Reviews tagging 'Self harm'

Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz

4 reviews

poenaestante's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional slow-paced

5.0

This is a searching and fearless portrait of a terrifying, thrilling, and oddly beautiful time. Wojnarowicz kept staring where others winced and looked away. He also walked down the alleys other's avoided, and recorded what he saw and how he felt, not with cool remove but with a deep sense of belonging to these funky, dirty, drug-infested, and queer spaces --- spaces where he could be free. The central question he pleads us to answer from the beyond the grave is whether the oppressive suffering is necessarily bound up with the human condition or if there exists some possibility for it to lift.
Rest In Power, David. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Incest, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

jackieeejw's review

challenging dark emotional reflective

4.5

Finishing took a lot out of me. It’s an exhausting but vital collection of essays, which jump around from topic to topic but feature absolutely incredible prose and is a unique, non linear and episodic approach to a memoir. Pretty insane how much David managed to do in the last year of his life, despite his diagnosis and the horror of “brush fires on the social landscape”, seeing his friends die one by one by one due to the negligence of government and religious orthodoxy.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Self harm, Suicide, and Terminal illness

abbeythomsen's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense

5.0

devestating, beautiful, essential, life-altering. we don't deserve David Wojnarowicz.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Death, Domestic abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Self harm, Terminal illness, Blood, Excrement, Kidnapping, Grief, and Murder

karlo's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad

3.75

the fact that the acknowledgments had to be split into the living and the dead... who's cutting onions?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Incest, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Eating disorder, Gun violence, Hate crime, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Car accident, and Murder