Billy-Ray Belcourt

This is an introspective book. A gay, indigenous PhD student walks away from his dissertation and returns to his reserve in northern Alberta. He is there to interview members of his community and, he hopes, to begin writing a novel. What follows is largely a deep look inside his experiences and how these have shaped him. We see how his various relationships have also affected him. Contrast is provided in the story of his cousin, who stayed on the reserve and ended up suffering from so many of the social problems Aboriginal people face: addiction, petty crime and incarceration. This is a deeply affecting book that brought me, I think a deeper, visceral understanding of the kind of lives I'll never experience.… (lisätietoja)

A Minor Chorus tells the story of a young unnamed narrator who becomes disillusioned with the academic life, abandons his PhD dissertation and embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Readers will struggle to separate Billy-Ray Belcourt’s main character from the author: both are Cree; both are academics; both are gay; both are writing a novel. Or maybe “struggle” is the wrong word since Belcourt’s narrative resides comfortably within the correlation the reader will inevitably make, one that grounds the action, gives it depth and emotional heft. The narrator’s disillusionment is sparked by two things: a sense that his academic writing does not reflect who he is—that it is in fact an “alienating” and repressive instrument that does not allow him to express his gay indigenous self—and the “racism and bureaucratic violence” he regularly encounters on campus. The narrator’s journey takes him north, away from the ivory-tower security of his life in Edmonton to the reservation where he grew up and back to the people who nurtured him through his youth but whom he left behind when he followed a path that landed him on a university campus. Central to the narrator’s story is another story, that of his cousin Jack. The two were close companions in childhood, but their paths diverged early. Years later, after the narrator left the reservation and moved to the city, Jack became a statistic and a familiar and tragic cliché: the young indigenous man swallowed up by the white man’s justice system. In his efforts to reclaim his identity, the narrator conducts a series of interviews: with his great-aunt Mary (Jack’s grandmother), a middle-age gay newspaper publisher named Michael, with Jack himself. The narrator tells Michael that he’s writing “an autobiography of a town, of rural Alberta,” and that the theoretical basis of his work is that “place governs the practice of self-fabrication.” The narrator’s quest for personal clarity is as fascinating as it is confounding. A Minor Chorus, structured in an open-ended, circular fashion, is an elegantly written novel in which resolution is elusive. It raises questions about the meaning of love and colonialism's disfiguring legacy, but chooses to leave many of these questions unanswered. After his conversation with Jack, the narrator sits down to write his novel. But does he complete it? Does the process of writing provide solace and self-realization? Is the narrator’s novel the one we’re holding in our hands? With regard to these questions there's a good chance Belcourt expects readers to reach their own conclusions.… (lisätietoja)

The Publisher Says: A debut novel from a rising literary star that brings the modern queer and Indigenous experience into sharp relief.

In the stark expanse of Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel, informed by a series of poignant encounters: a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral student River over the mounting pressure placed on marginalized scholars; a meeting with Michael, a closeted man from his hometown whose vulnerability and loneliness punctuate the realities of queer life on the fringe. Woven throughout these conversations are memories of Jack, a cousin caught in the cycle of police violence, drugs, and survival. Jack’s life parallels the narrator’s own; the possibilities of escape and imprisonment are left to chance with colonialism stacking the odds. A Minor Chorus introduces a dazzling new literary voice whose vision and fearlessness shine much-needed light on the realities of Indigenous survival.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When one reads the book description, there's very little doubt that most of us will be reading this as autofiction...as Billy-Ray Belcourt using the antique roman à clef to give us the keys to the kingdom. But that's never said anywhere. It's not part of the interviews I've read or listened to. I think, in fact, that's a quiet and much-thought-over means of demonstrating how identities are forced on us. Are forced by us, the readers of a novel, onto the author of the novel.

Indigeniety is an indignity of an identity. "Indigenous" is a label of Otherness, much as is "Queer" or "Gay" or "Two-Spirit." Labels are the source of stories, though, and the world's words were invented to make stories so us gossipy apes could make Othering a thing. Assigned by others, Othering is a burden many of us bear and many of us bear multiple ways. We aren't, as it unfolds, allowed much in the way of access to the main character's self-ness; he's collecting data, having copious amounts of sex, and eliciting intimacy from people still carrying horrible scars from being abandoned as children, being addicted to substances, being belittled and having their characters besmirched for queerness or Indigeniety. Or both. No one in this mill-race of ideas and images is in sharp focus. It's that fact that ate a star off my rating...if I have only misty-edged portraits to look at instead of vibrant, violent even, alive people, I respond without the visceral burst of passion I seek in novel-reading as I read their stories.

Author Belcourt being a tyro novelist, and his profession being a poet, this is completely understandable as a technique. It felt chosen, selected for its effect, not as though he simply didn't know how to do any different. That's why that fourth star is still there. I'm forgiving of first-novel mistakes or overreaches but I note them and grade my responses accordingly. I did not get that "oops" sensation from these memory-speaking characters, despite the fact that I wanted to know more about them. More was not to be offered. That is, as I realized, part of the point: What the reader wants is what the colonial master wants, more! more! always more! where Author Belcourt isn't offering it.

There is, then, a subtlety of reflection in this examination of the gulfs between striving and surviving; between surviving and thriving. The novel's structure and style are offers of mirror time. See what this world's demands cost? The price that some must pay while most will never even realize it's exacted on their behalf?

It's a delight of a read. It speaks its truth honestly and makes its voice honey-sweet.

But it is here to tear the tape off your eyes and yank the sock from your mouth.… (lisätietoja)