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A review by jaymoran
Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot
5.0
The things you said to your white women - I wanted that.
I slouched and inhaled shorter breaths to take up less space around you. I understood I had sacred blood, but what would that mean to a white man like you? I know. I know the tenses and the syllables of every rite and had spent hours with women who made medicine.
I wasn't made to be ornamental, but it's what I wanted. I inherited black eyes and a grand, regal grief that your white women won't own or carry. I don't think you knew how I felt, and I wondered what my grief looked like to you?
Raw would do this book a disservice - it's a book that sears, that blisters the reader's fingertips as they read it and is well aware that it doesn't have anything to apologise for. Mailhot's account of her struggles with mental health, trauma, and her heritage isn't linear or straight forward - her thoughts, still knotted and tangled from her mind, are unspooled onto the page for the reader to unwind for themselves. It's a purposeful and mesmerising mess of some of the darkest thoughts and feelings a person can carry, and it's one of the most unflinchingly honest depictions of mental illness I've ever read.
The way Mailhot writes about her Native American heritage is painful but also imbued with love and pride. She is ignited with love for a white man who can't reciprocate all of her feelings - his are fleeting, inconstant and loose whilst hers is all-encompassing and voracious. She compares herself to the white women she sees him flirting with, visualising herself as something monstrous and savage in comparison to them. However, Mailhot also swells with the knowledge that she has inherited something bigger - she was born with a history inside of her, something that she carries with her and that no one else can quite comprehend.
Had I not been born and cultivated in this history, I wonder how dim and dumb my life would be. I feel fortunate with this education, and all these horrors, and you.
I will restrain myself from gushing any further. Heart Berries is such an impressive, gorgeously written memoir/essay collection that mourns, rages, and celebrates life.
I slouched and inhaled shorter breaths to take up less space around you. I understood I had sacred blood, but what would that mean to a white man like you? I know. I know the tenses and the syllables of every rite and had spent hours with women who made medicine.
I wasn't made to be ornamental, but it's what I wanted. I inherited black eyes and a grand, regal grief that your white women won't own or carry. I don't think you knew how I felt, and I wondered what my grief looked like to you?
Raw would do this book a disservice - it's a book that sears, that blisters the reader's fingertips as they read it and is well aware that it doesn't have anything to apologise for. Mailhot's account of her struggles with mental health, trauma, and her heritage isn't linear or straight forward - her thoughts, still knotted and tangled from her mind, are unspooled onto the page for the reader to unwind for themselves. It's a purposeful and mesmerising mess of some of the darkest thoughts and feelings a person can carry, and it's one of the most unflinchingly honest depictions of mental illness I've ever read.
The way Mailhot writes about her Native American heritage is painful but also imbued with love and pride. She is ignited with love for a white man who can't reciprocate all of her feelings - his are fleeting, inconstant and loose whilst hers is all-encompassing and voracious. She compares herself to the white women she sees him flirting with, visualising herself as something monstrous and savage in comparison to them. However, Mailhot also swells with the knowledge that she has inherited something bigger - she was born with a history inside of her, something that she carries with her and that no one else can quite comprehend.
Had I not been born and cultivated in this history, I wonder how dim and dumb my life would be. I feel fortunate with this education, and all these horrors, and you.
I will restrain myself from gushing any further. Heart Berries is such an impressive, gorgeously written memoir/essay collection that mourns, rages, and celebrates life.