Review: A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

“The thesis behind my project was that people turned into musical instruments when encouraged to testify about the conditions of their lives.”

A Minor Chorus was a raw introspection of the struggle for love, identity, and meaning in one’s story when it often feels written by someone else - in this case, the colonial and systemically racist structure of Canada.

The story delves into the life of the narrator struggling to write their Ph.D thesis. The unnamed narrator realizes that they may, instead, want to write a novel as an exploration toward reconnection and identity in his home reserve by listening to and echoing the generational grief and trauma of its residents.

The narrator is difficult to follow at first. Their thoughts are disjointed and unorganized, but as the story progresses, clarity and focus are gradually achieved through revisiting his past, the broken past of the Cree experience in Northern Alberta, as well as some glimpses of hope.

I felt the story had a lot of depth and the more poetic portions reminded me a bit of “The Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman through a queer Indigenous lens. I’ll be honest, this is not a light read, but a story with depth and nuance. Even now, I’m still thinking about the narrative and how it all works together to express the importance of stories and how expressing and sharing them is a step toward healing, and, personally, that listening, recognizing, and uplifting Indigenous voices is a step toward reconciliation.

Publication date: September 13, 2022
Thank you @penguinrandomca for the opportunity to review this novel.

Content Warnings: racism, homophobia, abuse, sexual expression.