Coexistence: Stories Audiobook

Quotes

• “In Coexistence, Billy-Ray Belcourt has written a collection of deeply moving and philosophical stories. These characters’ passionate insistence on loving and desiring and hoping, amid the existential terror of colonization—and Belcourt’s nuanced and attentive rendering of it—is the most revolutionary of acts.

  — Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao

• Belcourt is one of the finest and most sublime writers at work today. This book is a feat of beauty and compression, every sentence reinventing the reader. It’s like entering a quiet room or a secret lake. It’s about our coexistence with lovers, kin, enemies, but also our coexistence with desire, solitude, and an intelligence that in itself is a form of hunger—language as solace, language as light. Belcourt is the rare writer who composes from, to, and because of the soul. It’s been some time since I loved a book so deeply.

  — Claudia Dey, author of Daughter

• “Through the interconnected lifeworlds contained in Coexistence, we hear a defiantly loving and astoundingly honest response to colonial and racial violence. Billy-Ray Belcourt has written an homage and an elegy to a still-unfolding history—as intimate and hopeful as young romance, as mysterious and life-giving as family. I adore this collection.

  —  Tsering Yangzom Lama, author of We Measure the Earth with our Bodies

• “Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Coexistence is a brilliant exploration of the boundaries both imposed and imagined that exist between beings and the spaces we inhabit. I wildly admire Belcourt’s crisp prose and remarkable insights, yet what haunts me most about these powerful stories is the author’s heart-blasted willingness to be vulnerable on the page. This engaging, alive text drills right to heart of what it is to be Indigenous in the twenty-first century.

  — Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls

• “Through the interconnected lifeworlds contained in Coexistence, we hear a defiantly loving and astoundingly honest response to colonial and racial violence. Billy-Ray Belcourt has written an homage and an elegy to a still-unfolding history—as intimate and hopeful as young romance, as mysterious and life-giving as family. I adore this collection.

  —  Tsering Yangzom Lama, author of We Measure the Earth with our Bodies

• “Coexistence filled my heart and lifted my spirit. There are few writers who can authentically capture the beauty and complexity of Indigenous existence both on the rez and in the city like Billy-Ray Belcourt. This book is a resolute proclamation of resilient Indigenous humanity and the nuance and richness we all embody. The stories weave and enrich on journeys that are both familiar and informative. Coexistence is a powerful celebration and a gift to the world.

  — Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Turning Leaves

• “Coexistence filled my heart and lifted my spirit. There are few writers who can authentically capture the beauty and complexity of Indigenous existence both on the rez and in the city like Billy-Ray Belcourt. This book is a resolute proclamation of resilient Indigenous humanity and the nuance and richness we all embody. The stories weave and enrich on journeys that are both familiar and informative. Coexistence is a powerful celebration and a gift to the world.

  — Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Turning Leaves

• “Billy-Ray Belcourt masterfully portrays the complexities of Indigenous lives, longing, and belonging through these stories. There are sentences in this collection that I didn’t know I had been waiting to read; my breath caught on several of them. I suspect that readers will be letting out collective sighs while reading this book.

  — Helen Knott, author of Becoming a Matriarch

• “In Coexistence, Billy-Ray Belcourt has written a collection of deeply moving and philosophical stories. These characters’ passionate insistence on loving and desiring and hoping, amid the existential terror of colonization—and Belcourt’s nuanced and attentive rendering of it—is the most revolutionary of acts.

  — Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao

• “[Coexistence] is a closely rendered portrait of love as a vessel for healing and Indigenous joy. . . . Belcourt cleverly invites the reader to follow his characters into the moments of transformation that spur an expansive shift in how we allow ourselves to love, which has the effect of opening a door. . . . I want to spend my life walking through those doors described in these stories. I think many of us do.

  — The Tyee

• “Through the interconnected lifeworlds contained in Coexistence, we hear a defiantly loving and astoundingly honest response to colonial and racial violence. Billy-Ray Belcourt has written an homage and an elegy to a still-unfolding history—as intimate and hopeful as young romance, as mysterious and life-giving as family. I adore this collection.

  —  Tsering Yangzom Lama, author of We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

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