Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Darkwater

Darkwater: Voices from the Veil by W. E. B. Du Bois

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This is commonly listed as an autobiography, and I suppose in most ways it is. It does contain several autobiographical sections in it, but these are interspersed with songs and poems, as well as essays about a variety of topics. This feels to me a lot like The Souls of Black Folks in this way, which has a similar mix of topics, and very much different from Black Reconstruction in America, which is a dedicated history and analysis text. The autobiographical sections are really interesting, […]

The Re-Birth of a Nation (and what came after…)

Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois

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I had been meaning to tackle this legendary W.E.B. Du Bois’ tome for years, finally deciding to do it this month. It wasn’t what I expected, in many ways. Those expectations came with my own ignorance in not knowing a lot of Du Bois’ work. I’d read little of him before getting to this. I knew that despite his status amongst the Black intellectuals and historians of his time, he was outcast near the end of his life for leaving the NAACP because of his […]

The Souls of Black Folks – W.E.B. Du Bois (1903)

The Souls of the Black Folks by W.E.B. Du Bois

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Just one of those books it’s important to reread from time to time. This book is a lot like rereading James Baldwin essays from the 1950s where it’s refreshing to find clear, precise, and relevant articulations of issues still being discussed. It’s also deeply troubling and depressing how many of these issues are still being discussed. Some stray observations: –the history of the Freedman’s Bureau in the early chapters of this book remind us that white supremacy doesn’t just refuse to give up power but […]

Even the greatest of us may be blind

Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington

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Booker T. Washington was born into slavery sometime around 1856. Following emancipation, he and his family moved to West Virginia to be with his mother’s husband, an escaped slave. He taught himself to read, and was able to attend school through perseverance and hard work. Working in coal mines and salt furnaces, he was eventually able to go to Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) for higher education. In 1881, Samuel Armstrong, Hampton Institute president, recommended Washington to be the leader of the new Tuskegee Normal […]

Filling in My Gaps

Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington

Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

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I made it a point earlier this year to try to be better. One of the things I told myself that I would do is read more books by black authors, especially those that I should have already read. I was assigned Should of Black Folk in college. I probably still have my copy on a bookshelf in my house but I doubt that I read it for class. Maybe enough to get by in case I was called on but I didn’t really read […]



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