Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot

51 reviews

bisexualbookshelf's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective fast-paced

3.5

Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries is a memoir that resists easy categorization—a fragmented, poetic, and searingly intimate meditation on survival, identity, and the complicated act of telling one’s own story. With prose that feels like both an offering and a demand, Mailhot unravels the layers of pain, memory, and inheritance that shape her existence as an Indigenous woman in a world that would rather forget her.

Mailhot documents her struggles with mental illness, her fraught relationships, and the impossible expectations placed upon Indigenous women, particularly in the realm of storytelling. She is not interested in neat narratives or palatable resolutions. Instead, she leans into the tension between personal truth and collective history, resisting the impulse to explain or justify. Her words cut with precision: “Indian girls can be forgotten so well they forget themselves.” That forgetting—forced, inherited, and sometimes willed—is at the heart of her story.

The memoir traces Mailhot’s time in an in-patient psychiatric hospital, her diagnosis of PTSD, bipolar disorder, and an eating disorder, and her tumultuous relationship with her white creative writing professor, Casey. The power imbalance in their relationship mirrors the broader structures of colonial violence, as Mailhot is forced to navigate both love and exploitation in a space where she is perpetually undervalued. Her struggles with motherhood, memory, and psychiatric care are deeply entangled, revealing how Western institutions fail Indigenous women, offering treatment without understanding, structure without care.

While Mailhot’s reflections on race, gender, and power are striking, Heart Berries is, at its core, a story of relationship dysfunction—one that often reads as a meditation on longing, self-destruction, and unreciprocated devotion. As someone who does not gravitate toward romance-heavy narratives, I found myself frustrated by how much of the book was consumed by Mailhot’s agony over Casey, rather than the sharper interrogations of colonialism and intergenerational trauma that surface throughout. Additionally, childhood sexual abuse is one of my primary triggers, and the lack of content warnings made certain sections difficult to engage with.

Despite these reservations, Heart Berries is undeniably powerful in its form and execution. Mailhot’s writing is unflinching, lyrical, and immersive, a refusal to be easily understood or consumed. Though the memoir was not for me, its rawness and vulnerability are undeniable, making it an essential read for those seeking a voice that refuses to be silenced.

📖 Read this if you love: raw and poetic memoirs, nonlinear storytelling, and explorations of Indigenous womanhood.

🔑 Key Themes: Reclaiming Narrative and Voice, Intergenerational Trauma, Mental Illness and Survival, Race and Gender in Intimacy, The Limits of Western Healing Frameworks.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Forced institutionalization, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Child abuse, Incest, Pedophilia, and Sexual assault

Minor: Alcoholism, Drug use, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Abortion, and Death of parent

The sexual assault, incest, and pedophilia content warnings are in relation to a description of incestual childhood sexual abuse. This description occurs on page 109.

jammmbi's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Deep, reflective, and tough to process but something I’m glad I read. I went on an emotional and reflective journey reading this memoir, and it had me taking a moment to reflect on my own relationships with trauma, with grief, with shame, with pain, and brutal honesty with myself. 

Quotes that stick with me:

“If transgressions were all bad, people wouldn’t do them. Do you consider me a transgression?”

“Feel culpable in my insanity because you are partly to blame.” 

“At thirty-two, I was a child, a victim of something.” 

“The right love is an adhesive.” 

“I am not too ugly for this world.” 

“This story is yours, culprit of my pain. Which one of us is asking for mercy?” 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Abandonment

annabelle42688's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0

A journey. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Eating disorder, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Abortion, and Pregnancy

readingpicnic's review against another edition

5.0

Stellar audiobook performance, and an incredible writing style unlike any I've encountered before. I love unabashedly honest memoirs, especially those that dip into the weird and messy. I think that I judged this book by its cover and expected it to be soft poetry, but it was shocking, flagrant, in-your-face storytelling with a poetic flare that I could not put down. I felt like a kitten being carried around by the scruff of my neck listening to this while my mother cat runs down a treacherous path, enjoying the ride but also being like ahhhhh!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Medical trauma, and Suicide attempt

blueyballoon's review against another edition

dark emotional informative medium-paced

i loved this even though it was hard to follow sometimes and there were things i didn’t fully understand. but i think that’s the point of this book. as a white woman who has not experienced the even remotely close to the same psychological trauma Mailhot did, i am simply meant to sit with her scattered writing from the mental health institution and take in bits and pieces of her native language. this memoir serves as a window into the mind of an Indian woman who has experienced horrific things and been treated like she was worth nothing. some chapters were just heartbreaking, but this book was incredible and i would absolutely recommend it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Death of parent

Moderate: Alcoholism

Minor: Eating disorder

lady_epoh's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Self harm, Sexual assault, and Suicidal thoughts

shewasreadergrl's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

This book was heartbreaking and heart broken. Beautiful, honest prose.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

theboricuabookworm's review against another edition

Gripping and raw. The lyrical way Mailhot writes about pain and trauma and grief will leave you gasping.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Incest, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Classism

leweylibrary's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.25

I'm struggling to rate this one because I don't feel like I have adequate words to do so?

I struggled with the format--or lack thereof really--and the audiobook narrator. I actually got like 35% through and then had to restart it waaaaay slower because I was finding myself missing things and not paying attention. I definitely think I would've done better with it reading it physically, there are just way too many poetic moments and literary devices at work for me to track on audio. I'm grateful for the Q&A style afterwords because it did clear up some of what the author was attempting to do. Like I now have a greater appreciation for the work she put into making her writing seem simple and punchy when while reading it, it mostly just felt jarring and hard to follow or stay invested in. 

The topics covered are obviously intense. Big trigger warnings for a lot. Covering them is absolutely vital to her story, though, and her journey towards reconciliation and healing.

Overall, I can tell it was brilliant, it just wasn't totally for me in this format. And that's okay and doesn't detract from the skill it took to write it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Grief, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Abandonment

emilyb84's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Racism