Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

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

11 reviews

demimimica's review

dark informative sad slow-paced

5.0

Rating this memoir with anything less than 5 stars feels like reducing the suffering of hundreds of people to arbitrary criteria such as “is it well written enough?” “Is this memoir sad enough?” “Is it orderly and understandable?” “Is it easy for me to digest?” I understand using these criteria to judge fiction, but this is different. These events happened. These people died. The book is engulfed in flames and the most gut-wrenching, enthralling anger.

This doesn't feel like something for me to judge. It is a cry for help, and all we can do is listen. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Homophobia, Sexual assault, Suicide, Abortion, Abandonment, and Sexual harassment

samuelachillese's review against another edition

4.5

David Wojnarowicz had an excellent, cutting, clear-eyed and sensitive perspective on society, the media, the AIDS crisis and art. Wish he was alive today and we could see what he’d have to say about COVID.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Homophobia, Rape, Suicide, and Violence

saturnalyx's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Hate crime, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Medical content, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Alcohol

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

twaision's review

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

5.0

Such a raw, powerful memoir. Each part of the book was written exactly how it needed to be written to get its message across, from brutally direct protest to beautiful confusing poetic passages. It touched so many topics and I felt like David Wojnarowicz was so ahead of his time in many ways.
Read this book if you can (but check the content warnings first).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Drug abuse, Homophobia, Rape, Suicide, Terminal illness, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Sexual violence, and Violence

eatyourphone's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

now one of my favourite books of all time. this book did so much for me that i am not even going to try to explain in a little storygraph review. i love you david! smell the flowers while you can.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Drug abuse, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide, and Violence

Minor: Incest

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

mentaboi's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Drug abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual violence, and Suicide

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