Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Musings on nature and a bit of tranquility

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

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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

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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

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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

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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, […]

Love what you do, how you do it, and the body you do it in

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown (Editor)

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Woof. I have been reading a lot of really amazing critical work this year and a lot of it has been just for fun. Also, a lot of it makes me feel like my brain is exploding but in a way that feels really really good to me, and I think Adrienne Maree Brown would approve.   Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, by Adrienne Maree Brown, is a collection of essays, interviews, and other writing by Brown as well as a series of […]

Everything Sucks and Here’s Why

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion by Jia Tolentino

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Trick Mirror is a collection of nine essays by millennial writer and cultural critic Jia Tolentino. And these are ESSAYS. At times, I felt like I was reading a succession of a particularly insightful and eloquent student’s final papers. Thoroughly researched and vaguely connected by the theme of the line between introspection and narcissism, the essays examine everything from the ecstasy of the highs brought on by religion and drugs, the wedding industry, rape on college campuses (her alma mater of UVA in particular), her […]



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