving. The truth of our leaving or coming into the world is never told.”

#NFIndigenousPeople

#SpringSkies

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

#berries 🫐🍓 #HumbleHarvest

@Eggs
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

⭐️⭐️

“Crafting the truth to be as bare as it feels was important…. Memoir, for me, functions as something vulnerable in a sea of posturing.”

Her skill is incredible, I‘m floored. Reading the afterward is at least as good as the rest of the memoir. The volume appears short, at 142 pages, and it took weeks to read. Her questions open a lot of doors, and none are easily answered.
#memoir #nonfiction #teresemariemailhot #mailhot

"I feel dormant watching you live fuller than I can. I worry I am a cavern."

I feel this book needs a reread sometime when I'm better able to dive into the intense emotional journey. Excellent, just a bit of overwhelming for me right now.

Just settling into what is sure to be an amazing evening of reading and snacking on chocolate (to be fair, I've already started on that part 😄). Amazing #jolabokaflodswap package @TheLudicReader - what great choices and thank you for the extra goodies as well! Happy #Jolabokaflod everyone!

Emotionally taxing, but so much to unpack. Each sentence has so much impact. It was good, but was difficult to digest - trauma is never easy to read.

This was a hard book to rate because it's rating an author's life and memories.

Here is a memoir that depicts all for the murky grey that people can be. This was angry and had every right to be and in that anger, there was a glimmer of something burning brighter.

......

#popsugarreading #readingwomanchallenge #readharder

Getting ready to start this for my next book club. I swear I had this in physical form but I can‘t find it for love nor money. Yay for ebooks sometimes am I right? Lol
Also yay for apple fritters.

#heartberries #memoir #teresemariemailhot #applefritter #donut #bookclub #ebook #bookclubs

Yowzas! This short memoir packed a punch. Poverty, sexual abuse, foster care, mental illness AND Paul Simon in a cameo. Her writing is sparse but also no fat anywhere. Not an extra word to be found. It was a very interesting read and I will definitely read more of her work.

I am so blown away by the skill of Terese Marie Mailhot, to craft such a short book out of so very much. The writing is remarkable. I genuinely don‘t think I have the words to explain how this book ripped me open. Roxanne Gay said " these essays are too intimate, too absorbing, too beautifully written, but never ever too much. What Mailhot has accomplished in this exquisite book is brilliance both raw and refined, testament."

#LovePrevails Day 5: Here is my #FebruaryTBR - the NYRB title is for our #NYRBBookClub

Bailed at 20%. Not for me, at least at this time.

After a 5 month hiatus, I'm back with a great read. This. Is. Profound. The way she describes our shared pain is nothing short of majestic. There is something exclusive in Indigenous woman pain, something in the way we feel and express pain that can be felt and expressed by no other. This book speaks of that exclusivity in a manner that we Indigenous woman understand in our soul. I honestly wanted this to last even longer. 🧠🤓📖🍵

Beautiful memoir with poetic prose that examines relationships through the lens of a woman working through her trauma. And there is so much trauma for an indigenous woman. Stream-of-consciousness and non-linear style writing might not be for all, but still an important one to read.

#unpopularopinion As short as this memoir is, I really struggled to get through it. Mailhot faced a lot of terrible things but the non linear narrative, the stream of consciousness, and the fragmented writing combined to make this an excruciatingly slow read. Full review at https://booknaround.blogspot.com/2020/11/review-heart-berries-by-terese-marie.ht...

“I was the third generation of the things we didn‘t talk about.”

Trauma can leave memory messy and disjointed, and Terese Mailhot‘s memoir reflects this. It is not straightforward, but unapologetic, which made me love it all the more. Her writing is incredibly intimate, as she writes of mental illness, abuse, motherhood, survival, and loss.

#NFN2020 #nonfictionnovember

What a beautiful memoir! I have been looking forward to reading this for months and I'm so happy that I finally did!

Oof, this is some hard row to hoe in terms of trauma to sort through even identifying. It comes across as powerful but broken, and i‘m not sure it‘s a good time for me to read this...feeling pretty fragile already...

The dawn. Thought t would be a good stand-in for my speechlessness over this book. Intricate.

#pdx #sunrise #cloudview #quarantinereading

T. M. Mailhot‘s #nemesis was an abusive childhood, and a neglectful, inaccessible mother

#beautifulwords
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @OriginalCyn620

#happycanadaday everyone! @KVanRead

I‘m a bit of a Canada fangirl fyi. My bf did his masters there and while being long distance was tough sometimes, I spent a year looking forward to trips to Canada, travelling in Canada, having Montreal as my computer background... Toronto and Montreal particularly are the site of some of my happiest memories!

1. Tagged, my favourite Canadian book by a breathtaking First Nations author

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Personal truths are never linear and often messy. Mailhot‘s poetic prose is astounding and revelatory; one cannot help but be moved by her story.

A painful and astonishingly powerful memoir. I needed to read the essays slowly, and finally only during daylight hours. As an alcoholic in recovery, and a woman who struggles with cyclical depression, it was at times triggering, but Ms Mailhot‘s discussions of
her experiences are painful, powerful and ultimately affirmative. What a gift!

🌟🌟🌟🌟

Raw, and brutal, and beautiful, Ms. Mailhot writes openly about her struggles with poverty, mental illness, sexual and physical abuse. This memoir is a collection of essays, but written like poetry. This was disturbing at times, and heart wrenchingly beautiful at others. This is one that will stay with me.

I think I would have loved this in my late teens/early twenties. It‘s got a poetic feel to the writing that I like and I appreciate the book on that level, as well as admiring the author for writing her story. Still, it lacked something for me - I didn‘t connect to it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This might be my 2nd to last read for #NFNov. This memoir is from the perspective of the Canadian First Nations author who describes her relationship with her Caucasian cheating husband, her three sons from two fathers, her grandmother who was a healer, her abusive artist father, and her mother. This was written like a stream of consciousness so it was a bit difficult to understand in some places. Total books read for #NFNov= 24 #total= 236

Sorry book, it is me, not you! I never read ebooks, but I decided to try with this because I got it through my library. But the format didn‘t help me take the content in, I just kept swiping the pages. I need to reread it again at some time, because Mailhot writes beautifully and poetically about tough subjects, and her words need to be taken in, thought over and felt, and I wasn‘t able to do that at the moment.

#IndigenousAuthor #Booked2019

I‘ll be posting My Favorite Books of 2019 soon, but I need a few more weeks to get that ready—so I thought I‘d re-share My Favorite Books of 2018. Here are books 7-12. #KennyCobleBookAwards #BestBooks2018

I listened to the audiobook and was not a fan of the narrator. She read Mailhot's words with a flat, almost bored inflection throughout. That's a shame, because Mailhot's writing is absolutely stunning. So much so that I could feel the beauty of the phrases despite the narrator. This is a compelling, vulnerable, honest memoir. (CW for childhood sexual abuse and neglect, mental illness) #nativeauthors

Day 4 - Beautiful cover for a beautiful book.

#7days7covers #covercrush

This brutal, heart-tenderizing memoir was not what I expected from the sweet cover! Mailhot writes gorgeously and with a fierce, direct vulnerability that‘s almost unbearable at times, whether recollecting her mother‘s death, her institutionalization, or losing her son in court. Mailhot bares the heart of the “difficult woman,” and as someone who has also borne that title, I thank her for these heart berries—they come straight from the chest.

Finished R is for Rocket. Switching mediums up by listening to an audiobook - Heart Berries by Terese Mailhot. I‘ll admit to backburnering this because I received a copy around the time the Sherman Alexie sexual harassment allegations came out (he wrote the introduction). Onward, I go! #24in48

"Her name was Adrienne, like a poet I loved. A woman of exclusion, who loved women enough to give her work solely to them. Adrienne was part of a continuum working against erasure."

What a coincidence that I had a book of Rich's poetry sitting right next to me as I read this paragraph in Heart Berries! #newyearwhodis @Emilymdxn

Tired and sore today, so I'm loving my reading break from packing for the move to California. 2.5 hours for #24in48.

Now here is a real book about mental illness (and other things - TW for child abuse, abuse in general, suicide)! Chapter 5 is why I‘ll never have kids. This book is just a squeak off amazing. Highly recommend. 4.5⭐️

#24in48 book 3
#booked2019 #indigenousauthor
#bfcr2 book 21/28 #goteam

Now I start all over with three new books!

#LilithJuly Catch up from yesterday ~ went with the song lyrics. This memoir by Terese Mailhot, a gifted Indigenous writer beautifully shares her painful beginnings. Her unhealthy #foundations lead to many poor decisions and toxic relationships. Not an easy book to read but her raw honesty will blanket you.

Is my first reading in the #bookfitnesschallenge #bfc it was short #audiobook. I like some parts but others... I am not sure if I will like it more if I read it. Have very mixed feelings about it. Has anyone else read it? Is just me?

My current read.

Loved my reads this month. The Bear and the Nightingale was a favorite. 💕 #swensonreads #swensonreads19

This memior was my #Booked2019 pick for #indigenousauthor.
There were things I enjoyed about it, mainly the depth and rawness of her emotion.
I am giving it a so-so because it was pretty hard to follow, jumping around in time. It is written like a letter to a past love and took some liberties with shared knowledge that left me feeling like I was missing something or not understanding fully.
@Cinfhen @4thhouseontheleft @BarbaraTheBibliophage

I feel bad panning this.. the author clearly has talent in writing and had clearly experienced much pain. But the back and forth between past and present had me confused most of the time and I truly could not relate to anything in this memoir. Maybe it would work for another reader, but not for me. #booked2019 and #readingwomenchallenge #indigenousauthor

It‘s a pick for me because Mailhot‘s writing is so powerful and impactful, but her story made me really sad. It made me sad because she seems to be trying to prove she‘s okay now, but really she still seems very angry. I‘m surprised she and her husband are still together to be honest.

Didn‘t love this... Reading some other reactions it might have been because I listened to it.

I truly think she is a great writer, but this book lacked in clarity for me, especially because it‘s a memoir. I would like to read fiction by the author.

I‘m so excited for Mailhot. A well deserved award for this stunning book and $50,000 in prize money. Here‘s hoping she‘s working on her next book. PS: If you decide to read this book (and I hope you do) I hear the audio version is not the way to go.