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challenging
emotional
sad
medium-paced
A plethora of content warnings here. J speaks in depth about not only her personal trauma, but of our collective trauma; her people, her family, and our country as it stands today. The text moves around as she does, including to University of Central Florida and Orlando itself. The Pulse shooting is specifically addressed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Rape, Suicide, Police brutality, Dementia, Mass/school shootings
Moderate: Medical trauma
Minor: Alcoholism, Death, Drug abuse, Grief
informative
reflective
Toni Jensen's Carry is a memoir in essays about her experience as a Métis woman, with a particular focus on how gun violence has become rampant and touches numerous lives. It's also about identity, trauma, being a writer, etc.
Guns are woven throughout, from her father's own possession, to encounters she's personally had, to other people she's known who have been affected by them. For example, she writes of the Pulse night club shooting in Orlando, a place that she used to live and which her students would frequent. Her life is almost presented as a web, a twisted game of "three degrees from..." as she relates herself to these events.
Guns are woven throughout, from her father's own possession, to encounters she's personally had, to other people she's known who have been affected by them. For example, she writes of the Pulse night club shooting in Orlando, a place that she used to live and which her students would frequent. Her life is almost presented as a web, a twisted game of "three degrees from..." as she relates herself to these events.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gun violence
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
This memoir in essays reminded me so much of another favorite: I am, I am, I am by Maggie O'Farrell. Both are stunningly, poetically written, with a focus on extraordinary and everyday brushes with death. Jensen is a born storyteller, someone whose curiosity about language and the effects of words comes through clearly in her writing. I fell head over heels for her narrative style from the first page. It feels overly simplistic to describe Carry as a book about violence - it is about that, it's true, but Carry is also about family, and place, and survival. It puts what's happening in (to use Jensen's refrain, our America) in a larger context. In her essays, she reminds us that as long as this country chooses to view gun violence as a problem that cannot be solved, as something that just is, that the violence against Black and Indigenous people, the violence against women and children, the countless almosts, the too-many-to-name violent acts that are carried out every day will continue. She reminds us that we cannot untangle the threads of the violence against animals and the violence against women, the violence of the past and the violence of the present, the everyday violence and the headline making violence, the violence of the individual and the violence of the government, because it is all connected. I hope that one day people will look back on stories like those in Carry and they will seem unrecognizable. In the meantime, they are an anthem, a warning, a question.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Sexual assault, Violence, Xenophobia, Trafficking
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.
TL;DR REVIEW:
Carry is one of those memoirs that just stands so far out from all the others. The writing is fierce, poetic, and self-assured. Read it.
For you if: You liked Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House.
FULL REVIEW:
Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land absolutely blew me away. Toni Jensen’s prose sings and cuts, drawing you in and rooting you to the spot until it’s finished.
Jensen masterfully weaves together two defining focuses of her life: her Native identity, and the recurring presence of guns and gun violence — be it in her fraught childhood home, on any of the various campuses where she’s taught, or in the neighborhoods where she’s lived. Somehow, she never loses the examination on either one of those things, even though they are not always related to one another. She also broadens out to examine the impact of racism against Native people, violence against women, classism, and more.
It’s heavy, but it rings with humanity. It’s honest, it’s sad, it’s hopeful, it’s important. I cried, I shook, I laughed. I’m still in awe.
This won’t be for everyone, in that it’s an untraditional memoir — but in the best way, I thought. It’s written in essays rather than a narrative arc, jumps around in time, and rings with metaphorical, poetic prose. The best comparison I can draw is In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. If you liked that one, I think you’ll like this one. Jensen’s skill with words is incredible.
TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Child abuse (physical); Child abuse (sexual); Animal abuse; Gun threats and violence; Pregnancy, breech/emergency C-section birth
TL;DR REVIEW:
Carry is one of those memoirs that just stands so far out from all the others. The writing is fierce, poetic, and self-assured. Read it.
For you if: You liked Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House.
FULL REVIEW:
Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land absolutely blew me away. Toni Jensen’s prose sings and cuts, drawing you in and rooting you to the spot until it’s finished.
Jensen masterfully weaves together two defining focuses of her life: her Native identity, and the recurring presence of guns and gun violence — be it in her fraught childhood home, on any of the various campuses where she’s taught, or in the neighborhoods where she’s lived. Somehow, she never loses the examination on either one of those things, even though they are not always related to one another. She also broadens out to examine the impact of racism against Native people, violence against women, classism, and more.
It’s heavy, but it rings with humanity. It’s honest, it’s sad, it’s hopeful, it’s important. I cried, I shook, I laughed. I’m still in awe.
This won’t be for everyone, in that it’s an untraditional memoir — but in the best way, I thought. It’s written in essays rather than a narrative arc, jumps around in time, and rings with metaphorical, poetic prose. The best comparison I can draw is In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. If you liked that one, I think you’ll like this one. Jensen’s skill with words is incredible.
TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Child abuse (physical); Child abuse (sexual); Animal abuse; Gun threats and violence; Pregnancy, breech/emergency C-section birth
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Child abuse
Minor: Pedophilia
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Gun violence, Violence
Moderate: Dementia, Trafficking