Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When generational trauma meets childhood trauma

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson

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This was our March book club selection, and I really enjoyed it. I read the author’s debut novel, Black Cake, in February and I feel like she resolved all the issues I had with her writing in that novel here. If anything, I think she could have devoted a bit more time to the past but she genuinely made me care about the present day characters. Good Dirt in this case refers to clay, and a family’s historical legacy that they trace back to an […]

Black AF History: Boring…AF? (Or Maybe Just Hard To Read)

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot

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I will come right out of the gate and say I approached this book the wrong way. I thought it was going to be more of a straight-through read, and it’s definitely something to read in chunks instead. Otherwise everything gets overwhelming and your brain just…shuts down. So perhaps for someone who didn’t try to power through it in a few weeks, or maybe even for someone who listened to the audiobook in its entirety, this book wasn’t…Boring AF. But I definitely found myself wandering […]

A multi-generational exploration of Black experience from the early days of the slave trade through modern day.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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CBR 15 Bingo: Africa – The book begins, ends, and half of it takes place in Africa. Yaa Gyasi begins Homegoing with a pair of sisters (Effia Otcher and Esi Asare) separated at birth at the height of the African slave trade.  One sister, Effia, is raised and married off to a white Englishman on the Gold Coast.  The other sister, Esi, stays in a tribal African village.  The story covers seven generations. Each chapter is a new person advancing down the timeline and alternates between […]

For my young reader, at least, it was a huge success

Hidden Figures: Young Readers' Edition by Margot Lee Shetterly

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I’ve been struggling all summer to find a book to read with my 8 year old. He’s a smart kid, but he’s not really all that interested in the things I remember being into as a kid. I keep trying books I grew up on, and he’s not really been interested in any of them. That may be a maturity thing, though. I didn’t really get into reading until I was in middle school. But he loves math. At the end of last year, he […]

Gentrification Meets Get Out in Brooklyn

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

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I couldn’t put down this book after starting it. I burned through it in one and a half days, because sleep,  it it was engaging all the way through and the ending was insane. Loved the story, as it’s something that resonates with me (gentrification in NYC has gotten so bad and so many people have been displaced/ out priced because of it). I also loved the slight sci-fi elements of this book, a turn I was not expecting as it starts out as a […]

You’ve heard of some, but come for the ones that kicked a$$ a little more quietly

Stand Up! 10 Might Women Who Made a Change by Brittney Cooper

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Stand Up! 10 Might Women Who Made a Change is the latest book in a slightly crowded genre of women of color making their mark in American history. With that said, it is a welcomed edition as it has a few people you have probably not heard of, making it fresh in many ways. Brittney Cooper introduces us to women who have inspired them, and others in these pages. The biographical information is presented as a story, making it easy to follow along. This book […]



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