Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Davis lecturing and marching.

Be the Light: How She Became Angela Davis by Daria Peoples

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Do you know who Angela Davis is? If you do, you are one up on me. I had never heard of them, or if I had it was just a footnote in history. And to be honest, Davis deserves to be more than a footnote. She needs her own thousand paged book. Instead I must settle for the clever picture book (currently available but read on line) Be the Light: How She Became Angela Davis written and illustrated by Daria Peoples. Davis was born in […]

A Landmark Read

Women, Race, & Class by Angela Davis

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Last month, when I was looking to try reading Angela Davis’ work, Women, Race, & Class was the primary recommendation. At the time, my local libraries were closed and this one was heavily borrowed via e-reader, so I picked up the available Are Prisons Obsolete? It was very good, giving me a concise history of penitentiaries and made me reconsider prison abolition. But I was still eager to get to this one and got excited when I saw it available. It was worth the wait. Davis does such […]

How to feel Bad about the World and Yourself!

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Sometimes I am incredibly scared about the world. And often when I get scared, I rationalize my own place in it and maybe even the degree of danger the world is in. Sometimes when I read writers who come at their analysis from a Marxist perspective and this set of actions gets even more pronounced. And often, when that writer is Communist, I am able to at least roll my eyes a little bit and feel a little better. Angela Davis sort of splits the […]

Making a Complicated Topic Easier to Understand

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Best for: Readers interested in learning more about the history of the women’s movement from a race and class perspective (it’s right there in the title). In a nutshell: Brilliant academic and activist Angela Y. Davis provides a thorough history of the women’s movement, with a focus on the contributions of Black women and men and a deep analysis of the ways that white women in particular failed to support the needs of their Black sisters. Line that sticks with me: “Yet there were those […]

Connecting Across Continents and Time

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Best for: Anyone interested in fighting back. In a nutshell: A mixture of interviews and speech transcripts that seeks to connect struggles for freedom across the world. Line that sticks with me: “But those protest movements would not have been necessary – it would not have been necessary to create a mid-century Black freedom movement had slavery been comprehensively abolished in the nineteenth century.” Why I Chose It: I decided to kick off participation in my fifth Cannonball Read with this book because I am […]



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