Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The ones who left

Homeseeking by Karissa Chen

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Bingo Square – Diaspora (it says so right in the novel’s description – follows two main characters that left China during the war between the Nationalists and Communists and represents two different paths). Also, this makes my first Bingo (4th column is complete). This novel follows the lives of Suchi and Haiwen, Sue and Howard, or Susu and Doudou as they are called at various points in their lives. Childhood sweethearts in 1940s Shanghai, the two are separated when Haiwen joins the Nationalist army in […]

We’re all the same to them

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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“Yours is a lucky generation.” “I wouldn’t say we were so lucky,” Phuong said. “You’ve never appreciated what you have.” Her father waved his hand over the meal and Phuong squeezed her glass, bracing to hear the stories of her parents one more time. ……. “Phuong was bemused at how these tourists would want to spend their money and their day here, instead of at the beach, or at a fancy restaurant, or in a hammock at a rustic riverside café. The reason for such […]

A powerful story of belief, grief, and belonging

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

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Gifty is the daughter of two Ghanaian immigrants: her mother, a depressive woman who turns to American Evangelical Christianity for a respite from life, and her father, a man who abandons his family to return to his home in Ghana. Gifty has a brother: an athlete who struggles with addiction. Throughout the novel, Gifty bounces from memory to memory as she completes her doctoral work at Stanford in neurology and takes care of her mother. Each memory reveals layer after layer of who Gifty is […]

Brevity Isn’t Everything

We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib

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In We Have Always Been Here, activist, writer, and photographer Samra Habib writes about her emigration from Pakistan to Canada, her relationship with Islam and the persecution her family faced as members of the Ahmadiyya sect, her arranged marriage to her first cousin, and her journey of discovery and acceptance of her queer identity. If that sounds like a lot to cover in 220 pages, that’s because it’s not covered all that much at all. I would have happily spent more time reading about it, […]

These Virtues are Formed in Man by His Doing the Actions

Severance by Ling Ma

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“I couldn’t see myself as a product coordinator forever, coordinating Bibles, shaving razors, Nike sneakers, or whatever, from my desk in New York to various plants across Southeast Asia. Just because you’re adequately good at something doesn’t mean that’s what you should do.” On the surface of it—introverted young woman absorbed by her career struggles to survive a plague-ridden world—this book’s premise isn’t particularly innovative. Turns out it’s all in the execution. This finely crafted novel fully deserves the flotilla of awards it gathered in […]

The snoring, the rain, and Mama’s hair that smells like bread.

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I feel incredibly robbed not to have found this book when I was mid-adolescence, when I would have reveled in empathy with Esperanza, the beautiful, awkward, sad, scared, bold, shy, lonely, social narrator who is coming-of-age through the course of the year during which The House on Mango Street takes place. Cisneros writes this book as an extended series of short vignettes: portraits of people, places, and things in Esperanza’s life; all the things that make up the tapestry of her youth. With these vignettes, […]



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