Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Let It Burn…Wanna Let It Burn…

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

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Steph Cha has a hell of a tightrope to walk with this one. A fictional retelling of the murder of Latasha Harlins, she breaks down the impact of it between both families impacted: the black family that mourned her and the Korean family that produced her killer. Writing black characters, specifically in a context such as this, is a tall task for a non-black writer. But Cha is successful. She navigates this with a less-is-more approach, focusing on how grief and racial trauma impact both […]

A Good Starting Point

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

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Let me start by saying there is a reason why this title is on often near the top of many lists for anyone but especially white people who want to educate themselves on racism and racial inequality especially in the US. The author is up front about her being white herself, in fact she repeats that every so often throughout the book, often in order to point out that a lot of the things she has to say sound a little better to most other […]

White Like Me

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard For White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

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Warning: I’m a white guy reviewing this from my perspective. Totally understand if you want to skip this review or call me out on my crap. If you have ever taken, and internalized, seminars and/or courses on racism, specifically addressing white supremacy, much of this will be familiar. But that’s not to say you shouldn’t read it. Robin DiAngelo does a great job breaking down the substance of what makes white people so angry when it comes to addressing racism, while talking about how harmful […]

Thinking On It

How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

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This isn’t going to be a conventional review because it’s a book I’m going to be processing for a while. Some background info: I’m a cishet white guy. Aside from economics, I’m at the top of any privilege chart (and being middle class in the States, I’m pretty high up there too). I’ve done some reading, most of it theologically based, on racism, antiracism, and specifically the black experience in the States. I’m maybe more well versed than most people who share my skin color. […]

Kind of wondering what Queenie would think of current events?

Queenie by Candace Carty-Williams

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Official book description: Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle-class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to […]

An excellent adaptation of a classic novel

Kindred by Octavia Butler

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Some stories hit you harder than others. Reading this graphic novel, shortly after watching the film Harriet, struck like a thunderbolt. Some people, mostly belonging to a certain political party, have attempted to make slavery seem not so bad. Which is why works like Kindred are so important. In Kindred, Dana, a young black woman, married to a white man in 1976, finds herself transported back the mid 1800s to save a white ancestor of hers. She bounces back and forth between the time periods […]



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