Coexistence

Stories

By: Billy-Ray Belcourt

Narrated by: Hunter Cardinal, Trevor Mitchell, John Wamsley

Superbly rendered portraits of modern indigeneity from the acclaimed author of A Minor Chorus.

A grieving mother calls out to her faraway son. A student forgoes the lurid appeal of dating apps in exchange for a painter’s love. The anonymous voices of queer native men converge amid violent eroticism. A man just out of prison balances the uneasy weight of family and freedom, while a professor returns home to conduct research only to be haunted by a dark specter. The stories and voices in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut story collection are buoyed by philosophical undergirding, poetic demand, and the complex relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Belcourt pirouettes through the short story form in his signature staccato voice, imagining a range of characters from all walks of native life. He is an expert in celebrating the ways Indigenous peoples make total conquest impossible.

“These characters’ passionate insistence on loving and desiring and hoping, amid the existential terror of colonization—and Billy-Ray Belcourt’s nuanced and attentive rendering of it—is the most revolutionary of acts.” (Vauhini Vara, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Immortal King Rao)

“A brilliant exploration of the boundaries both imposed and imagined that exist between beings and the spaces we inhabit. This engaging, alive text drills right to the heart of what it is to be Indigenous in the twenty-first century.” (Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls)

©2024 Billy-Ray Belcourt (P)2024 Audible, Inc.

Human emotion, human reflection

My review is more for my reflection of the title than a summary and praise of it…

As a straight man who struggles to get into touch with his own feelings and put them into words to make sense of them this book is transformative in understanding the struggles and challenges queer men face when approaching love and life.

The authors in this book are extremely reflective on their sexual identity, social status, and race allowing them to give outsiders (me) a look into their world experience which is vastly different from my own. As a first generation Mexican American I see some similarities between Native struggles and our own as we face the challenge of staying with our roots while bettering our own life conditions. I’ve learned new terms such as colonial capitalism that I was not aware of and its effects on Naive life in Canada. In this book I learned how dismissive those who are benefactors of colonial capitalism were when it came into conversation.

What I’m taking out of this book the most is the translation of the raw emotions these authors felt when dealing with their love life. The toll it took on them to be with their partners and to struggles they faced when looking for love that straight people don’t have to consider. Overall it’s a great book on humans being human as they struggle dealing with the social class and sexuality they were given.