Title: Heart Berries (A Memoir)
Author: Terese Marie Mailhot. From the back of the book: “Mailhot is from Seabird Island Band. She graduated with an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she now serves as faculty. She is a Tecumseh Postdoctoral Fellow at Purdue University.”
Synopsis: Terese Marie Mailhot began her memoir Heart Berries after being hospitalized for suicidal ideation and being diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, PTSD, and an eating disorder (she admitted herself to a psychiatric institution). The entire memoir is a series of essays written to her now-husband Casey. Mailhot grew up on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest, and in this memoir she reflects on the childhood trauma she endured (including abuse and neglect) as well as how being a First Nation Canadian impacted her relationship with mental illness as well as with her past.
Why I liked this book: This is probably the most poetic book I have ever read. The writing is really rich and complex with a strong emphasis on sensory detail. I liked how honest Mailhot was about her feelings and her struggles with mental illness: you could understand and empathize with all that she endured and all of her strength, but you also could appreciate and understand the mistakes she’d made and the things she regretted. Mailhot’s story helps normalize mental illness in communities of color, specifically Indigenous communities, and demolishes the idea that mental illnesses can exist only biologically or act in isolation. The fact that the book is mostly a series of letters written to her white husband is also powerful and beautiful: by exposing the ways her husband labelled and misunderstood her, Mailhot also provides a reader like me with many opportunities to explore how I engage in similar behaviors. This is one of the most powerful and beautiful works I have ever read, DEFINITELY READ!!!!
Powerful passage: “In my first writing classes, my professor told me that the human condition was misery. I’m a river widened by misery, and the potency of my language is more than human. It’s an Indian condition to be proud of survival but reluctant to call it resilience. Resilience seems ascribed to a human conditioning in white people” (page 7).
Things to keep in mind: This book details sexual abuse as well as hospitalization.
Link: https://bookshop.org/books/heart-berries-a-memoir/9781640091603
My Fast 