Reviews with content warning for Mass/school shootings - Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land

Carry is moving and heartbreaking, written from the perspective of a Métis woman who also happens to be white-passing. I really appreciate how Jensen presented her insights with this in mind and its relations to the various topics she covers ranging from gun violence to domestic abuse. She doesn’t shy away from sensitive topics but never sensationalizes them. There’s a lot of care that went into each chapter, especially as Jensen considered the impact various circumstances and issues had on her own life.

I would say it’d be more accurate to describe this book as a collection of essays tinged with personal anecdotes as opposed to a memoir due to its structure. Not that this is a bad thing, since I still enjoyed this memoir (of sorts). Something I really appreciate about Carry is Jensen’s unique voice and writing style. It was very clear that she found her rhythm, which allowed each chapter to come together as beautifully as they did.

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alsoapples's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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suzyreadsbooks's review against another edition

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5.0

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just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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4.0

I try to be really careful about what I request from NetGalley. First, becasue it is so easy to overdo it and let that get out of control (on this front, I am only marginally successful, as I am fairly far behind on sending feedback there - I'm only human). Also, because those require reading on my Kindle which is just not my favorite. I prefer a physical book. Even as I'm getting into audiobooks, I still like to have the physical copy on hand to reference, if possible. So all that being said, I am not sure what prompted me to request this particular memoir. it isn't one that I had heard of before, so I wasn't eagerly anticipating it. And I had read no reviews of it at all so I had no frame of reference for the writing, etc. But request it, I did. And, though I am clearly a bit behind on my read/review in relation to its pub date, I am really glad to have gotten access to it because it was a great read.

This is a sort of memoir in essays from Métis author Toni Jensen. Throughout the collection(?) she covers topics including her childhood and family, teaching and writing, relationships, motherhood, environmental activism and more, all tied together with an overarching theme of exploring the realities and narratives around violence, and especially gun violence, in the landscape of America historically and today.

First, and very high on the list of things I loved about this memoir, I have to mention the writing. It was just phenomenal. There is poetry in the language of Jensen's prose. And I love the way she uses definitions of words (Webster's mainly, but other options, like Urban Dictionary, when Webster's doesn't have anything), exploring the various meanings of them, their origins, and the connections she makes between those definition and the "real world," the sometimes incongruence-ness of those textbook meanings with off-page realities. It's really, for lack of a more sophisticated descriptor, cool. And it ties the chapters together stylistically, which is really necessary (I felt) since the topical/temporal ties of the essays seemed, at times, sporadic. That could have really bothered me, but I ended up being ok with it since the leaps sort of followed a natural thought-process, the way memories tend to ebb and flow into each other in understandable but not necessarily patterned ways. In summary here, the wordplay is masterful.

In contrast to the gorgeousness of the writing, many of the themes within Jensen's memoir are anything but. In fact, this was often particularly difficult to read, as Jensen delves into violence in her own life, as well as violence in this country (America), in a way that profoundly illustrates how deeply that violence is rooted in our homes and lives. Taking a look in turn at all the parts of herself, as a female (daughter, partner, mother), a Métis woman, an educator, a person living in American, Jensen shows how violence has historically been enacted against all those aspects - in the country at large and against herself individually. It's a striking and uncomfortable exploration, but an incredibly important one. The violence of America against Indigenous populations, against women, "domestically" (in quotations because I loved Jensen's interrogation of why, when violence occurs in the home is the treatment of it/reaction to it changed?), on campuses, and in general, all based in motivations of racism/sexism/stereotypical (fragile) masculinity, has gotten to a point that is essentially too much to comprehend realistically, so we have inured ourselves to the reality of it, lost ourselves in the cycle of "ignorable until it’s tragic and then ignorable again" so that its now just part of the marrow of the country.. Jensen questions that mindset, asking how we got here, and providing some background/context, some insight, some suggestion of change, but, mostly, challenging the reader to come out of the protective mental shell and join her in interrogating why this has to be our reality.

I particularly was interested in the look at the changing rhetoric in the social and political landscape of America from the 1970s to today that radicalized the “every man,” creating the idea of a strong man with a gun to protect what is his, and how that led to mass and buy-in from rural communities who would actually benefit from the exact opposite policies. It's a fascinating recent history that I don't have much baseline knowledge in. Honestly, I am only recently starting to pick up nonfiction at all, so, for me, this discussion of the rise of gun violence in America and the way it centers within wealth/whiteness and the rhetoric that conflated gun ownership with manliness/protection at this level of analysis is new to me. I was, of course, aware of (and agreed with) the clear data and reality that increased access to guns = increased likelihood of gun violence (like, duh), but just have never read much that truly dissects it like this (and I'm sure that even this is a surface-level dissection, really). But the way Jensen wove the data and current events and larger issues into her own personal experiences with and exposure to domestic/interpersonal/state-sponsored/gun violence as a sort of case study in consequences really worked for me as a reader. There is also a partial spotlight on environmental justice, the land, threatened by America (back to that theme of violence), being protected, as always, by Indigenous peoples. It wasn’t as large a piece of the memoir as the reflection on the land being stolen in the first place, and that heritage, but it was there.

Jensen uses exquisite composition to tell the story of violence in America, and her own story of violence. It is challenging, frightening, but necessary and compelling. I appreciated Jensen’s words, her vulnerability, her confrontation of the various narratives that become the dominant ones, the ones we don’t question, and asks us to really consider if this is how it has to be. And it’s powerful.

“See how science newly quantifies what some of us have long known – how historical and cultural trauma is lived in our bodies, is passed down, generation to generation, how it lives in the body.”

“It’s okay, I’ve learned, to love the things that make you, even if they also are the things that unmake you.”

“In our country, the myth of individualism pushes us to ignore structures that create tensions and pressures in individuals, yes, but also in families, in communities. But that’s not how people are made, in isolation, with only some notion of character or goodness to form them.”

“Who is served by our everyday American procedure of rendering general and passive our language about violence?”

“Whether a circumstance is acknowledged openly or formally or whether it’s denied, how a situation becomes one worthy of study, is mainly in how it does or does not intersect with or affect the lives of the wealthy.”

“More often than not, if someone describes a woman to me as difficult, I find that woman to be delightful or unusual or unorthodox. It’s a word most often used to censure women who live unconventional lives.”

“To memorialize correctly, language matters.”

“The taking by force of our land always has been twinned with the taking by force of our bodies.”

“If more wealthy Americans own guns than do those living in poverty, why do we have such difficulty fitting this fact into our collective gun narrative? Because when wealth and whiteness are combined, the narrative shifts most times towards plenty, toward goodness instead of lack or deformity. We’re unwilling to acknowledge abhorrent behavior from an heiress but expect it from a working-class man.”

“What does it mean to try to pass? What does it mean to pass without trying? With this act, how do we measure intent? With this act, this action, how much does intent matter?”

“How much grace is it possible to give to others when you move through the world with more than a small measure of safety – when this is safety you own but have not bought?”

“People who kill other people with guns have to have access to the guns. The more access, the more violence. We have in our country almost entirely unfettered access.”

“When you’re going to be called trouble anyway, your life then becomes your own. There’s liberation and loneliness both in this shift.”

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sarah984's review against another edition

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Essay collections are always hard to rate for me. Some of the essays were brilliant, searing looks at the meaning of violence, but others had clearly been published elsewhere before and didn't fit in as well with the rest of the content. The parts about COVID felt kind of tacked on and strange.

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5.0

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abbie_'s review against another edition

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I know this book was only published in 2020 so it would be odd if it weren't relevant to the here and now, but I genuinely cannot think of a book more suited to our current world. It's focused on the US, but Carry is a book that should be on everyone's radar, regardless of location.

This book is a blend of personal essay, memoir, history, the natural world and social justice. From the first essay I was blown away by Jensen's ability to weave together topics which at first may seem unrelated but, once you dig deeper, are linked in nefarious ways. She includes her own personal experiences of racism, domestic and sexual violence she's endured in various settings, including academia and at home, but links them to wider cases and events in history to create a complex and devastating tapestry of America, both past and present.

Jensen has a way of looking at things that made me question things differently too. Such as, what constitutes a violence? How many close calls, how many brushes with sexual violence does a person have to endure before they make up a whole violence? The experiences we live, whether close calls or not, leave permanent marks on our minds. We carry those experiences throughout our lives, they impact the way we do everyday things.

While the sections dealing with sexual assault affected me greatly, they did not (sadly) surprise me. The many sections on gun violence however... Oof. Obviously I know that guns are a thing in America. In the UK we obviously get news from the US concerning mass shootings. But I don't think I fully comprehended before this book, just how much guns form a part of tragic everyday violence in America. And once I did... it's staggering. Jensen holds absolutely no bars when she assesses why gun violence rates are so high in the US - practically unfettered access to firearms. All the research and studies in the world can't change that simple fact.

She also examines the untouchable combination of wealth and whiteness when it comes to gun violence, not to mention the intense difference with which the media treats white perpetrators compared to Black perpetrators or perpetrators of colour. Gun violence in America includes the white and wealthy more often than the narrative around the problem would have you believe. With white shooters, they're more inclined to follow the guidelines of not splashing their faces or even names across the news, to not inspire copycat killings and show respect for the victims and their families. But if the shooters aren't white? It's almost guaranteed their faces will be right there, splashed across the news to further fuel the racist agenda.

One thing (among many) I love about this book is how Jensen will always mention which Indigenous peoples owned the land before it was stolen from them whenever she mentions a new place. Jensen is Métis, and is 100% dedicated to reminding us that the 'Vanishing Indian Myth' is in fact just that. A myth. Her examination of the way American history has sanitised the slaughters of Indigenous folks across the country is eerily accurate to what we're living through right now. With media outlets refusing to call the terrorists who stormed the Capitol for what they are, America (and the rest of the world) is literally watching history being altered, being made more comfortable for the white gaze. Jensen hammers home how much language matters. They weren't 'battles', they were massacres of Indigenous peoples.

Jensen also continually refers to 'This, our America' throughout the book. I can imagine she was not at all surprised by the events at the Capitol, as no one should be, since it fits perfectly the narrative of America so far - the true narrative, not the comfortable sanitised one. She states at one point that Americans (but again, people all over the world) doing the bare minimum and believing themselves to be part of the solution are in fact the problem. And that is something we all need to internalise.

One last thing, the title of this book 'Carry' is probably the most perfect title I've ever come across. Throughout the book, Jensen quantifies and defines terms according the many definitions of Webster's. I loved this aspect, and if you were to look up the definitions for 'carry', you would find this book summed up.

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