Her writing is refined and meticulously crafted, each sentence strikes with intention. Page after page, her pride in her craft shines through, as the power in her narrative comes from what Mailhot leaves off the page. She writes, “it comes from a traditional upbringing and regarding my work as something more sacred than generations of effort and study.” A talent she recognizes in herself, but one she won’t take credit for. Mailhot pulls the curtain back to show her inner workings with painful yet refreshing honesty.Īt just 140 pages, “Heart Berries” is a testament to Mailhot’s talent as a storyteller.

Whether it be her mental health, abuse, or her upbringing, she captures her experiences in vivid detail and recognizes how it’s shaped her into the woman she is today. This is a story of survival and perseverance. Revisiting painful memories and traumatic experiences is a hard thing for anyone, and it’s even harder to find value in them like Mailhot is able to. “It was about trying to articulate that to the world.” “There’s a lot of things that I felt like I had to validate to him, and by the end of it, I realized it’s not really about him at all,” she said.

In an interview with NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Mailhot shared that the book started as a sort of epistolary to Gray so that he could better understand her experiences as an Indigenous woman.

Most of the memoir is written for her husband Casey Gray, as she reflects on her personal history and their tumultuous love story. Mailhot throws the reader headfirst into a washing machine of memories: one bleeding into the next. With a commanding narrative, she speaks on abuse, intergenerational trauma, and her darkest emotions. “Heart Berries,” tells the story of her coming-of-age and her journey towards self-acceptance. Mailhot grew up on the Seabird Island First Nation reservation. The end result, “Heart Berries”, is a beautiful, yet gut-wrenching memoir. While inside, Mailhot was given a notepad and pen and began writing essay after essay. After checking herself in for suicidal ideation, Mailhot was diagnosed with Bipolar II, PTSD, and an eating disorder. Mailhot began writing her memoir from the inside of a mental institution. She currently teaches creative writing at Purdue University. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, the Los Angeles Times, and Carve Magazine. In 2018, her debut book “Heart Berries: A Memoir” was named a New York Times bestseller. The event is free and open to the public. to noon, there will be a reading, followed by a discussion in PUB 258. 24, Terese Marie Mailhot will be visiting Clark College as part of the ongoing Columbia Writers Series.

Heart berries a memoir