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Coexistence: Stories
Superbly rendered portraits of modern indigeneity from the acclaimed author of A Minor Chorus.
A grieving mother calls out to her faraway son. A student forgoes the lurid appeal of dating apps in exchange for a painter’s love. The anonymous voices of queer native men converge amid violent eroticism. A man just out of prison balances the uneasy weight of family and freedom, while a professor returns home to conduct research only to be haunted by a dark specter. The stories and voices in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut story collection are buoyed by philosophical undergirding, poetic demand, and the complex relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Belcourt pirouettes through the short story form in his signature staccato voice, imagining a range of characters from all walks of native life. He is an expert in celebrating the ways Indigenous peoples make total conquest impossible.
“These characters’ passionate insistence on loving and desiring and hoping, amid the existential terror of colonization—and Billy-Ray Belcourt’s nuanced and attentive rendering of it—is the most revolutionary of acts.” —Vauhini Vara, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Immortal King Rao
“A brilliant exploration of the boundaries both imposed and imagined that exist between beings and the spaces we inhabit. This engaging, alive text drills right to the heart of what it is to be Indigenous in the twenty-first century.” —Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls
A grieving mother calls out to her faraway son. A student forgoes the lurid appeal of dating apps in exchange for a painter’s love. The anonymous voices of queer native men converge amid violent eroticism. A man just out of prison balances the uneasy weight of family and freedom, while a professor returns home to conduct research only to be haunted by a dark specter. The stories and voices in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut story collection are buoyed by philosophical undergirding, poetic demand, and the complex relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Belcourt pirouettes through the short story form in his signature staccato voice, imagining a range of characters from all walks of native life. He is an expert in celebrating the ways Indigenous peoples make total conquest impossible.
“These characters’ passionate insistence on loving and desiring and hoping, amid the existential terror of colonization—and Billy-Ray Belcourt’s nuanced and attentive rendering of it—is the most revolutionary of acts.” —Vauhini Vara, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Immortal King Rao
“A brilliant exploration of the boundaries both imposed and imagined that exist between beings and the spaces we inhabit. This engaging, alive text drills right to the heart of what it is to be Indigenous in the twenty-first century.” —Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls
156 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 21, 2024
About the author
Billy-Ray Belcourt
11 books836 followersBilly-Ray Belcourt is a writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation. His books are: THIS WOUND IS A WORLD (Frontenac House 2017; UMinn Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize, NDN COPING MECHANISMS (House of Anansi 2019), winner of the 2020 Stephan G. Stephansson Poetry Prize and longlisted for Canada Reads, A HISTORY OF MY BRIEF BODY (Hamish Hamilton and Two Dollar Radio 2020), finalist for the 2020 Governor General's Literary Prize for Non-Fiction and the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, and the forthcoming A MINOR CHORUS: A NOVEL (Hamish Hamilton and Norton 2022).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 447 reviews
June 16, 2024
Breathtaking collection. So much longing. So much vulnerability. Made my world stop.
May 29, 2024
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital ARC of Coexistence.
This short story collection importantly portrays Indigenous characters and experiences, which are refreshing but also relatable. However, it didn't entertain or move me as much as I was hoping for.
This short story collection importantly portrays Indigenous characters and experiences, which are refreshing but also relatable. However, it didn't entertain or move me as much as I was hoping for.
May 11, 2024
BRB always blows me away. Such a moving reading experience. Every story just as incredible as the next. Brilliant writing of queer & indigenous longing, desire, sentimentality, and joy. The complexities of his characters lives are written with superb craft and skill. I was so lost within each story and cared so deeply for each characters situation and journey. No one captures queer tenderness with such poetic force like Belcourt. The reflection of queer and indigenous life here is monumental and an indelible record of our current moment. Books like this are a reminder of the potential and beauty of literature.
July 8, 2026
I like how all of Billy-Ray's books constantly have me pausing and reflecting on single sentences. The opening paragraph has the fourth sentence in the book say:
To be a mother is to represent for someone else life as an abstract quality.
I'm finally adding to this review here in Sept, though I finished this in July at the beach. (just kept reading books and neglected this review). But I just wrote a review for a YA book a few minutes ago that I almost want to go back and deduct a star simply due to writing depth comparison.
I cannot do justice to each of these 10 short stories contained here by simply summarizing the plot/storyline. It is the writing! So I will feature the writing. And the learning.
1. One Woman's Memories
People die, but even in death they continue aging in crooked photographs along a wall in someone's house.
When they met, he was a non-status Indian because his mother had married a non-status man and in so doing surrendered Indian status - this gender-biased clause in the Indian Act wouldn't get amended for several more decades; status Indian men had the power to transmit status, but Indian women could only have theirs taken away; Because of who they loved they could cease to be Indian in the eyes of the government.
Does she wish she had had more children? Sometimes. Mostly, though, she wants to undo time or to live the same life over again. To make small adjustments that would, of course, change everything.
They lived through land loss and famine and the inception of the residential school system. They were the first cohort of parents who had to endure the seizure of their children in the name of state mandated colonial education Louise thinks about the reserve today and shudders at the thought of its suddenly emptied of children . A place without children has no future.
The love I felt for her was stronger than I'd ever experienced. He held hands sometimes, and something in me ached when we did. I didn't know that two Cree girls could fall in love. I didn't think to ask Sue if she loved me . That possibility was absurd, really.
When he died, louise went on, her voice breaking, I had to figure out how to keep living. I did everything with him. We never slept in different beds, not once. We were together for so long and yet I still wanted more time. Some people don't take to the singular I
2. Lived Experience
The walls are so thin that I often hear my neighbors f***ing, Which makes me feel both more and less a part of the world, Their animal sounds remind me that the solitary I is a trick of the light and that the plural is dense and unbearable.
I open the app and see our faces side by side on the grid. I block him.
I shouldn't treat my body like ashore for others to shipwreck onto. Somehow no one has told me this yet
I vow then to delete the app. I won't let men ruin me.
We're all citizens of the 20th century . Especially natives. I think it ever ended for us
I feel beautiful because he's looking at me.
The pleasure of looking at what he's looking at almost overwhelms me.
I take in the aroma of his shampoo - pomegranate, We are together in our minor grief, That he exists, that he and I constitute a we, however budding and unstable, is enough of a counter, today, to historical ignorance, We aren't over determined by the instructors politics of forgetting . As the lecture continues, Will doesn't move, his head remains on my shoulder It's a gesture so caring I almost can't stand it.
You're really beautiful, Will says, then he says it again. The more he says it the more I believe it. We come at the same time. We continue kissing; he continues f***ing me.
I'll show him my past, which is one of the most intimate acts available to anyone.
They love him very much and we will love whoever he brings home.
Now I didn't want to long and ache for nothing. Something inside me, it seems, is opening like a door, and maybe Will is already wherever that door leads to. That's what love is - someone else's spirit moving through you.
It takes all my restraint not to fixate on an eventual uncoupling, even though Will's desire for me hasn't waned.
Why does anyone stay with anyone else? Routine, fate, senselessness, true love. These seem like the only options.
The spectacle of his importance here opens up a new kind of distance between us. For a moment I feel be mournful, as though I have less of a claim over him.
It's possible to injure oneself by inadequately loving someone else. I don't want this to be my fate. I want to be ready to love and not self explode.
3. Poetry Class
After a decade or so of teaching, the company of students has become an integral part of my social life.
We were supposed to derive pleasure from the quiet repetition of our days .
I thought about staying with him until I died simply to not have to pull apart the bookshelves.
He sat in the front row, wide eyed, as I read poems about cruising an intergenerational trauma and loneliness. I couldn't help but look at him the whole time. After the reading, I went back to his place. We had sex, easy and effortlessly, and after we finished we lay awake for hours talking and laughing and then f***ing some more
4. Sex Lives: An Anonymous Chorus
(very erotic story)
5. Young Adults
I had the idea that it would be hot to give him a bl*w j*b under the table, but I don't.
Adulthood requires that we stick with activities and relations even when they don't feel meaningful.
It isn't just that in Tom's work we are two young men in the world and in love but that the world and love are thrumming inside us.
6. Literary Festival
I wrote about the future because I wanted to invent it. I wrote about the present so that it wouldn't obliterate me.
I've never met a poet who could live off his books . What a shame. I didn't tell him that I never wanted to live off my poems. Rather my poems enabled me to keep living.
7. Outside
Unexpected pregnancy. Strong storyline here.
8. Summer Research
Paying for property on one's own ancestral land was a paradox I still lost sleep over.
I realize that we all lived in the aftermath of unresolved social violence, yet we discussed it seldomly, if ever
in grad school, I asked my peers to describe their conditions of living. Most said precarious labor or racism or sexual exploration or a combination of all three. Everyone seems so miserable but most of us didn't desire any other way of life
We were poorly paid, made into assistance for senior professors, enticed into believing in the job market that was more mythological than real.
I had gone to Catholic school, so understood that God wasn't an entity but rather a set of ideas that could be put to terrible use.
9. My Diary
I'm lucky enough to have had kinds of sex that felt sacred, after which living felt more possible . But that's not what the Catholics meant
Whenever I write Homeland I see the ghostly possibility of the non word HOMOLAND. I wish my homeland was queerer. That would have solved the problems I had growing up - there was so much to contend with and no schema to reduce the scale of contention to something manageable
I keep thinking about nostalgia, about how it requires us to pity our present time, which is all we really have.
I noticed in my peripheral vision a man I went to high school with, T. He was the first person I had sex with . We were both so ravenous and inexperienced - it happened, then we never talked about it
Eventually T took up less and less space in my mind, until the image of him whittled down to a brief memory of the despair of youth.
The apps weighed me down in these days, made me feel like an object and not a person.
I understood that throughout my entire adulthood they missed me immensely ; I was their only child. I didn't know how to slow the pace of my life to spend more time with them. I often encourage them to visit me in Toronto, to make the drive out, but they always said they were too old for the excursion and avoided air travel. I had done enough to sideline my own desires. I knelt at their graves and became sunburnt .
Kissing him made me feel young again , it collapsed time
I've been with enough men to know when the connection is real and when it isn't, when it is shared, when it is electrifying and earthy
In bed with T I felt dense with the desire to live longer.
10. Various People
In some circles, to be a native capitalist, as her grandfather was, is cause for contempt.
In his 20s, he wanted to live a normal life: to own a house, to have a stable job, to get married.
a son without a mother and a father is a bit forgotten history, a lost country of the mind.
In order for a Cree sentence to make sense it had to be spoken as carefully as possible. What would the world look like if we all had to treat language with that much care? All he speaks is English, which is both blunt and ugly.
Children are terrible at accounting for the happiness of their parents.
What other facts about himself, he wonders, does he not know ? And is it already too late to find out?
Do you have any regrets?
In life
Yes
Maybe I should have had a kid, then a better husband, come home more often ... invested more. It all feels trivial
Regrets don't mean anything to me anymore. The living get to have regrets. You still get to change your life .
I hope heaven really does exist. I hope your dad is waiting for me
He wonders what the world will be without her in it. The truth: it will be nothing and it will be everything
Holy Crap!! Simply capturing all these underlined sentences makes me appreciate this book SO MUCH.
I will continue to read everthing Billy-Ray publishes.
4.75*
To be a mother is to represent for someone else life as an abstract quality.
I'm finally adding to this review here in Sept, though I finished this in July at the beach. (just kept reading books and neglected this review). But I just wrote a review for a YA book a few minutes ago that I almost want to go back and deduct a star simply due to writing depth comparison.
I cannot do justice to each of these 10 short stories contained here by simply summarizing the plot/storyline. It is the writing! So I will feature the writing. And the learning.
1. One Woman's Memories
People die, but even in death they continue aging in crooked photographs along a wall in someone's house.
When they met, he was a non-status Indian because his mother had married a non-status man and in so doing surrendered Indian status - this gender-biased clause in the Indian Act wouldn't get amended for several more decades; status Indian men had the power to transmit status, but Indian women could only have theirs taken away; Because of who they loved they could cease to be Indian in the eyes of the government.
Does she wish she had had more children? Sometimes. Mostly, though, she wants to undo time or to live the same life over again. To make small adjustments that would, of course, change everything.
They lived through land loss and famine and the inception of the residential school system. They were the first cohort of parents who had to endure the seizure of their children in the name of state mandated colonial education Louise thinks about the reserve today and shudders at the thought of its suddenly emptied of children . A place without children has no future.
The love I felt for her was stronger than I'd ever experienced. He held hands sometimes, and something in me ached when we did. I didn't know that two Cree girls could fall in love. I didn't think to ask Sue if she loved me . That possibility was absurd, really.
When he died, louise went on, her voice breaking, I had to figure out how to keep living. I did everything with him. We never slept in different beds, not once. We were together for so long and yet I still wanted more time. Some people don't take to the singular I
2. Lived Experience
The walls are so thin that I often hear my neighbors f***ing, Which makes me feel both more and less a part of the world, Their animal sounds remind me that the solitary I is a trick of the light and that the plural is dense and unbearable.
I open the app and see our faces side by side on the grid. I block him.
I shouldn't treat my body like ashore for others to shipwreck onto. Somehow no one has told me this yet
I vow then to delete the app. I won't let men ruin me.
We're all citizens of the 20th century . Especially natives. I think it ever ended for us
I feel beautiful because he's looking at me.
The pleasure of looking at what he's looking at almost overwhelms me.
I take in the aroma of his shampoo - pomegranate, We are together in our minor grief, That he exists, that he and I constitute a we, however budding and unstable, is enough of a counter, today, to historical ignorance, We aren't over determined by the instructors politics of forgetting . As the lecture continues, Will doesn't move, his head remains on my shoulder It's a gesture so caring I almost can't stand it.
You're really beautiful, Will says, then he says it again. The more he says it the more I believe it. We come at the same time. We continue kissing; he continues f***ing me.
I'll show him my past, which is one of the most intimate acts available to anyone.
They love him very much and we will love whoever he brings home.
Now I didn't want to long and ache for nothing. Something inside me, it seems, is opening like a door, and maybe Will is already wherever that door leads to. That's what love is - someone else's spirit moving through you.
It takes all my restraint not to fixate on an eventual uncoupling, even though Will's desire for me hasn't waned.
Why does anyone stay with anyone else? Routine, fate, senselessness, true love. These seem like the only options.
The spectacle of his importance here opens up a new kind of distance between us. For a moment I feel be mournful, as though I have less of a claim over him.
It's possible to injure oneself by inadequately loving someone else. I don't want this to be my fate. I want to be ready to love and not self explode.
3. Poetry Class
After a decade or so of teaching, the company of students has become an integral part of my social life.
We were supposed to derive pleasure from the quiet repetition of our days .
I thought about staying with him until I died simply to not have to pull apart the bookshelves.
He sat in the front row, wide eyed, as I read poems about cruising an intergenerational trauma and loneliness. I couldn't help but look at him the whole time. After the reading, I went back to his place. We had sex, easy and effortlessly, and after we finished we lay awake for hours talking and laughing and then f***ing some more
4. Sex Lives: An Anonymous Chorus
(very erotic story)
5. Young Adults
I had the idea that it would be hot to give him a bl*w j*b under the table, but I don't.
Adulthood requires that we stick with activities and relations even when they don't feel meaningful.
It isn't just that in Tom's work we are two young men in the world and in love but that the world and love are thrumming inside us.
6. Literary Festival
I wrote about the future because I wanted to invent it. I wrote about the present so that it wouldn't obliterate me.
I've never met a poet who could live off his books . What a shame. I didn't tell him that I never wanted to live off my poems. Rather my poems enabled me to keep living.
7. Outside
Unexpected pregnancy. Strong storyline here.
8. Summer Research
Paying for property on one's own ancestral land was a paradox I still lost sleep over.
I realize that we all lived in the aftermath of unresolved social violence, yet we discussed it seldomly, if ever
in grad school, I asked my peers to describe their conditions of living. Most said precarious labor or racism or sexual exploration or a combination of all three. Everyone seems so miserable but most of us didn't desire any other way of life
We were poorly paid, made into assistance for senior professors, enticed into believing in the job market that was more mythological than real.
I had gone to Catholic school, so understood that God wasn't an entity but rather a set of ideas that could be put to terrible use.
9. My Diary
I'm lucky enough to have had kinds of sex that felt sacred, after which living felt more possible . But that's not what the Catholics meant
Whenever I write Homeland I see the ghostly possibility of the non word HOMOLAND. I wish my homeland was queerer. That would have solved the problems I had growing up - there was so much to contend with and no schema to reduce the scale of contention to something manageable
I keep thinking about nostalgia, about how it requires us to pity our present time, which is all we really have.
I noticed in my peripheral vision a man I went to high school with, T. He was the first person I had sex with . We were both so ravenous and inexperienced - it happened, then we never talked about it
Eventually T took up less and less space in my mind, until the image of him whittled down to a brief memory of the despair of youth.
The apps weighed me down in these days, made me feel like an object and not a person.
I understood that throughout my entire adulthood they missed me immensely ; I was their only child. I didn't know how to slow the pace of my life to spend more time with them. I often encourage them to visit me in Toronto, to make the drive out, but they always said they were too old for the excursion and avoided air travel. I had done enough to sideline my own desires. I knelt at their graves and became sunburnt .
Kissing him made me feel young again , it collapsed time
I've been with enough men to know when the connection is real and when it isn't, when it is shared, when it is electrifying and earthy
In bed with T I felt dense with the desire to live longer.
10. Various People
In some circles, to be a native capitalist, as her grandfather was, is cause for contempt.
In his 20s, he wanted to live a normal life: to own a house, to have a stable job, to get married.
a son without a mother and a father is a bit forgotten history, a lost country of the mind.
In order for a Cree sentence to make sense it had to be spoken as carefully as possible. What would the world look like if we all had to treat language with that much care? All he speaks is English, which is both blunt and ugly.
Children are terrible at accounting for the happiness of their parents.
What other facts about himself, he wonders, does he not know ? And is it already too late to find out?
Do you have any regrets?
In life
Yes
Maybe I should have had a kid, then a better husband, come home more often ... invested more. It all feels trivial
Regrets don't mean anything to me anymore. The living get to have regrets. You still get to change your life .
I hope heaven really does exist. I hope your dad is waiting for me
He wonders what the world will be without her in it. The truth: it will be nothing and it will be everything
Holy Crap!! Simply capturing all these underlined sentences makes me appreciate this book SO MUCH.
I will continue to read everthing Billy-Ray publishes.
4.75*
February 23, 2024
Belcourt has quickly become a favorite of mine. Coexistence is marketed as a short story collection but the characters are intertwined, so it really reads more like a novella that just follows multiple characters. all 3 of Belcourt’s works that I’ve read follow similar characters (he seems to self insert a lot lol), but the writing is so good that it prevents it from becoming too repetitive, and he writes interesting, fleshed out characters despite it being a short length
July 31, 2024
did this book render me mute story after story and dealt me with emotional damage that i’ll probably never recover from? yes!
is this the best short story collection i’ve ever read? also yes, a most definite yes!!!
this is how you write a short story collection or this is probably my template for a good short story collection, but really, what’s the difference?
belcourt injects us in to the middle of these seemingly innocent lives of indigenous people, but it never feels abrupt or foreign, you feel like you’ve entered an old friend’s house to get a drink, the prose is that warm and the level of attention he lent to each of his characters is unparalleled!
each with their own voice and troubles colored by them being indigenous and queer, some trying to run away from the hand they’re dealt with, some trying to make do and have a fresh start, but central to each of these stories is the title, coexistence, a very literal theme in some stories and is added to the story only to enhance the importance of human connection and intimacy or the lack there of!
and to explore such dire themes such as grief, racism, queerness and indigeneity (especially in canada) with the kind of subtle irony and so much love for his characters that they’re brimming with it, and doing such a tremendous job at it too, belcourt is definitely a go-to author for me now and i promise you’ll find something to hold onto and love in each of these stories!
my favorites are definitely
1. one woman’s memories
2. lived experience
3. poetry class
5. young adults
6. literary festival
10. various people
is this the best short story collection i’ve ever read? also yes, a most definite yes!!!
this is how you write a short story collection or this is probably my template for a good short story collection, but really, what’s the difference?
belcourt injects us in to the middle of these seemingly innocent lives of indigenous people, but it never feels abrupt or foreign, you feel like you’ve entered an old friend’s house to get a drink, the prose is that warm and the level of attention he lent to each of his characters is unparalleled!
each with their own voice and troubles colored by them being indigenous and queer, some trying to run away from the hand they’re dealt with, some trying to make do and have a fresh start, but central to each of these stories is the title, coexistence, a very literal theme in some stories and is added to the story only to enhance the importance of human connection and intimacy or the lack there of!
and to explore such dire themes such as grief, racism, queerness and indigeneity (especially in canada) with the kind of subtle irony and so much love for his characters that they’re brimming with it, and doing such a tremendous job at it too, belcourt is definitely a go-to author for me now and i promise you’ll find something to hold onto and love in each of these stories!
my favorites are definitely
1. one woman’s memories
2. lived experience
3. poetry class
5. young adults
6. literary festival
10. various people
January 25, 2024
I think this might be my favourite Billy-Ray Belcourt yet. I'm not typically someone who reaches for short story collections, and I think that's because the different characters and settings and storylines give me whiplash. This did not do that at all. There was a point of view that underlined the entire collection, so that each story bled into and complimented each other. Some narrators seemed to be the voice of multiple stories whereas other stories were clearly distinct. In any case, they were all undeniably Billy-Ray, and all undeniably beautiful.
When I reach for words to describe this, the two that come to mind are 'delicate' and 'tender'. I was having a conversation with someone just earlier this week where we were trying to describe love in one word, and it occurs to me that the two words that came to me then were 'delicate' and 'tender' too. I think this book truly does capture love in a rare way; it honors the human connections around us, the connection between two people surely, but also between self and land, self and history, self and self. It is a gentle, quietly beautiful work that makes me think of open air and pale blue and rain disintegrating a poem and the estrangement of a fraying relationship and the loneliness of a hotel room. It exists at the intersection of theory and history and rage and poetry and lived experience, and results in something that feels like a deep breath in and a deep breath out. Thank you Billy-Ray for such a beautiful collection!
When I reach for words to describe this, the two that come to mind are 'delicate' and 'tender'. I was having a conversation with someone just earlier this week where we were trying to describe love in one word, and it occurs to me that the two words that came to me then were 'delicate' and 'tender' too. I think this book truly does capture love in a rare way; it honors the human connections around us, the connection between two people surely, but also between self and land, self and history, self and self. It is a gentle, quietly beautiful work that makes me think of open air and pale blue and rain disintegrating a poem and the estrangement of a fraying relationship and the loneliness of a hotel room. It exists at the intersection of theory and history and rage and poetry and lived experience, and results in something that feels like a deep breath in and a deep breath out. Thank you Billy-Ray for such a beautiful collection!
May 25, 2024
First off, thanks to Cam and Penguin for hooking me up with this short story collection!
I think I'm probably in the minority here, but I'd say 50% of the stories in Coexistence landed super well for me. I loved the diversity of indigenous experience in this collection and how Belcourt expands language to incorporate those who have been previously marginalized by the literary establishment. In particular, I loved the story about the dissolution of a marriage whose lead finds solace in his library.
I mean, who among us hasn't been in a dark moment and turned to the shelves to feel less alone?
The rest of the stories were varying from pretty-good to not-at-all-for-me. Though a lot of people seem to enjoy Belcourt's language, there were a few occasions that felt needlessly academic or socially involved. I can't quite put my finger on what it was that didn't land for me, especially since that's my usual thing (see my recent Percival Everett obsession).
In any case, I'm very glad to have read this one. Belcourt's an undoubted talent and one whose star I'm excited to watch ascend even if every story doesn't blow me away.
I think I'm probably in the minority here, but I'd say 50% of the stories in Coexistence landed super well for me. I loved the diversity of indigenous experience in this collection and how Belcourt expands language to incorporate those who have been previously marginalized by the literary establishment. In particular, I loved the story about the dissolution of a marriage whose lead finds solace in his library.
I mean, who among us hasn't been in a dark moment and turned to the shelves to feel less alone?
The rest of the stories were varying from pretty-good to not-at-all-for-me. Though a lot of people seem to enjoy Belcourt's language, there were a few occasions that felt needlessly academic or socially involved. I can't quite put my finger on what it was that didn't land for me, especially since that's my usual thing (see my recent Percival Everett obsession).
In any case, I'm very glad to have read this one. Belcourt's an undoubted talent and one whose star I'm excited to watch ascend even if every story doesn't blow me away.
July 4, 2024
The stuff about anonymous gay sex and being lonely is real and stuff but it loses its power when that’s all he talks about. You can’t have the main character of every story be a young, cynical, gay indigenous canadian man and keep it interesting
March 7, 2024
BRB's stories are written from the heart, with a tenderness and melancholy that plunges you into a second state. I was deeply moved by every one of them, as well as by the perfectly drawn, empowered characters. BRB handles words to perfection, writing about queer love, contemporary indigenous life, confiding intimate snippets of life. my favorite stories are poetry class, literary festival and outside. coexistence puts into words the inextricable link between the past - Canada's colonialism - and the present - the traumas that have run through generations of indigenous peoples. it's a central theme whose multiple facets we see through snippets of everyday life.
"I shouldn’t treat my body like a shore for others to shipwreck into. Somehow no one has told me this yet."
"That’s what love is - someone else’s spirit moving through you. When someone moves though you they leave behind a small trace of human life. It’s how we know we’re still alive."
do yourself a favor and read coexistence. BRB has an incredible pen and delivered an outstanding collection.
"I shouldn’t treat my body like a shore for others to shipwreck into. Somehow no one has told me this yet."
"That’s what love is - someone else’s spirit moving through you. When someone moves though you they leave behind a small trace of human life. It’s how we know we’re still alive."
do yourself a favor and read coexistence. BRB has an incredible pen and delivered an outstanding collection.
September 1, 2024
In Belcourt's story, "Summer Research", a gay, Indigenous PhD student goes back to his hometown to conduct interviews with locals for his dissertation. He is interested in the indelible legacies of colonial violence and dispossession on reservation communities and, in an ironic coincidence, he is staying in a refurbished residential school, a place where nuns had abused native children in the name of public charity and Christian salvation. In his bag, he is carrying an academic book—Avery Gordon's Ghostly Matters—a treatise on the idea of "haunting", a literary and sociological exploration of the ways in which the past is always immanent in the present, the present always insolubly tied up with the historical trauma of the past. During the night, he has a vivid dream of a nun crying in his bathroom; during the day, a racist vacationer threatens him away from his property. It is a story that captures both the spectral and the sociological meaning of "haunting", historical memory haunting him at day, ghostly visitations haunting him at night.
It's a story that speaks for the collection, vignettes illustrating the coexistence of the past and the present, the ways in which the colonial past is reenacted on Indigenous communities—through racism, through educational curricula, through the carceral system. His stories follow the modern lives of Cree individuals and show the lingering depredations of colonialism. It is an overtly theoretical work of fiction, applying the language of critical theory to the contours of daily life on reservation land. In "Poetry Class", the teacher muses on the "political uses of illegibility" and he is annoyed at his partner who derides his over-use of theory. In "Literary Festival", an aloof poet speaks at a largely empty panel, trying to explain the role of poetry as a means of resistance and courting skepticism ("I felt a couple audience members tune out at the mention of "colonial-capitalist enclosure." Some people thought those kinds of words were meaningless, too large to shape real life"). Belcourt's stories are gritty and academic at the same time, an attempt to show and to explain the contemporary tragedies of colonization.
The novel is very similar to his earlier A Minor Chorus. I thought on the whole these were clipped and incisive, but in some cases, a little forced and implausible. In "Summer Research", the doctoral student has a conversation with a priest about the sins of colonialism, but it just felt hollow (the priest obstinately redirects the conversation to confession and conversion, refusing to discuss the sordid history of the old boarding school—but, whatever one might think about the Catholic Church, a lot of priests are sensitive to this topic and have more pastoral good sense). Sometimes it felt like theory dogmatically overrode authentic story-telling and character complexity.
It's a story that speaks for the collection, vignettes illustrating the coexistence of the past and the present, the ways in which the colonial past is reenacted on Indigenous communities—through racism, through educational curricula, through the carceral system. His stories follow the modern lives of Cree individuals and show the lingering depredations of colonialism. It is an overtly theoretical work of fiction, applying the language of critical theory to the contours of daily life on reservation land. In "Poetry Class", the teacher muses on the "political uses of illegibility" and he is annoyed at his partner who derides his over-use of theory. In "Literary Festival", an aloof poet speaks at a largely empty panel, trying to explain the role of poetry as a means of resistance and courting skepticism ("I felt a couple audience members tune out at the mention of "colonial-capitalist enclosure." Some people thought those kinds of words were meaningless, too large to shape real life"). Belcourt's stories are gritty and academic at the same time, an attempt to show and to explain the contemporary tragedies of colonization.
The novel is very similar to his earlier A Minor Chorus. I thought on the whole these were clipped and incisive, but in some cases, a little forced and implausible. In "Summer Research", the doctoral student has a conversation with a priest about the sins of colonialism, but it just felt hollow (the priest obstinately redirects the conversation to confession and conversion, refusing to discuss the sordid history of the old boarding school—but, whatever one might think about the Catholic Church, a lot of priests are sensitive to this topic and have more pastoral good sense). Sometimes it felt like theory dogmatically overrode authentic story-telling and character complexity.
December 27, 2023
Brilliant, as expected.
November 11, 2023
My most anticipated book of 2024 was COEXISTENCE by Billy-Ray Belcourt since I loved A Minor Chorus so much I read it five times. I was so lucky to receive this galley from my friend Cameron and I just read it for the second time because it’s so moving. This is one of my fave books! I’m in awe of how beautiful this writing is where each sentence is tender. I loved the themes of family, motherhood, love, grief, men in love and Queer Cree joy. I loved all ten stories and this book made me cry more than once. I love the poetic use of language and how each story is emotional in its own way. I’m a proud member of the BRB fan club as commemorated by this bracelet that I made.
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my ARC!
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for my ARC!
May 30, 2024
A brilliant collection of stories about searching for connection and intimacy in a colonized world told through the indigenous perspective. Some are about love while others are about loneliness. Some contain the horrors of being human and some showcase how beautiful being human can be. Belcourt shines the brightest when he is writing about where queerness, intimacy and connection meet. He just really gets it. He writes with a tenderness and confidence that sweeps me away every time. I know I am in great care when I am sitting with Belcourt’s work and Coexistence was no exception.
Favorite stories from Coexistence: Lived Experience, Poetry Class, Literary Festival, & Various People.
Thank you so much to W. W. Norton & Company for the eARC on NetGalley.
Favorite stories from Coexistence: Lived Experience, Poetry Class, Literary Festival, & Various People.
Thank you so much to W. W. Norton & Company for the eARC on NetGalley.
August 20, 2024
Not on purpose, I've taken such a huge break from reading short fiction, a format I'm otherwise very attached to reading and writing. And THIS. Was the perfect way to return to it. Billy-Ray Belcourt can just WRITE the hell out of anything, and while there's a quietness and a normalcy to these stories, they carry an emotional and philosophical punch that resonates with our conceptions of love and family through the lens of indigenous life under colonialism. I'm not a re-reader, but this begs to be read again with fancy annotation supplies at the ready.
No notes! If you read one story collection this year, it needs to be this.
No notes! If you read one story collection this year, it needs to be this.
June 19, 2026
By far one of my favorite books of the year. Relatable. Master class in telling stories of queer people that resonate and made me cry! Do yourself a favor add this art to your TBR
May 6, 2024
This is my third read from Belcourt and potentially my favourite - a real solid collection of stories without any notable misses. Some of the concepts and delivery are abstract, but the writing is beautiful and profound.
Coexistence is a deeply personal collection about life for modern Indigenous people in Canada. Collective memory and grief underpin the experiences of these characters, and the titular theme of coexistence is central to each story. In some stories it takes a more literal interpretation, but the explorations of the insidious underbelly of generational trauma is where it truly shines. Belcourt notes that for Indigenous people, the past and present will always coexist - there is no way to ignore the long and ongoing violence of colonialism. My favourite line is “For whom is violence sad, and for whom is it a brutal inneritance?”.
I love everything Belcourt writes, but I think this might be my favourite yet. Every story is an act of rebellion, of reclamation, and truly a piece of art. Queer men in particular will definitely relate to several stories in this, but the intersection of Indigeneity and queerness highlight how stark and apparent injustice and racism still are in Canada.
Thank you to Penguin Random House for sending me an early copy - Coexistence releases May 21st, 2024 and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Coexistence is a deeply personal collection about life for modern Indigenous people in Canada. Collective memory and grief underpin the experiences of these characters, and the titular theme of coexistence is central to each story. In some stories it takes a more literal interpretation, but the explorations of the insidious underbelly of generational trauma is where it truly shines. Belcourt notes that for Indigenous people, the past and present will always coexist - there is no way to ignore the long and ongoing violence of colonialism. My favourite line is “For whom is violence sad, and for whom is it a brutal inneritance?”.
I love everything Belcourt writes, but I think this might be my favourite yet. Every story is an act of rebellion, of reclamation, and truly a piece of art. Queer men in particular will definitely relate to several stories in this, but the intersection of Indigeneity and queerness highlight how stark and apparent injustice and racism still are in Canada.
Thank you to Penguin Random House for sending me an early copy - Coexistence releases May 21st, 2024 and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
August 1, 2024
(influenced to read this collection by @literaryiggy and @barandthebookcase)
A stunning collection about queer love, Cree and Indigenous people, characters experiencing aging and longing for more time, yearning for more life; stories about growing apart; loss of desire; the healing nature of poetry and writing; questions of intimacy; the feeling of wanting to escape; loneliness, grief and mourning; attempting to let go, nostalgia and heartbreak. It’s intimate and oh so brilliant.
“Lucy’s love opened space inside his mind for different memories. That was how love changed people: it made you want to give yourself over to new pasts, to future emotional histories. It made you ache to be alive.” - Outside, pg. 97
Also, the last page of the last story made me cry….hard. – When I tell you I underlined almost every single page in this collection, it’s true.
A stunning collection about queer love, Cree and Indigenous people, characters experiencing aging and longing for more time, yearning for more life; stories about growing apart; loss of desire; the healing nature of poetry and writing; questions of intimacy; the feeling of wanting to escape; loneliness, grief and mourning; attempting to let go, nostalgia and heartbreak. It’s intimate and oh so brilliant.
“Lucy’s love opened space inside his mind for different memories. That was how love changed people: it made you want to give yourself over to new pasts, to future emotional histories. It made you ache to be alive.” - Outside, pg. 97
Also, the last page of the last story made me cry….hard. – When I tell you I underlined almost every single page in this collection, it’s true.
July 13, 2024
very talented craftsman of prose, so many lines that could be underlined and highlighted and read again and again. unfortunately too many of the stories lacked depth and the storylines/characters too simplistic and unremarkable. also, while it was really lovely to read indigenous stories from an indigenous perspective, there were too many instances where they would randomly put some schlocky hackneyed lefty-ism ("genocide", "capitalism", "class solidarity", etc) in the middle of an otherwise unrelated "normal" sentence, that felt very trite and gave "poetry slam circa 2016" energy. perhaps that's what the format for this collection should have been, instead of short stories.
May 15, 2024
Billy-Ray Belcourt can't help but to write something that stuns and stings, that drips with queer desire. He infuses layers of emotions into his writing that will take the reader unawares. Each word the characters speak is stacked with history—sometimes haunted, often complicated. Every story in the collection in some way asks how we're able to all keep existing alongside each other in our ever-unstable world.
November 24, 2024
Wanted to like, but unfortunately, it fell flat for me. The collection felt repetitive, with many themes and ideas circling back on themselves without much new insight. The narrators tone came across as conceited and overly pretentious, making it difficult to connect with the stories or their messages. Lost all engagement and ultimately didn’t enjoy the time I spent with this book. This collection just wasn’t for me.
June 24, 2024
such a strong collection of short stories. beautifully written.
May 15, 2025
i’m gonna need the gays to stop overthinking their thoughts—sometimes, a cup of coffee can just be a cup of coffee.
August 31, 2024
I firmly believe that this is Billy-Ray Belcourt’s best book yet! Short stories require a master writer to FULLY engage you, and not just for one or two, but for the whole entire collection, and Belcourt does exactly that in Coexistence. Literally all the stories in here are top notch, so well thought out and they don’t feel incomplete in any way. My one complaint is that they’re too short, because I want full length novels that just examine the lives of all these characters!
January 10, 2025
ten stories, each of them a demonstration of good art. one can find so much empathy for these people and the experiences they have had, i want to say i see so much of myself in each one of them, though this is not to downplay the realities of exploitation they potray. all crafted by one person. can not wait to read more from him
July 28, 2024
you know when a book makes the buzzing in your head go quiet for a few moments? this did exactly that.
May 30, 2024
This was a memorable, moving and poignant collection of short stories by the best-selling Billy-Ray Belcourt, who is from the Driftpile Cree Nation.
These stories reflect modern (and mostly queer) Indigenous life in Canada from a diverse number of perspectives. I listened to the audiobook and thought the full cast narration was really well done.
A couple of standout stories for me included, The outside - about a young Indigenous man recently released from prison and trying to make connections back on the Res - and, Literary festival, in which a poet is invited to speak at a fringe literary festival and finds himself alienating the organizer and other writers.
Recommended for fans of authors like Joshua Whitehead, Morgan Talty and Thomas King.
These stories reflect modern (and mostly queer) Indigenous life in Canada from a diverse number of perspectives. I listened to the audiobook and thought the full cast narration was really well done.
A couple of standout stories for me included, The outside - about a young Indigenous man recently released from prison and trying to make connections back on the Res - and, Literary festival, in which a poet is invited to speak at a fringe literary festival and finds himself alienating the organizer and other writers.
Recommended for fans of authors like Joshua Whitehead, Morgan Talty and Thomas King.
August 25, 2024
I was completely captivated by this book. Definitely one of the best books I’ve read in 2024 so far. I can’t wait to read more of Billy-Ray Belcourt’s stories. I came across the book in a little bookstore and was fascinated by the cover. The queer and indigenous stories that are composing the book are truly real and powerful. The writting is so precise and so vulnerable that you can easily imagine that some of the stories are either part of the authors life, part of the life he would have wanted or part of the life he could have had. Nonetheless, I am really grateful to have been able to embrace theses journeys and have been touched by them as a reader.
January 28, 2025
“I wrote about the future because I wanted to invent it. I wrote about the present so that it wouldn’t obliterate me.”
in this collection of short stories, where lives intertwine literally and culturally, we are invited to reflect on modern indigeneity through a variety of characters.
a lonely poet, a haunted professor, a dying woman, a recently released prisoner, a student searching for love; through them, belcourt paints a portrait of every day native lives as they navigate a society that refuses to acknowledge their history and trauma and grief.
each story by their very existence highlights the pain and trauma of losing a people, a culture, a language, a community, a history, and a land to the ravages of colonialism and the current-day ramifications.
through belcourt’s beautiful prose, we see these characters find peace in the return. whether it’s a return to the reserve, a return to the familiar, or a return to the self, in an attempt to feel whole again. it’s a testament to indigenous spirit and strength and resilience.
this collection is not just about a coexistence of people but also about how we coexist with our grief every day and how despite it all, persevere.
✨
//
gonna be thinking about this one for a bit folks! rtc
in this collection of short stories, where lives intertwine literally and culturally, we are invited to reflect on modern indigeneity through a variety of characters.
a lonely poet, a haunted professor, a dying woman, a recently released prisoner, a student searching for love; through them, belcourt paints a portrait of every day native lives as they navigate a society that refuses to acknowledge their history and trauma and grief.
each story by their very existence highlights the pain and trauma of losing a people, a culture, a language, a community, a history, and a land to the ravages of colonialism and the current-day ramifications.
through belcourt’s beautiful prose, we see these characters find peace in the return. whether it’s a return to the reserve, a return to the familiar, or a return to the self, in an attempt to feel whole again. it’s a testament to indigenous spirit and strength and resilience.
this collection is not just about a coexistence of people but also about how we coexist with our grief every day and how despite it all, persevere.
✨
//
gonna be thinking about this one for a bit folks! rtc
July 10, 2024
Stunned me right at the end with "My Diary" and "Various People".
"If nothing else, I know that it's rare to feel as desperate to see what the future holds as I do right now...I didn't know I still had that degree of desperation in me. It's a relief."
"If nothing else, I know that it's rare to feel as desperate to see what the future holds as I do right now...I didn't know I still had that degree of desperation in me. It's a relief."
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