It’s okay, I’ve learned, to love the things that make you, even if they also are the things that unmake you.

Métis writer and professor Toni Jensen opens her memoir, Carry, with a scene that will resonate with every woman. A chance encounter in nature with two men that suddenly turns from ordinary to harrowing. She describes a man gesturing her out of her car with a handgun with a smile, while “say[ing] things that are incongruous with his smiling face.”

Not that we’ve all had a gun pulled on us, but that dissonance between what a man says and the look on his face. It gave me chills.

I had chills often reading this, actually. Jensen confronts stereotypes, particularly of Native Americans, and interprets them in relation to herself and her family. It addresses her relationships, the birth of her daughter, and working at universities as a Métis woman. The thread running through it all are haunting encounters with gun violence.

There’s a tone of melancholy that runs throughout and it suited the material so well. Jensen manages to sound both profoundly strong and yet weary, not because she’s been hit with so much but because look at the state of this fucking country (those are my words and impression, I don’t want to put that all on her).

The portions around gun violence read the strongest. This is a harrowing subject any way you take it, but Jensen has had connections to more than her fair share of shootings and the threat of them, including what seems like an ever-present threat for college professors in their courses, or the fear when it happens to colleagues. It’s stomach-turning. This is no way to live, or to die.

Because all roads used to lead back to that house, and it is a measure of time and hard work that they no longer do.

A story told in bits and pieces is around her dysfunctional childhood home and abusive father. He later falls ill with Lewy body dementia, and she considers her complicated feelings for him, how she has more affection for her dogs. “This is what it would be like, day-to-day now, with my father if my heart were a different heart. If we loved each other differently. Each day I would watch him cross and hold my breath and hold my heart steady and I would walk around to meet him.”

This, in my opinion, is memoir at its absolute best, when a writer is forced to examine something in themselves that’s so uncomfortable to think or say but they have to say anyway. This has moments of brilliance but overall I found it disjointed and at times repetitive. I noticed a few points where facts or details were repeated, which made it seem less like a cohesive memoir and more like interconnected essays. It also didn’t establish much about who Jensen is, it just jumps right in and we get something of a portrait in fragments.

But it’s haunting, has a powerful voice and a lot to show and say about violence against women in many forms, and gives ample food for thought. It also teaches — in one of my favorite anecdotes — the importance of bringing the proper sized bag of snakes.

I don't like to rate memoirs. It seems strange to put a star rating on someone's real-life story, something they've written how they remember it, and how they interpreted it. And I always seem to get something out of every memoir I read. Carry is powerful, so very current, and a poetic expression of the violence Toni Jensen has experienced so far in her life. Violence that is hard to read.

I read Carry quickly, speeding through it almost like ripping off a band-aid, knowing it would be difficult and wanting to just be done. So I don't think I even appreciated it as much as I should have. But being two months away from a terrifying election, I didn't know if my head was in the right space for such an important message. But reading about the shocking experiences Toni Jensen has been subjected to, instance after instance of gun violence that has touched her life, it further impressed upon me the importance of telling stories such as these.

This memoir is told in a collection of essays, and they're not in chronological order--which was a bit distracting until I accepted that the order didn't matter. Each story is separate, but woven together with a common thread---violence. Gun violence, physical violence, violence against women, violence stemming from racism. It should be unacceptable. It should not have become the norm. Jensen examines her own experiences, as well as historical ones, even taking a look at the literal definitions of certain words. It's this focused attention that carries throughout the essays that kept me reading and learning.

And when I say this memoir is current, I mean current. It includes mentions of Covid-19 and George Floyd's murder. There is something almost comforting about seeing these events we're currently living in mentioned and discussed. Strangely, it made my negative headspace more tolerable, less lonely, I think.

While your instinct may be to skip over this one because of the heavy material, I encourage you to read it. It's only through the personal stories of victims that I think minds and hearts can be changed.

This came out today and I haven’t finished but am loving it. A well written and important story that makes me want to learn more.

It's really hard to really give a review on a memoir because each person's experience is uniquely their own. However I enjoyed reading about her experience even though they were very difficult. I can tell a lot of people will like this book and I highly recommend it.

Thanks to NetGally for the advanced copy of this book and for the chance to offer my honest review.

Sometimes rating and reviewing a memoir can be really difficult. Who am I to judge someone’s life story? I almost was unable to rate this but settled with the 3 stars. While I enjoyed Carry by Toni Jensen, there were some parts of the writing and layout that didn’t quite work out for me but I will start with what I liked.

Toni Jensen is an indigenous woman from the Métis tribe in particular but is white passing. I don’t see much indigenous representation out there (including white passing) so I really loved that! Jensen speaks about her experiences in sisterhood, parenting, and friendship. She also speaks about the relevant topics such as gun violence, police brutality, and racism. These topics are always important to discuss and read about and I thought her experiences were hearting stopping or goosebump inducing.

Now what I didn’t like is that this is more of a collection of essays about her experiences. I would preferred a chronological order of events and how one thing lead to another. The order made it feel jumbled and disorganized. There are a lot of Webster definitions peppered throughout the book and I found it rather distracting and repetitive. I understand what point the author was trying to make but after I hit the 20% mark, I thought it overused. There is no doubt that Jensen can write, I found myself highlighting a LOT of quotes.
Overall, I do think this is a relevant and important read due to the topics that are being discussed and I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the layout was different.

Thank you so much to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book!

I don’t read a lot of memoirs. I don’t read a lot of nonfiction (although, that has been changing this year). But when I got an email from the publisher about Carry, something about the synopsis drew me in. And with the assurance that the publisher would also be sending copies of the ARC to Indigenous reviewers (I will be listing as few at the end of my review), I decided to download it and review it.

I was not disappointed.

As I’m not part of the Indigenous community, I can’t say how good a representation this is of Indigenous life or Métis life, but I will be talking about the writing and different sections of the memoir. It is told in vignettes (not sure that’s the right word), but it’s not told in a linear way which, as y’all know, I LOVE.

First, trigger warnings!!: Guns (obviously), gun violence, physical abuse, sexual abuse (not strictly on the page), threats of violence, mass shootings, school shootings

Ok, let’s talk writing. This could not be better written. It’s poetic and raw. It pulls no punches. This is definitely one of the best pieces of creative nonfiction I’ve read in a while. The way the author can mention a short snippet of something and then come back to it and have you anticipate it despite you knowing it’s not going to be a “nice” story is truly brilliant.

She mentions the abuse by her father several times but doesn’t say what exactly happened until closer to the end. Like she’s preparing you for it and I really appreciated that.

I don’t know what else I can say. The writing is gorgeous and the way she weaves together history, personal experience, facts, and opinion is so brilliant. I’m envious as someone who tried to do this successfully in school with less than amazing results.

Her stories also punched me in the gut. I’m not comfortable around guns. I don’t know if I ever will be. The fact that she had so many stories around guns kind of shocked me despite knowing the country we live in.

I’m definitely privileged in that and it made me think why I don’t have more gun-related stories. The fact that I could get a gun so easily with my shaky hands and my mental health record is utterly fucked up and probably one of the reasons I stay as far away from them as possible.

Jensen’s story about teaching and having someone with a history of violence be in her classroom scared the shit out of me. I’ve been in night classes like that, in conservative places like that, with shady-looking dudes like that. It painted those experiences in a different light. Of what could have been.

Also, the part near the beginning where she talks about being in a field and the men in the car trying to trap her…that had me afraid to move from my couch. Sexual violence or even the possibility, the hinting at it makes every red flag in my body go on high alert (hence why I don’t normally read books with it in it) and this was no different.

Except when I read it in fiction, I can put it away. It’s not real. It’s in a story. But this really happened. These fuckers, the dudes that come with the pipelines and the fracking, still exist in the world and they’re still hurting so many people. It’s not just about the environment. It’s about the communities and women who are abused too. And not enough people are listening.

I highly recommend everyone read Carry. Even if you think you’re informed on the issues it covers, reading it yourself makes the abuse and the problems hit you more than any news article or study can.

I am giving Carry by Toni Jensen 4.5 out of 5 stars. If you’re looking for a steller memoir, you can’t go wrong
here.

Absolutely the best memoir I have read on indigenous women ever. Written by one that wrote a strong and compulsive story about her own history. Insightful and eye opening. I believe this to be a must read. For everyone no matter if you're make or female. No matter what your skin color or your religion. Deserves a tip spot on your TBR stack Happy reading!

I was provided with a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Firstly, I think a trigger warning is very useful here - violence of many different types is discussed.

Written in a series of essays, Carry is a beautifully written book about a Métis womans life and the intersection of historical overlap. Jensen utilizes dictionary definitions to shape how the reader views the story (and in my experience, to then reflect how that term is utilized outside of the book).

While not an easy read, I very much appreciate having the opportunity to do so.

Carry is a memoir in the form of essays. It is beautifully written, although the style might not work for everyone, but I found the writing to be gorgeous and haunting. The essays are all about violence in some form or another, focusing on domestic and gun violence in particular. Reading it is heartbreaking, but also brings to light a conversation we as a nation need to be having.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

It's hard to put into words how to describe this book. There are passages that feel as if Toni Jensen has reached inside my head and put my own thoughts to paper.

This book is a collection of essays on Jensen's life experiences as they tie to gun violence. And to say that you don't think you'll relate to her stories is false. Everyone in some way or another has been affected by gun violence. I can count at least 5 instances in my own life that were affected by gun violence - including a shooting 2 blocks from my apartment on the same street, and at the same time I would normally walk my dog; and a person allegedly bringing a gun into my place of work while I was in college when I was the manager that shift. Does this mean someone had a gun pointed at me 5 times? No, it does not. It simply means I can tie at least 5 life experiences to guns. And I'm sure if you all think on your past you'll be able to find these instances too.

That's what Jensen has done with Carry. Each chapter is a different life experience that ties to gun violence. Whether it's school shootings, police brutality, domestic abuse, workplace violence, neighbor disputes, drugs and alcohol and more, Jensen ties each to something she's experienced. Some instances you think you're not going to get the connection but when you get to the end of the chapter you're just like "Wow, I did not see that coming."

This book feels so timely, and I feel is an important read in an election year. It not only examines gun violence but also really looks at what it's like to be American right now, and I think that's something all of us can take some time to think about.

Carry by Toni Jensen will be available tomorrow, Sept. 8 and I highly recommend you give this a read. 🕊
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Thanks to NetGalley & Random House for this advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

A memoir written in essay form that deals with current issues such as racism, sexism, and physical abuse. This was a well written and thought provoking memoir, however it was difficult for me to follow due to the essays being out of order. It actually took me a little bit into the book to realize that was why I was having a hard time getting into the story. Some of the topics were covered in different chapters (George Floyd and coronavirus for example), and didn't seem to connect. I felt like some of the stories were disjointed and hard to follow. The author also had a writing style where she would repeat certain words or phrases, and I kept thinking I was reading the same sentence over again by accident. I feel like this could have an impact and the author touches on very important topics, I just found the way it was presented disconnected.

Thank your to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

WOW is pretty much all I was thinking while reading this stunning memoir. The writing is poetic and full of fire, or, "a bag of snakes". I will be thinking about this for a long time and recommending to everyone.

Toni Jensen comes "from lace-curtain Irish married into Métis." She touches on so much of the essence of the moment, while calmly explaining the etymology of birds and their collective nouns. We're learning about a tiding of magpies and then we're at Standing Rock, a riot of robins leads to sex trafficking, an exaltation of larks child abuse, the migration of the sandhill cranes racism, a meiny of swallows divorce, a cloud of blackbirds the Trail of Tears. I tore through this book in a day, and could not get over the beauty of the writing, despite its contents: everyday violence, domestic abuse, police brutality, animal cruelty, gun violence, fear and racism, mass shootings, dementia, genocide. Jensen writes with honesty and quiet passion, about passing, teaching, suffering, and championing.
I'd never heard of Lewy body dementia before, or the terrible truths about John James Audubon and Paul Harvey. I'm sure everybody in the world can find something relatable, entertaining and instructive in Carry. The title is brilliant, relating as it does to pregnancy, weapons, sickness, history and so much more.

This memoir in essays reminded me so much of another favorite: I am, I am, I am by Maggie O'Farrell. Both are stunningly, poetically written, with a focus on extraordinary and everyday brushes with death. Jensen is a born storyteller, someone whose curiosity about language and the effects of words comes through clearly in her writing. I fell head over heels for her narrative style from the first page. It feels overly simplistic to describe Carry as a book about violence - it is about that, it's true, but Carry is also about family, and place, and survival. It puts what's happening in (to use Jensen's refrain, our America) in a larger context. In her essays, she reminds us that as long as this country chooses to view gun violence as a problem that cannot be solved, as something that just is, that the violence against Black and Indigenous people, the violence against women and children, the countless almosts, the too-many-to-name violent acts that are carried out every day will continue. She reminds us that we cannot untangle the threads of the violence against animals and the violence against women, the violence of the past and the violence of the present, the everyday violence and the headline making violence, the violence of the individual and the violence of the government, because it is all connected. I hope that one day people will look back on stories like those in Carry and they will seem unrecognizable. In the meantime, they are an anthem, a warning, a question.

TW: Toni Jensen talks in her book about the failure of phrases like domestic violence, but for lack of better options, here is a list of content that readers may find triggering: sex trafficking, gun violence, domestic violence, drug overdose, alcoholism, sexual assault, animal abuse, xenophobia

Thanks to the Marketing Manager | Random House Group | Penguin Random House for the chance to read and review this ARC and to NetGalley for the download.

How do you critique a memoir? You don't. A persons life and their thoughts about their life are theirs to own. So how do you review a memoir? You can't critique a memoir, but you can critique the manner in which it was written.

I had a problem with this memoir. To me it felt disjointed, a bit hit and miss. There were sections that I enjoyed and then parts that left me scratching my head, wondering how they even fit in to the story. In addition this author felt the need to give definitions for specific words from the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, not as a footnote, but right within the text, which for me, broke up the rhythm of the story.

The crux of the story was balanced on violence - mostly domestic violence but also included murder and suicide, as the author recounted her life. It also spoke to the cost of being a Native American in a white American society.

For me, this was not a good read. It read in fits - starts and stops, interruptions and often the topics changed abruptly, sometimes within the same paragraph. So without critiquing the life of this author I can speak, in my opinion, on how the story was presented, and for me the presentation did not make for a clear concise understandable story.

I am struggling with this review. The book has left me open and raw and angry and sad and deep in memories I never, ever, wanted to revisit [and thought I had dealt with, but apparently, I have just shoved them into one of those compartmentalized boxes in my brain and moved on], and it has also made me so incredibly angry and sad for the author. Even though she has worked through a lot of what happened to her in the past, how does one ever move on from that kind of trauma? And she cannot ever erase [nor should she even want to] that she is Métis and proud of that [as she and everyone else that is, should be], even when it works against her. And it infuriates me that she even has to defend that she is proud of her heritage [I just cannot with ignorant people anymore]; but I also truly admire her; what she has been able to accomplish in SPITE of all the things that happened to her [abuse is insidious and permeates every part of your being and being able to move away from that and have even a partly normal life is amazing to me and I am in awe of her] and BECAUSE of the things that have happened to her. And even while you are wallowed in these stories, there is also admiration; she is winning. She may not think that at times, but to me, she is winning. And I admire her even more for that.

Reading this brutal [because it IS brutal] book has made me realize that sometimes important books need to be brutal. And this is an important book. Even in that it is brutal and unhappy and anger-inducing and there is not a typical "happy ending" [or what the world classifies as happy ending], it needs to be read. It should be required reading. And it made me realize I need to change a couple ratings on some books I recently read. Just because a book is brutal and sad and bothers me, doesn't mean that it deserves less than 5 stars and that it isn't important. THIS book made me realize that. And I am grateful for that lesson [and I may or may not have learned this lesson before and have forgotten it - sometimes being uncomfortable makes you forget how important being uncomfortable is and how change only comes from people being uncomfortable].

You need to know [if you have not picked up on this already], this is not a happy book. Not even remotely. Filled with stories of her childhood and life, mixed with current [and not so current] events and a TON of dictionary definitions as well as statistics that will make your toes curl and your stomach contents curdle, there is little that is happy. And the things that are, you just grab at and cling to [ANYTIME she talks about her daughter is just a ray of sunshine and I loved every mention of her because you can tell she brings her mother such joy]. You need to know that if you have had trauma of any kind in your life, there will be moments that this book is extremely difficult to read. Please know, there is no shame in skipping sections, stopping for awhile, or for forever. Everyone who has had trauma in their lives deals with books/movies/life about trauma differently and you have to do what is best for you. I powered through, but there have been moments since last night that I have wondered if that was wise. And I am not sure how I will shove all that came out with this book back into the compartmentalized boxes that they belong in. You do what you need to do for you. And this book might not be for you, but then again, it just might be for you and be the very thing you need to move forward. Because for all its brutality and unhappiness, there IS a thread of hope throughout this. Hope for healing. Hope for the future [even in the midst of all that is happening]. Hope that she will never, ever, have to defend who and what she is E V E R again. And that those who are also Metis [and POC. And Native American. And. And. AND.] will never, ever have to defend who and what they are E V E R again. And that hope just might be exactly what you need.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing - Ballantine/Ballantine Books for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Carry is a collection of interconnecting essays from Toni Jensen discussing police brutality, domestic violence, gun violence, human trafficking, and rape through the author's own experiences living as a Métis woman.

This was a very honest and at times a difficult to read but is an incredibly relevant and valuable read right now.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC.

This series of essays might set you back on your heels. Jensen has explored, in a thought provoking way, what is means to be Metis and what it means to be female. And, what guns mean in society today. She has used entwined her family history with a stern look at stereotypes. While it's a very serious collection, it is leavened with occasional flashes of light. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Read one essay- appreciate it- and then read another the next day. Excellent.

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.

This is may be one of the best books I’ve read this year. Author Toni Jensen has drawn such a wide net to capture ideas that normally remain elusive and just beyond our grasp. Even the title CARRY: A MEMOIR ON STOLEN LAND is worthy of repeated reflection. Equal parts diary, memoir, didactic lecture, poetry and yes, dictionary, the book asks readers to consider and reflect upon a host of old and very pressing issues that refuse to settle quietly. If anything, they are bubbling up now as never before, in both rural and urban areas, as we approach the 2020 Elections. Ostensibly about guns, the books also looks at the rights of women, Native Peoples, white privilege, police use of force and so much more. Jensen is an eloquent writer providing depth and reflection where it is needed most. This is an amazing book. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.