This was a very hard book for me to read. And I’m not talking about difficult in the sense of not being able to get through it - on the contrary, Carry is a beautifully written collection of essays and memoir, and I didn’t want to put it down. But I recognized a lot of myself and my own life and traumas in Toni Jensen’s, and for that reason I had to set it aside from time to time, and read it slowly. I also don’t know how on earth I am going to be able to do this book justice in a review…

There are so many layers to Carry. It is the author’s personal journey in life, living as an Indigenous woman on land that has been stolen over and over again from Indigenous people. It is also the author’s personal journey of growing up in an abusive home, with an abusive father, and, later on, a fractured family. Carry is also a memoir of gun violence in the US, both the author’s own encounters with gun violence, as well as gun violence in general. 

Toni Jensen does an amazing job of weaving the personal with the more general, painting a difficult image of how entrenched violence is in this country, especially violence against women and children, especially violence against Native American women and children. But there is also so much more embedded within the author’s words: her travels around the US, her amazing descriptions of the land that she travels over, that she has lived on, and that was stolen from so many different tribes. The violence and indifference that women of color confront so often in healthcare, education, housing, and so on. The trauma passed through generations due to displacement, violence, and systemic racism, and how this trauma affects our children. (The latter is something that I have personally lived with and I am glad that I grew up in a country where obtaining a firearm isn’t an easy feat as I have no idea what that would have meant for us if it had been). 

There is even more to Carry, such as the way the author uses the dictionary to define words, and then portrays what they are used to mean and what they really mean. This is one of those books that you can read multiple times, and every single time you will discover something new. One of the best memoirs and collections of essays that you can read this year in my opinion! And the cover is just gorgeous!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.