Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Unspeakable pain, unspeakable loneliness

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

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Decades ago, when I first heard the term “footbinding,” I thought it simply meant that the feet of Chinese girls were wrapped tightly to keep them small and delicate. Then when I learned that there was much more to it than that, I realized it was awful but didn’t give it much more thought. After reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which goes into detail about how girls as young as 5 or 6 were subjected to the practice, I’m truly horrified. If you […]

Connecting a community one sock at a time

Magnolia Wu Unfolds it All by Chanel Miller

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Magnolia Wu is almost ten. She spends a lot of time at her parent’s establishment, the Bing Qi Ling Bubbles Laundromat. Her loneliness leads to lots of creative thinking: on one wall is her bulletin board of lost socks, lone socks left behind by customers. While new friend and California transplant Iris is visiting, a customer xenophobically Karens out on Magnolia’s mom, and Magnolia nearly throws out her sock wall in a fit of anger. But Iris proposes they start the NYC Sock Detective project, […]

Beautiful story of sexual identity awakening and first love

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

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And then she asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?” Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a beautiful glimpse into a moment in time of a sexual identity awareness and first love, amidst the Red Scare of McCarthyism in 1950’s San Francisco.  Sexual feelings awaken for the first time within Lily Hu but everything she has been taught says it […]

Myth, history and culture collide

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Ho Lin’s short story anthology was an interesting read. Each tale aimed to shed light on random moments from varying points of view. He pulls in the reader with unexpected juxtapositions of settings and tone. The collection exudes emotion as if the stories were collective memories meshed together. He rarely delves deep into any specific narratives. The stories bounced between Asia and American even within the same story. We meet an American ex-Pat in China, then a host of characters in San Francisco, while another […]



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