“Here’s a word. Bereavement. Or, Bereaved. Bereft. It’s from the Old English bereafian, meaning ‘to deprive of, take away, seize, rob’. Robbed. Seized. It happens to everyone. But you feel it alone. Shocking loss isn’t to be shared, no matter how hard you try,” (Macdonald 13). After her father suddenly dies, Helen Macdonald decides to …
“What am I without religion? What am I without the safety of us?” (Jong 119). In Tamara Jong explores her life growing up and being a devour, practicing Jehovah’s Witness while also understanding the instability of her childhood and her father’s emotional distance and mother’s alcohol addiction as she comes to lose and understand herself …
“The cells of your body are dying and growing again every day, and you are always in the process of becoming something new. You’re not sure yet who you will be, but you are ready to find out,” (Stevenson ix). N.D. Stevenson looks back at eight years of their life (2011-2019) through mini comics and old …
I received this book from Simon and Schuster Canada in exchange for an honest review. “Driving home, I’m caught in the crazy paradox: people want to be remembered when they’re gone, yet everyone’s afraid to talk about the dead. The fastest way to forget someone is to stop saying their name,” (Waite). When Jessica Waite’s husband dies suddenly …
“Some are born anxious, some achieve anxiety, and some have anxiety thrust upon them. I am lucky enough to have been blessed with all three,” (Donahue 7). I heard Anne Donahue read from her collection of essays a few years back (the same literary festival where I heard Claudia Dey read from Heartbreaker, so I guess I’m …
“My scared voice also asks if it’s truly possible to have a chosen family when, for me at least, almost everyone in it is tied romantically to another, or will be, their sense of family closing in on itself as they couple up and have kids. I feel frustrated with myself for wanting to be …
“Sometimes patrons ask if my full first name is Benjamin. Then they ask if I know what my name means…They are surprised to find out I’m the oldest of two sons and not the youngest of twelve. They look at me as if I’m wearing the wrong name tag, wearing the wrong name,” (Robinson 31). …
“The central tragedy of childhood is never getting what you want,” (Easton). Easton’s memoir explores their life growing up in the West as a Mormon, queer, Autistic individual. Following them as a child in the Mormon church and a student at an Anglican boys’ boarding school to be “reformed,” to mall bathrooms, rodeos, bathhouses, and Catholic …
“lost and alone,/wandering./i swill back the pain; it burns and it belches/rage and despair/leaving only a windigo/who cannibalizes himself,” (Thistle, 157, “Windigo”). Jesse Thistle recounts his journey of recovery from drug-addiction. He remembers his brief time in the foster-care system with his brothers, moving to Ontario with his paternal grandparents, until he finds himself homeless. …
“I’m no longer sure which is worse: surviving and living the rest of my life as a lie, or wasting away in this apartment and dying from this cancer,” (Maylott 35). Paige Maylott’s debut memoir is an honest exploration of transition and discovery. Finding solace, community, and love in online communities and games, Maylott comes into …
Sarah O'Connor 