A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

Personally, I find it pretty tricky to review memoirs and non-fiction in general because here I’m reading about someone’s life, so how dare I judge and criticize situations they felt on their skin and in their soul. Even if I’m not Indian and Canadian, yet when reading A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt, I had thoughts that I couldn’t help but share, or they would stay turning in my head, especially when it comes to topics concerning the LGBT+ community.

Not long ago, I watched a reading blog from Books and Lala, and I loved how she described A History of My Brief Body and; as I said, now that I read it, I have thoughts I need to share. The first thing that got to me was how the author talks about how being a person from a small minority as if their lives aren’t as important or at least it isn’t valued as much as the life of a straight white man. I know that the majority of crimes in the trans community happened to trans people of colour.

My heart nearly stopped every time the author gave a random stranger from the Internet his home address, not knowing who was going to turn up. I felt so bad when he thought he was safe with his partner and realized that his partner wasn’t. So, he wanted to get tested he was worth it to get tested and get medical help like it is already hard to get the courage to get tested due to the stigma around queer and sex health. Not sure if my thoughts came out as clear on paper as I hoped, but it is five stars for me.