A devastatingly beautiful collection capturing the voice of queer indigeneity! Billy-Ray Belcourt is undoubtedly one of best writers of our time. Poetic and lyrical prose that captures truth seamlessly, and much more joyful than other works by the same author. I will undoubtable be reading this again and again in the years to come.

such a quiet set of essays that were interesting in their look at queer culture and relationship dynamics

I read A Minor Chorus last year and it was a moving and wonderful book, I was very excited to have the honour of reading Coexistence by Billy Ray Belcourt. This short story collection was extremely well written and throughout each story you will read about love, hard-ship and perserverance. Belcourt never fails to impress.

3.5⭐️ Thank you Penguin Random House Canada, Hamish Hamilton and NetGalley for this Advanced Reader e-Copy of Coexistence. Pub date: May 21, 2024.

This is a collection of stories that marries themes of the indigenous identity with sexuality and longing. Some stories were 4⭐️ for me, others were 3⭐️ thus the overall rating. It’s a more erotic read than I expected with moments of tenderness, hope and melancholy.

What I liked:
* Honest discussion of the realities of being native, identifying as LGBTQ, and being native + LGBTQ
* Perceptions of colonialism
* The use of language as a metaphor
* One story that verged on horror/suspense
* Themes of love and belonging

What didn’t work for me:
* Redundancy of reference to dating apps
* Some stories were related, others were not — difficult to follow at times
* Multiple timelines of related or unrelated stories — can be tricky to follow

Overall, a reflective read. I am always so appreciative of lessons learned from voices other than my own.

This book is absolutely brimming with love, hope and tenderness and left me feeling so happy and content. It most prominently tackles indigenous life and identity and how that changes how you navigate through the world, as well as queerness, modern day struggles, parent and child relationships and literature and poetry.

This was a fantastic entry point for me as my first indigenous book and I think it handled it in such a beautiful way, talking about how being indigenous can impact you in daily encounters, in your memories, in trauma, being fetishized, racially profiled by the police and much more. It made it so clear how much racism and injustice still prevails in modern day Canada, and it's utterly devastating. Yet the book was still filled with so much hope and joy.

The second story was my absolute favourite and made me think that oh, maybe I do like romance stories? Or at least I do if they're all like this. I could have stayed in that joyful and tender bubble for much longer than we were given.

⭐ Rating: 5/5 stars
🗓 Publish date: May 21, 2024
🌈 Representation: various queer and Indigenous characters

CW/TW:
Grief, Abuse, Sexual content, Alcohol use, Homophobia, Racism, Addiction (minor)


I will never not be obsessed with anything that Billy-Ray Belcourt writes. His stories feel both personal and universal, intimate and relatable. I find myself continuously highlighting as if with a shovel: unearthing gorgeous prose and new ways of viewing the world.

Short story collections can easily feel disjointed or uneven, with some stories standing out and others fading into the background. For Coexistence, I feel every story was strong. I loved all the characters and how the format allowed for different perspectives.

I especially appreciated the depictions of queer and Indigenous experiences, set mainly in my home province of Alberta. The impacts of colonialism and the resilience of Indigenous peoples in the face of its horrors were so powerfully felt throughout the narratives.

I highly recommend picking this one up! And a big thank you to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for providing an eARC of this title. All thoughts expressed here are my own.

a sparing collection that in terms of voice feels a bit too one-note, despite the stories focusing on characters of different ages etc.

Billy-Ray Belcourt is one of my favourite authors, and Coexistence is an instant favourite.

A Minor Chorus was my favourite book from 2023, and so I was very excited to see Belcourt was releasing a short story collection.

All of these stories were phenomenal. I loved the fact that 2 of these were intertwined from opposite POVs. The last story almost made me sob not gonna lie.

Highly recommend this short story collection!

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a digital ARC of Coexistence

This short story collection importantly portrays Indigenous characters and experiences, which are refreshing but also relatable. However, it didn't entertain or move me as much as I was hoping for.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of Coexistence!

I love a short story collection, and Billy-Ray Belcourt’s first collection is a stunner. I’ve only read his memoir-in-essays so far (a History of My Brief Body) but this collection reminded me to get my hands on his 2022 novel and maybe even try his poetry! Coexistence draws somewhat from Belcourt’s own lived experiences (as a queer Native man), but there are other experiences explored here that show off his skills at embodying different characters.

The stories do feel very cohesive, but avoid being repetitive. A lot of them feature creatives of some description (writers, artists) who struggle to form or keep meaningful relationships. A few explore dating as a queer man of colour, and a few explore the lasting damage colonialism wreaked on Indigenous lives.

One favourite was Outside, following Jack who just got out of jail and is faced with continuing to perpetuate cycles of abandonment that plague his family, due to generational trauma passed down, or trying to forge ahead and break those cycles. Another was Summer Research, where a young man housesits for his parents - except the house is haunted by a malevolent ghost left over from a residential school.

Belcourt easily switches between soft and tender, creepy and uneasy, tragic and hopeless, caring and hopeful. This collection runs a whole gamut of emotion, with only (I think) two stories that didn’t really stick with me. A collection teeming with life and perseverance.

The two latter stories were the strongest for their departure from the formula. Each story on its own was well done; the trouble is that, taken together, they don't necessarily make for a dynamic collection, which does matter to me as time goes on. Belcourt expertly balances his own area of interest - being an Indigenous gay man living in cities and/or returning home for a visit to the reserve - with enough CanLit voice that the stories feel intimately familiar even to Canadian readers who don't share those identities. But so too does it fall into a common pitfall of CanLit short fiction: it doesn't often vary its subject.

These stories mark necessary departures from the abidingly white CanLit short fiction sphere; they allow us to see land through the lens of dispossession instead of the mist of nostalgia common to pastiche Ontarian settlers. This collection is a worthy contribution to the field, familiar enough to suck in unadventurous lit fiction readers while provoking decolonizing thought. But what made the final two stories - "summer research" and "various people" - stand out is that, even if the protagonist still bears familiarities for a reader who's been through the rest of the collection already, they are toying with form ("summer research") and pathos ("various people"). "summer research" pushes into horror territory, but of course the horror is colonialism, while "various people" was the story that moved me the most, leaving us off on a note of love significantly less complicated than we have witnessed so far.

I think Belcourt's a great writer whose strengths shine when he leans into what makes him distinct from (other) CanLit writers. Simply put, I wish this collection was weirder. I'd like to see him push those envelopes a little further, be bolder, give every story a yet more distinct voice. There is a lot of melancholy here and fewer truly memorable character moments like that of our "summer research" protagonist who walked into a confessional and asked the priest for HIS confession. I love a quiet gay decolonial story, but I wish there was more noise between each one.

billy-ray belcourt has quickly become one of my favourite writers, and "coexistence" further cements that fact. a collection of short stories, each of them tenderly explores an aspect of indigeneity, queerness and a quintessential canadian-ness that the literary world is often devoid of. with each sentence, belcourt transports you to the harsh terrain of our country, unpeeling it's fraught history along the way. with each story i felt harnessed by belcourt's prose, and embalmed in the setting and moments that he was recounting--fiction and nonfiction.

i find most collections like this either feel disjointed or lacklustre, but "coexistence" is anything but. each story, despite their differences, feels tethered to the previous one in its languid composition and reflections. it's a testament to the authors talent, to know when less is more or when more is less, and it's something that many of belcourt's peers fail at. with each new work, it feels like he continues to raise himself upon the pedestal of great canadian writers, and i feel honoured to exist in a time where i can read each word he grace's the page with.

Billy-Ray Belcourt has quickly become an all-time favourite author of mine, and this book was no exception. Belcourt is an incredibly talented writer with such poetic and refined prose that reads so vividly. This book was emotionally poignant, compelling to read, and very impressive on a craft level- truly a joy to read!

My most anticipated book of 2024 was COEXISTENCE by Billy-Ray Belcourt since I loved A Minor Chorus so much I read it five times. I was so lucky to receive this galley from my friend Cameron the publicist and I’m currently reading it for the second time because it’s so moving. This is one of my fave books! I’m in awe of how beautiful this writing is where each sentence is tender. I loved the themes of family, motherhood, love, grief, men in love and Queer Cree joy. I loved all ten stories and this book made me cry more than once. I love the poetic use of language and how each story is emotional in its own way. I’m a proud member of the BRB fan club as commemorated by the bracelet that I made.

When I requested to view this book, I was excited at the idea of delving into Indigenous characters and experiences, as I have always felt like literature that centres them is lacking. However, what I failed to notice was that "Coexistence" is made up of stories instead, and I was a bit sceptical because I do not tend to read collections for fear of a lack of connection.
Well, if you have the same scepticism, leave that behind and make an exception for " Coexistence", I truly mean it. Belcourt writes a kaleidoscope of human experiences, of settings, of beautiful sentences that will make you reconsider your stance on short stories.

These characters and their experiences are vastly different, but there are two common threads that the author clearly highlights and uses as fil rouge: indigeneity and loneliness. Now, we can see these two themes as one and the same, as if being indigenous in a colonial space is intrinsically a lonely experience, or we can interpret them as being two "conditions" that orbit each other but are not necessarily dependant on each other. I believe it is up to the reader.
"Coexistence" also tries to combat this psychological loneliness that affects its characters, as well as theorise the use of language and spaces to fight the physical loneliness that Indigenous people face while both living near their native reservations and far from them.
Nevertheless, as I said before, the author's characters are still relatable to non-Indigenous readers, the theme of loneliness, of loss of identity is a universal one, especially in a world both as connected and disconnected as ours.

One of the best books I’ve read in a long time, no one breaks your heart quite like Billy-Ray Belcourt, that’s for sure.

The writing is sublime, characterised by beautiful prose, rich languid language, finely detailed reminiscences, picturesque framing.

These stories are beautiful, heartfelt, tragic, wistful explorations of lived experience. Some had me gasping at their beauty, and their tragedy. Some brought me practically to tears.

They all, without exception, show an exquisite tenderness for and between their characters.
I felt like I was living these stories.

Short story collections are often hit or miss for me, and while there were a couple stories in here that didn’t work as well for me, there were so many fantastic ones and the collection worked so well overall. At the heart of each story, there is a relationship, whether that’s between a dying mother and her son, two men falling in love, or a long-term relationship falling apart. Coexistence is such a perfect title for this collection as it examines how people coexist, how ideas coexist, and how things that are seemingly at odds coexist, and it’s written in the most gorgeous prose. There was something so poetic about the full circle way in which the first and last stories feature the same relationship, the mother and son, that really sold it as a collection for me.

Billy-Ray Belcourt's Coexistence is a beautiful collection of short stories that had me in tears by the end. His writing is honest and vulnerable, and I really enjoyed how some of the stories connect to one another.

As a big fan of Billy-Ray Belcourt’s work I was beyond excited for the release of Coexistence and it did not disappoint. A beautiful collection of short stories with some of them being intertwined by sharing characters but switching time and point of view. Especially the first and the last story are the most gorgeous beginning and ending, making the book feel really whole with a satisfying but tearful closing. Contrary to how collections often feel, this one does not have any weak point, every story fits perfectly and compliments the emotional flow of reading. It’s gentle, tender and intimate, might even make you shed a few tears! It’s Belcourt’s writing at its finest with reflections on love, queerness, loneliness, grief and generational trauma of indigenous peoples. The prose is poetic but has a certain simplicity to it, certain rawness even. There are so many lines I wanted to underline and remember forever. I will definitely be coming back to this book.