– Memory, it seems, isn't always material out of which to make art. Sometimes remembering refuses us. Sometimes I'm a shoreline the water of memory drags its palm across. –

Belcourt's memoir is riveting, dripping with vulnerability, identity, family, queer desire and experiences; history of land, people, trauma, and ongoing colonial violence.

There is a unique flow to his prose, which melds poetics seamlessly with memory, observations, and interrogations. It is impossible to ignore the resonance of his style.

– To be queer and NDN is paradoxical in that one is born into a past to which he is also unintelligible. I wasn't born to love myself everyday. –

In this short memoir, Belcourt uses language to not only interrogate desire, existence, expression, experiences, racism, love, and suicide; he also interrogates language, its beauty and violence in the ways it is used and constructed.

...to confess to desire in a different direction was to expose oneself to existential risk, among other types.