Brief Description:
"Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest"--Provided by publisher.
Biographical Note:
TERESE MARIE MAILHOT is from Seabird Island Band. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Elle, Granta, Mother Jones, Medium, Al Jazeera, the Los Angeles Times, and Best American Essays. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Heart Berries: A Memoir. Her book was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for English-Language Nonfiction, and was selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for March/April 2018. Her book was also the January 2020 pick for Now Read This, a book club from PBS Newshour and The New York Times. Heart Berries was also listed as an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, a Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, and was one of Harper's Bazaar's Best Books of 2018. She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, and she is also the recipient of the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. She teaches creative writing at Purdue University.
Review Quotes:
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & EDITORS' CHOICE
Winner of the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature
Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for English-Language Nonfiction
Selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for March/April 2018
A PBS Newshour/New York Times Now Read This Book Club Pick
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
An NPR Best Book of the Year
"There are so many sentences I had to read again because they were so true and beautiful. It's a memoir of pure poetry and courage and invention. Whenever I think about it, my heart clenches with love." --Cheryl Strayed, The New York Times Book Review
"A sledgehammer . . . Her experiments with structure and language . . . are in the service of trying to find new ways to think about the past, trauma, repetition, and reconciliation, which might be a way of saying a new model for the memoir . . . If Heart Berries is any indication, the work to come will not just surface suppressed stories; it might give birth to new forms." -- The New York Times
"A fierce and poetic memoir that grips you from the start and never lets go. Each page, paragraph and sentence is more gut-wrenching than the one before it. An illuminating account of grief, abuse and the complex nature of the Native experience, it is at once raw and achingly beautiful. Terese Mailhot is a truly fearless writer, and this little book is nothing short of a gift." --Juan Vidal, NPR, A Best Book of the Year
"Sharp and scorching . . . It's exciting to think that a person might be able to write their way out of seemingly insurmountable personal, cultural and historical trauma. It's even more exciting to actually watch someone appear, at least partly, to do so . . . This unconventional epic should be part of the canon." -- Chicago Tribune
"Sometimes a writer's voice is so distinctive, so angry and messy yet wise, that her story takes on the kind of urgency that makes you turn pages faster and faster. Terese Marie Mailhot has one of those voices, and her memoir about being raised on a Canadian reservation and coming to understand what it means to be an indigenous person in modern times is breathtaking." -- Esquire
"Mailhot examines the circumstances of her life--replete with grief, abuse, and structural injustice--with searing honesty and forceful language in her tiny but powerful debut. Steeped in several generations' worth of history, Heart Berries demands to be re-read over and over, every return yielding a new insight." --Julie Kosin, Harper's Bazaar
"Terse and tough and fierce and honest, Mailhot is an essential new voice in the Native literary world, as well as in the world at large." --Tommy Orange, GQ
"A luminous, poetic memoir." -- Entertainment Weekly
"Puts an undeniable spotlight on the trials and oppression of modern Native women. Her memoir includes a poignant statement on the continued colonization of Native women and an attempt to shine a light on the not-so-secret harm colonialist structures causes First Nations Peoples." --Marilyn La Jeunesse, Teen Vogue
"For the person who knows the power of using language to mitigate our feelings of shame. For the person who knows that shame dissipates when you figure out how to tell your story. For the person who has always been told their stories don't matter. For the person who knows that their stories are precisely the kind that matter, because it's been so long and they've never been told. For the person who knows that, after a while, it's easy to mistake pain for the truest form of intimacy. For the person who discovers that there are other ways of being close to people, ways that don't have to hurt always, even if sometimes they do. For the person who knows that truth isn't spelled with a capital T. For the person who knows that the only way out of trauma can be by meeting it head-on." -- NYLON
"This gut punch of a memoir . . . [is] essentially a love letter, full of humor and truth, to tough, challenging women everywhere." -- Marie Claire
"Utterly arresting . . . Mailhot makes beautiful sentences out of ugly things, addressing the complexities of mental illness, the particular damage wrought by sexual abuse, and the injustices of racism and white male supremacy, in a distinctive, uncompromising style. It is a very empowering read, hard-hitting and politically charged, while at the same time offering a tender celebration of motherhood, its expansive love, its defiance." --Diana Evans, Financial Times
"An astounding memoir in essays. Here is a wound. Here is need, naked and unapologetic. Here is a mountain woman, towering in words great and small . . . What Mailhot has accomplished in this exquisite book is brilliance both raw and refined." --Roxane Gay, author of Hunger
"I am quietly reveling in the profundity of Mailhot's deliberate transgression in Heart Berries and its perfect results. I love her suspicion of words. I have always been terrified and in awe of the power of words--but Mailhot does not let them silence her in Heart Berries. She finds the purest way to say what she needs to say . . . [T]he writing is so good it's hard not to temporarily be distracted from the content or narrative by its brilliance . . . Perhaps, because this author so generously allows us to be her witness, we are somehow able to see ourselves more clearly and become better witnesses to ourselves." --Emma Watson, Official March/April selection for Our Shared Shelf
Description for Sales People:
The New York Times bestseller, now in paperback
One of the most critically acclaimed books of 2018
The paperback edition, like subsequent editions of the hardcover before it, does not include the original introduction by Sherman Alexie
An urgent, provocative memoir written by a First Nations woman; the narrative style is non-linear, written like a lyrical prose poem, with echoes of the style found in recent works such as Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts
Heart Berries pushes the boundaries of form, using storytelling as a way to reveal how memory functions or fragments (as a blend between remembrance, imagination, trauma, and acceptance)
Submitted for consideration for the ABA Indies Introduce and B&N Discover Great New Writers programs, as well as to the Junior Library Guild New Adult/YA Crossover catalogs
For readers who loved Joy Harjo's CRAZY BRAVE and Lidia Yuknavitch's THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER
Author has published her essays widely, including in The Toast and The Rumpus, and her essay, "I Know I'll Go," was listed as notable in Best American Essays 2016.
Praise from Librarians and Booksellers
"Some books need us more than we need them. Others, the rare ones, are gifts that restore potency to language, confront trauma with wiliness and craft, and revitalize the world. Heart Berries is one these rare books." --Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books (Point Reyes Station, CA)
"Heart Berries is a slender jewel of a memoir written by a wholly original and unexpected new voice. I have never read anyone like Terese Marie Mailhot--each page delivers new and delightful ways to play with words and sentence structure, in an extremely natural and organic way (nothing overwritten or precious here). It doesn't feel like it was written so much as physically extracted from her body like a root, gnarled and dirty and honest and beautiful. I cried, and laughed, and never wanted it to end. I can't wait to see what she does next." --Leah Cushman, Powell's Books (Portland, OR)
"Over twenty years have passed since Mary Karr's Liars' Club burst on the scene and delivered an electric shock to the memoir. I'd say that's just about the appropriate amount of time for the dust to have settled enough to create the perfect environment in which Terese Marie Mailhot's debut, Heart Berries, could reawaken the genre once more. I'm not sure mental illness or America's pastime of indigenous exploitation has been tackled with such ferocity and honesty before. Mailhot has a knack for hiding poems within her prose, and each chapter sings with spine-chilling exactness. I found myself rereading almost every passage enough to where I had nearly read the book twice by the time I got to the end. Take my (and Sherman Alexie's) word here: Mailhot is a damn good voice--one to watch for many years to come." --John Gibbs, Green Apple Books on the Park (San Francisco, CA)
"In a time of memoirs that, at best, help a reader know what vulnerability and facing down fear are, Terese Marie Mailhot's cathartic, moving Heart Berries, is one of the bravest and most fearless of such books. Her coming of age on a First Nation reservation, Seabird Island, in Canada, is particular to that vividly evoked place, but also carries larger universal lessons for the human spirit, its survival, its enduring every kind of trial and difficulty, to find meaning, dignity, and beauty. A necessary book." --Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company
"This is the boldest kind of writing because it speaks directly to people. Terese Marie Mailhot addresses numerous people she has loved in her life--a mother, a father, a lover, and others--and in doing so, she gets right to the core of it: what it feels like to love, to accept love, despite our and its limitations. Heart Berries is a deep, wrenching, searching sort of book, and it contains impossibly raw, yet seamless, sentences: 'You think weakness is a problem. I want to be torn apart by everything.' It isn't sensational. To call anything in this memoir 'sensational' would be to eschew its logic. Everything in Heart Berries rings true to me. Many upturned stones appeared familiar, felt new. This writing is tactile. Though it deals in questions of love, health, grief, inheritance, and shame, it gave me something to hold." --Will Walton, Avid Bookshop (Athens, GA)
"This book reads like a wildfire. Full of ferocious intellect, searing emotion, and fearless self-examination, Terese Marie Mailhot's memoir surges through the complexity and conflict of love, trauma, identity, and mental illness with language that crackles and burns right off the page. I was blown open reading her honest dispatches of life with her mother, the madness of romantic heartbreak, and her ventures toward love and stability. Brave is an easy word to describe this book, but it isn't enough. Resilient, courageous, powerful, aware, alive, unforgettable; this slender memoir is huge." --Julie Wernersbach, literary director of the Texas Book Festival
"I have read at least two dozen memoirs this year; Heart Berries is the only one I was compelled to read twice. Heart Berriesachieves that most elusive and sacred goal of literature--to make us feel less alone in the world. With a beautiful and original voice, Mailhot applies the precision of the poet to her prose. Each sentence feels necessary, each paragraph vital, as she grapples with daughterhood, motherhood, sisterhood, wifehood, and finally, selfhood. This is a book written against forgetting, against losing self to the needs and desires of others. It is the kind of writing that has the power to make us all forgive ourselves and to teach us that we each must take up our space in this world. But this isn't self-help. This is careful, crafted literature, the disciplined work of a masterful artist." --Tina Ontiveros, Klindt's Booksellers (The Dalles, OR), Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association board member
"A poetic, absorbing memoir about love, trauma, shame, and mental illness. A beautiful and unsettling read." --Lexi Beach, Astoria Bookshop (Astoria, NY)
"Terese is a Native American from the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. This gripping memoir is a no-holds-barred expression of her mental illness as she tries to come to grips with her dysfunctional family and the abuse she suffered as a child. Not only was she physically abused by family, but the cultural abuse she also experienced is gut wrenching. She is able to articulate the pain she feels and at times it is difficult to be in the place she resides, but her story is so compelling and her voice is so authentic that I was mesmerized by her experience. She writes beautifully and is so expressive. This is a story that needs to be read, and in a world where diversity is the word of the day, it is important to view her perspective and have compassion for all that she has endured." --Stephanie Crowe, Page and Palette (Fairhope, AL)
"Terese Mailhot delivers one of the most poetic and heartbreaking memoirs I have read this year. Her prose and form take the typical memoir and turn it on its head. Unsurprisingly, she was one of Sherman Alexie's students, and shows the same inventiveness of style. Heart Berries is a beautiful and painful ode to struggles as a Native woman. I treasured Mailhot's words and ability to openly share her unique yet universal struggles as an indigenous person." --Kate Laubernds, Powell's Books (Portland, OR)
"Heart Berries is slim but so potent. I found myself seized and unnerved by Mailhot's piercing command of language, and her courage in reforming her life's narrative. She's destined to become a must-read for those who've loved the work of writers like Mary Karr, Sherman Alexie, and Roxane Gay." --Leigh Atkins, Kepler's (Menlo Park, CA)
"A beautiful book. Mailhot writes of Indian heritage, of poverty, of mental health, of dysfunctional love, of motherhood, of substance abuse without a trace of artifice or intellectual posturing. Instead, these are pieces of her life that she's witnessed, lived through, manifested, and transformed into story and writing that rumbles and pierces. The writing is intense and incredibly rendered, but what's more is how it serves to illuminate what's concrete--many of the images of her life will stay with me (not least, Paul Simon on the landline, a Stevie Ray Vaughan shrine on the table, a baby holding a hammer with her back against a banging door). Memoir at its best." --Molly Moore, BookPeople (Austin, TX)
"Sometimes a writer seems to be peering into your life and peeking into your soul, instead of the other way around. And while she lays herself bare on the page, Mailhot also stripped away my own pretense of holding it together. As I turned each page, I felt just as lost as she. She writes of love and pain, and how love can be painful. While these themes don't make for an easy read, her words have an urgency and necessity that will connect readers to their own humanity." --Consuelo Marie Hacker, BookPeople (Austin, TX)
"This is not ordinarily the sort of book I pick up, but I found it powerful and disturbing and heart-wrenching to read. Mailhot writes her madness in an extraordinarily compelling way, one that viscerally portrays the abuse and trauma at the heart of her story. Every time I went to put it down, I found myself compelled to pick it up again." --Jenny Craig, librarian, Seattle Public Library
"I feel completely inadequate in writing a review of something from such a place of unique heart-wrenching perspective, obsession, anguish, and culture. I think Sherman [Alexie]'s intro and his own fumbling for enough exclamation points to endorse [Mailhot's] writing kind of sums up my own response . . . What a courageous book." --Jesica Sweedler DeHart, Neill Public Library (Pullman, WA)
Table of Contents:1 INDIAN CONDITION 2 HEART BERRIES 3 INDIAN SICK 4 IN A PECAN FIELD 5 YOUR BLACK EYE AND MY BIRTH 6 I KNOW I'LL GO 7 LITTLE MOUNTAIN WOMAN 8 THE LEAVING DEFICIT 9 THUNDER BEING HONEY BEAR 10 INDIAN CONDITION 11 BETTER PARTS
Publisher Marketing:
*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & EDITORS' CHOICE*
Winner of the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature
Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for English-Language Nonfiction
Selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for March/April 2018
A powerful, poetic memoir of an Indigenous woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest--this New York Times bestseller and Emma Watson Book Club pick is "an illuminating account of grief, abuse and the complex nature of the Native experience . . . at once raw and achingly beautiful" (NPR)
Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder, Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father―an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist―who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.
Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world.
