Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“You can’t change how other people think and act, but you’re in full control of you.”

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

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4.5 stars ustyce McAllister is a seventeen-year-old with a bright future, thanks to his grades and being lucky enough to have a mother who has worked herself to the bone to send him to the prestigious prep school in Atlanta. Then one evening, when trying to help his extremely drunken ex-girlfriend get home safely (she’s half-black, but looks more like her Norwegian mother than her black dad), he’s detained by a very aggressive cop who’s convinced he was trying to carjack and abduct the girl. […]

God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no water but the fire next time.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

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I’d been looking forward to reading this since I (finally) started reading Baldwin last year. When this became available at the library at the start of Black History Month it seemed serendipitous. That, unfortunately, is where the joy and happy coincidences ended. I’ve wanted to read this since I read Between the World and Me a few years ago. The Fire Next Time served as inspiration to Coates, at least in the format of crafting a letter to a child, Baldwin’s nephew and Coates’ son. […]

It’s Never Been Fair

The Color of Law- A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

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After reading A Promised Land and feeling upbeat, I started The Color of Law because we don’t deserve happiness in 2021. The Color of Law, subtitled A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, sets out to prove, and I think very effectively, that segregation was and is the result of government policy. More simply, the policies are de jure not de facto. It was not the actions of people or institutions acting with prejudice but instead the laws passed, from the national to […]

Dismantle the master’s house.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

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Audre Lorde had no equal, and I’m again disappointed that I never had to read her for any of my literary theory classes in college. She’s a talented writer and a brilliant thinker, well ahead of her time, and reading Sister Outsider was thought-provoking and a bit humbling (for she wrote about things we’re STILL dealing with today–we have so much work to do left). Because this is a collection, Lorde compiles these speeches and essays from a variety of experiences and occasions. Therefore, the […]

Intersections of experience lead to better feminism.

Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis

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I’m really mad I did not read this book in college, because I think it would helped me develop a more well-rounded feminism. Angela Davis does not use the word “intersectionality” here, but she’s clearly angling for it. I also think that this book is vital for feminists/womanists, because it helps us address complex issues that surround equity for all who identify as women. As a former history major, I was glad to see the long (racist) history surrounding women’s suffrage frankly addressed. Until we […]

More work to be done

The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt by Jill Watts

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt by Jill Watts was our Mocha Girls Read book club selection in June. It became a very timely selection after the horrible death of George Floyd, which shone a brighter light on Black Lives Matter activism in America. As a Black woman, I was suffering from emotional exhaustion during that time. This history book actually helped put so many current things in perspective. We have come a long way, […]



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