Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

> FAQ Home
> Tag: essays

Powerful Essays

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House by Audre Lorde

by Leave a Comment

Best for: People interested in some seriously good essays from a poet and activist. In a nutshell: This mini book contains five of Lorde’s essays / speeches on revolution and liberation. Worth quoting: “To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society.” “Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women.” “Can anyone here still afford to believe that the pursuit of liberation can be the sole and particular province of any one particular race, or […]

Musings on nature and a bit of tranquility

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

by 2 Comments

As a fan of Helen Macdonald’s lovely memoir H is for Hawk, I was happy to receive Vesper Flights, a collection of her new and previously published essays, for Christmas. If you have read any of Macdonald’s work, you will know that she is an acutely personal writer, connecting her thoughts about nature to deeper personal feelings, and even modern issues and current events. Vesper Flights comprises 41 individual essays, so if you want to dip your toe into Macdonald’s writing, and maybe generate a […]

“Nobody thought of it as history, herstory, my-story, your-story, or our-story. We were being denied a place to dance together. That’s all. The total charisma of a revolution in our CONSCIOUSNESS rising from the gutter to the gut to the heart and the mind was here. Non-existence (or part existence) was coming into being, and being into becoming. Our Mother Stonewall was giving birth to a new era and we were the midwives.”

The Stonewall Reader by The New York Public Library

by Leave a Comment

This is a book that has immense historical value, but I had a very hard time paying attention to it. Partly, this is due to my own expectations, and partly due to the format. I was expecting a book mostly about the actual events of Stonewall itself, first of all. That’s not really what this is. Only about a third of it focuses on the actual riots, the middle section. The first section focuses on pre-Stonewall writings by queer authors, and the final third does […]

Feminist Think Pieces

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino

by 3 Comments

Bad Feminist Roxane Gay is a writer and academic and Bad Feminist is her 2014 essay collection. The book is divided into a 5 thematic sections, with two very personal sections bookending three less personal sections. The more personal sections focus on Gay’s experiences as a black woman, the sexual assault perpetrated on her as a child, and her issues with mainstream feminism and its rigidity. The less personal sections contain essays with Gay’s reviews/opinions on news and culture, focusing on what this news and […]

Black Feminism Expressed

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Dr. Brittney Cooper

by Leave a Comment

Should be clear from the beginning as Dr. Brittney Cooper is in her book: this is a book written by a black woman for black women. It’s diametric opposite target is a white guy like me. I knew that going in but you should know that as well. That being said, most bestselling books, even non-fiction essay collections, are targeted to white men. But white men can’t teach other white men about Black women, Black feminism, etc. I’ve appreciated Dr. Brittney Cooper’s work from afar, […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo