Reviews tagging 'Terminal illness'

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

5 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

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

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

daisymaytwizell's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective medium-paced

4.0

A stunning exploration of life as a gay man during the AIDS epidemic, written in experimental prose and a guttural kind of emotion that makes you want to hold someone you love and overthrow the government all at once.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Terminal illness, Medical content, and Medical trauma

Minor: Homophobia, Suicide, and Violence