Heart Berries
Ratings24
Average rating3.8
"Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father-an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist-who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world."--
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Oof, my heart. HEART BERRIES by Terese Marie Mailhot has this immense power to it. In just 160 pages Mailhot examines her life with a rawness that leaps off the pages.
Content warnings: sexual assault, sexual abuse of a child, suicidal ideation, self harm, PTSD.
I could neatly summarize it as an exploration of Indigenous identity, mental health and mental illness, dating outside of one's race, and complex motherhood but that would be pretty reductionist of me. Mailhot's writing first calls on the trauma of existence, of being an Indigenous person, of being a woman and then what it is to face that trauma and make choices that wind and twist around that trauma. I'm not a parent (by choice) but there are some truly heartbreaking moments when Mailhot talks about her firstborn being taken from her custody on the same day her second child was born. Definitely steel yourself for some tough walks down memory lane.
Most of my reads recently have either been EXTREMELY HARD or lighthearted and fun. This is as you can imagine, one of the former. I've already talked about how paltry my Indigenous reading has been this year, but I also realized one of my gaps is in not having read much Indigenous memoir.
This book is like reading poetry rather than prose. A deeply moving memoir about mental illness, family, and memory. It was visceral, heartbreaking, and through it all, hopeful.
