Heart berries

By Terese Marie Mailhot

Subjects: Indians, north american, nyt:hardcover-nonfiction=2018-04-01, Healthmailhot, terese marie, Biography, Women, Health, Patients, Feminism & Feminist Theory, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Women's Studies, New York Times bestseller, Ethnic Studies, Women, biography, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Indian women, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Bipolar disorder, Indian women--northwest, pacific--biography, Post-traumatic stress disorder--patients, Stress disorders, post-traumatic, Personal Memoirs, Bipolar Disorder, Rc552.p67 m3555 2018, Manic-depressive illness, SOCIAL SCIENCE, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic, POLITICAL SCIENCE, Manic-depressive persons--northwest, pacific--biography, Indians of north america, biography, Canada, biography, Indian women, canada, Native women, Wm 172.5 m219h 2018, 362.19685/210092 b, Native American Studies, Manic-depressive persons, Post-traumatic stress disorder--patients--northwest, pacific--biography

Description: "Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. 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."--