Hi friends, happy Wednesday and first day of February! I hope you’re all well. Today I’m posting my review of Cody Caetano’s memoir, Half-Bads in White Regalia.

This has been on the Canada Reads 2023 longlist.

Half-Bads in White Regalia by: Cody Caetano: This is the author’s memoir on his childhood, growing up with absentee parents, with two older siblings that tried their best to take care of him when their parents couldn’t. Told through the eyes of a child trying to understand what everything meant. This also dived deep into coming to learn of his heritage, as his mother was adopted as a baby, after a lot of perseverance to learn about her birth parents, she found out she’s Indigenous, making him half Indigenous, half Portuguese. This was a whirlwind of a book to read, in a good way. Even though it dealt with a lot of hard times and heavy topics, while reading it, the reader realized that Caetano as a child never really perceived his situation as bad. He was focused on being a kid and wanting kid things. His references to places and things felt very nostalgic for this reader as they grew up in the same province around the same time. His writing was also really lively and dramatic, but it worked so well because it helped tell the story of his life and to paint a picture that we might not have completely gotten otherwise. The way he had knick-names for people also left this childlike aspect to his writing; it gave the more intense moments a sigh of humour and it balanced very well. There were so many things happening at once in his life that it made sense he wrote a memoir. It was so easy to get through, with short chapters mixed with the chaos that was his life, the reader found themselves zipping through it all in a wind-sweeping blur. Between all the harder moments, there were also really beautiful and warm moments too; Caetano has a story worth telling and listening to. This memoir was different and unique in the way it was told and that’s what really stood out to the reader. This was a fast-paced and intriguing read.