Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot

18 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.

jessbc91's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Minor: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Racism, Rape, Suicide, 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

biab00's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Grief, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Alcohol

frufai's review against another edition

dark emotional sad fast-paced

5.0

Used the English language beautiful. Makes you think about the difference between love and obsession 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Gaslighting

devan's review against another edition

sad fast-paced

1.5

I think I am being generous with a 1.5. People have said this book is poetic. It feels more like stream of consciousness - verbal vomit. I know mental health can be a tough topic but it felt more like “woe is me, I can’t stop saying yes to this unhealthy relationship and I feel bad no good about it”. 

Memoirs are tough to review but it brings up a question about who they are written for. If someone needs to tell their story, who am I to stop you but stories like this being praised feel a bit like rewarding & praising toxic relationships. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Death, Suicide, and Toxic relationship

eegred's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse and Sexual violence

Moderate: Self harm, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

sillysausagezj's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Mental illness, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Toxic relationship, and Colonisation

Minor: Abortion

itscunning's review against another edition

The writing is really strong, but I went into the book hoping to learn something about processing grief and instead, the writer talks about how awful men are — WHICH I GET as a woman of the 21st century. Sometimes though I want to learn things from a perspective I can’t relate to and this made me reflect on everything wrong in my life. Will probably return because there are some good tidbits and writing and the dedication is beautiful. 

“I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.” 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide

clarabooksit's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

1.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Alcoholism, Sexual violence, Grief, Alcohol, and Colonisation