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Please join us Thursday, November 7th at 7pm for Alibi Bookshop's November Memoir Book Club: "Heart Berries" by Terese Marie Mailhot.A New York Times bestseller
A PBS Newshour/New York Times Now Read This Book Club Pick
A New York Times Editor's 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
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 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.
Books available in the shop and online: bookshop.org/shop/alibibookshop and audio: libro.fm/alibibookshop
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Alibi Bookshop - Vallejo, CA, 624 Marin St,Vallejo,CA,United States
