Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It Is the Innocence Which Constitutes the Crime

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

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This book consists of two letters, one that is addressed to Baldwin’s nephew on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and a longer one that he calls ‘A Letter from a Region in My Mind’. They concern themselves with the history and the state of race relations in the US in the 1960s, both from a very personal and a more general perspective. I put this on my TBR when I read an article in my local newspaper earlier this year, in which they […]

Can You See Me America?

I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin

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I heard about the movie, but had no idea there was a companion book to it.   “In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck’s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America.” The writing, essays, the photos that […]

A Harlem Love Story

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

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I’d never read any Baldwin before, but he kept coming up in conversations, books, and of course, movies.  I took it as a sign that it was time to read some James Baldwin, and I thought I’d start with If Beale Street Could Talk, just to get to it before the movie, which looks great. First, in case there was any doubt: Baldwin can write.  The construction of the narrative, the careful plotting, the realistic dialogue, the direct but poignant tone.  It was just … […]

Perfect

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

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If Beale Street Could Talk is sublime. For those who saw the movie, not everything in the novel stays the same, there are some scenes that I assume were cut for time. I thought that the way this ended was pretty perfect though.             This book is told from the POV of 18 year old Tish. She is dealing with the effects of her fiancee Fonny being locked up after he was accused of rape. You think that this would […]

But I don’t care how many times you change your ways, what’s in you is in you, and it’s got to come out

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CBR10Bingo: White Whale I know why this book sat on my shelf for so long. I read Giovanni’s Room several years ago, and while I loved James Baldwin’s writing, I really did not care for the story, particularly the way it ended. I’ve picked up Go Tell It on the Mountain several times when looking for my next read, and each time, I put it away, never quite in the right mood for this book that felt too heavy with expectation and history, like a […]

It’s not possible to forget anybody you’ve destroyed.

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This novel came out in 1962 and deals with various love….triangles, quadrangles, quintangles…the entire sexual framework of the USA as it deals with bisexuality, homosexuality, heterosexuality, and queerness in general. It also deals with those same issues as they relate to race, black and white identity, Americanness, African-Americanness, and even Frenchness/French Colonialness. All of this leads to an earnest and devastating novel that bloodied and beautiful mix of pain, sadness, love, sexual energy, and violence. There’s some parallels and similarities to a few other writers […]



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