Originally from the Cree First Nation of Driftpile, in Alberta, Billy-Ray Belcourt creates with Brief history of my body a fragmented and moving first essay, in the form of a memoir which, although drawn from the source of his memories, extends well beyond the limits of his individual life. Filled with flashes as burning as they are insightful – “Love is the act of banging your head against the window of an “I”” – the writer dissects the manifestations of queer and indigenous thought through his body to find traces of colonial violence, racial dynamics which reverberate on dating applications as well as in intimacy, romantic illusions, and joy and “care” as the only possible resistance in a country that seeks to annihilate you. Accompanied by the reflections of Roland Barthes, James Baldwin and Maggie Nelson, among others, he denounces, refuses compromise and passivity and recalls, quoting Judith Butler, that “poetry is the gesture of listening beyond “what we are able to hear”. » Brutal.
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