A History of My Brief Body

I ‘finished’ this book today, but I’m not sure I will ever (want to) be finished with this book. I read it in a time of queer grief, and the author, Billy-Ray Belcourt, puts things into words that seem unspeakable. When writing of the threat of homophobic violence he says ‘that night I sleep not with him [his then boyfriend] but with the thought of what they could have done to us, what they wanted to do to us.’ In another moment this may have been too much, but somehow I caught these words when they were a balm for me. Queer, Driftpile Cree Canadian, poet, academic, Billy-Ray is trying to write a future in which his joy is possible, in a present trying violently and repeatedly to strip him of humanity. He weaves through both the experience and politics of academia, gender, gay culture, literary criticism, ‘care’ and the health system, violence and suicide, media and law, all delicately and incisively. This should give an indication of the complexity of this book’s contribution. This is not to say the work feels heavy or laboured. I am so grateful Belcourt is a poet. He takes behemoth systems and puts them through his loom for readers, interpreting in a way that makes queer, feminist, decolonial futures almost imaginable. It’s rare I’m motivated to write reviews, but I had to capture some of the moment my world changed with this book, in the hope more people might share it.