HEART BERRIES

Terese Marie Mailhot. HEART BERRIES: A Memoir. Doubleday, Canada, 2018.

December 15, 2018. I read this memoir a second time, as the writing is so dense, like poetry, with every word and phrase needing to be attended to. Very brave. And complicated. The dual and triple diagnoses, with mental illness complicated by racism and obsession. Anxiety-producing in that the reader worries/hopes the writer is well now. 

I was watching more closely this time for the subtle cultural references of Little Mountain Woman who goes to the river and the desert. 

HEART BERRIES

Terese Marie Mailhot. Heart Berries: A Memoir. Doubleday, 2018.

Love this memoir by American Indian writer Terese Marie Mailhot, formerly of Seabird Island Band, Agassiz, BC. Heart Berries is a memoir about mental health, emotional and relationship challenges, complicated by race and culture and artistic/writer gifts. It is about parenting skills, and about repressed memory. If this were my daughter’s story, I’d be counselling her not to waste herself on undeserving men. Because most of us have been there, done that, and, hopefully, survived to tell the tale. What elevates Mailhot’s tale is the addition of the cultural wisdoms braided with Catholic symbolism, and the wonder that someone ill is still able to see and record the anguish as she lives it.

PS I forgot to mention. The part of this book which is about co-dependence and female martyrdom reminded me a lot of Elizabeth Smart's novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.