A Minor Chorus
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.
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Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is Canada's first First Nations Rhodes Scholar. This Wound Is a World was awarded the 2018 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize, the 2018 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize, and a 2018 Indigenous Voices Award. He is also the author of NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field.
No one breaks your heart as elegantly as Billy-Ray Belcourt. Innovative, intimate, and meticulous.--Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster
A Minor Chorus is a rare gem of a book. We will be reading and rereading A Minor Chorus for decades to come.--Alicia Elliott, author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
A truly exceptional novel about how the disregarded sometimes live the most remarkable lives. A Minor Chorus is like a song that's over too soon; I want to play it on repeat, to memorize the words so that I can sing them to myself.--Katherena Vermette, author of The Strangers
An achingly gorgeous debut novel of Indigenous survival...This is a breathtaking and hypnotic achievement.-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
Following his essay collection, A History of My Brief Body, poet Belcourt, from the Driftpile Cree Nation, continues his exploration of Indigenous trauma and queerness in this erudite debut novel...Smart, thoughtful.--Kathy Sexton "Booklist"
With his first novel, wunderkind Belcourt cements what has become increasingly clear across two poetry collections and a memoiristic book of essays: he is a fearless writer... [A Minor Chorus is] a ruminative constellation of ideas regarding colonial trauma, heteropatriarchy, and the innate sociality of writing; Belcourt's boldest, freest, and most linguistically assured work yet.-- "Library Journal (starred review)"
A Minor Chorus is a feat of technical brilliance, a novel that questions the worth of writing even as it asserts its own value. It is a slippery, scholarly work, rooted in the layered complexity of Indigenous life.--Laura Sackton "BookPage (starred review)"
