Coexistence

Reviews

“A feat of beauty and compression, every sentence reinventing the reader. Belcourt is the rare writer who composes from, to, and because of the soul. It’s been some time since I loved a book so deeply.”
—Claudia Dey, author of Daughter

“Belcourt has written an homage and an elegy to a still-unfolding history—as intimate and hopeful as young romance, as mysterious and life-giving as family. I adore this collection.”
 —Tsering Yangzom Lama, author of We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

“Coexistence filled my heart and lifted my spirit. There are few writers who can authentically capture the beauty and complexity of Indigenous existence both on the rez and in the city like Billy-Ray Belcourt.”
—Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Turning Leaves

“There are sentences in this collection that I didn’t know I had been waiting to read; my breath caught on several of them. I suspect that readers will be letting out collective sighs while reading this book.”
—Helen Knott, author of Becoming a Matriarch

“What haunts me most about these powerful stories is the author’s heart-blasted willingness to be vulnerable on the page. This engaging, alive text drills right to heart of what it is to be Indigenous in the twenty-first century.”
—Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls

“These characters’ passionate insistence on loving and desiring and hoping, amid the existential terror of colonization—and Belcourt’s nuanced and attentive rendering of it—is the most revolutionary of acts.”
—Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao

“Belcourt sheds light on the transformative potential of love. . . . These wise and open-hearted stories astonish.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Explores Indigenous life on the rez and in the city, family and community bonds, queer love, art and survival—all within the paradox of grief and joy of contemporary Indigenous life . . . Exquisite writing.”
—Winnipeg Free Press

“An instinctive, liberating short story collection.”
—Vancouver Sun

“A closely rendered portrait of love as a vessel for healing and Indigenous joy. . . . Belcourt cleverly invites the reader to follow his characters into the moments of transformation that spur an expansive shift in how we allow ourselves to love, which has the effect of opening a door. . . . I want to spend my life walking through those doors described in these stories. I think many of us do.”
—The Tyee

“Belcourt tries his hand at short stories here . . . proving to be without peer when it comes to empathetically translating the quotidian of daily existence into spiritual portraiture. The collection is lush and richly observed and made all the more moving thanks to Belcourt’s tendency toward first-person narration, which pairs perfectly with his talent for concisely expressing characters’ interiority and his ability to locate beauty in bruising.”
—Library Journal Expand reviews