Cannonball Read 15

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Listening, Feeling, and Acting like an superhero

I Am an Antiracist Superhero: With Activities to Help You Be One Too! by Jennifer Nicole Bacon

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Jennifer Nicole Bacon’s book, I Am an Antiracist Superhero: With Activities to Help You Be One Too! is exactly what you expect of a modern day, antiracist picture book. It is a bit dated as it talks about the protests surrounding George Floyd, but the rest is anytime information. The information included is less about being racist or antiracist, but how you can be a good person or a superhero.  It is about speaking up when you see someone is being picked on or something […]

The Price of the Ticket

The Price of the Ticket by James Baldwin

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

No Name in the Street by James Baldwin

The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin

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The Price of the Ticket This is a big collection of James Baldwin essays and nonfiction from about 40 years or of writing. I tend to be a bigger fan of James Baldwin’s nonfiction more than his fiction in part because I think the poetry of his brain and language elevates his nonfiction in such a big way. In his fiction, it still works, but it’s less powerful for me. Some of the not previously printed highlights include “A Talk With Teachers”  – In this […]

Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone by James Baldwin

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Leo Proudhammer is a lot of things at the beginning of this novel. He’s 39, he’s a famous stage actor, he’s world-traveled, he’s a Black man who grew up in Harlem, and he’s bisexual. He’s also just had a stress induced heart-attack that’s nearly killed him. In his post-attack state, he begins to reflect on his life to this point. He begins by telling about his childhood, where he and his seven-years-older brother looked out for each from their tyrant of a father. There’s the […]

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. […]

No Name in the Street – James Baldwin (1971)

No Name in the Street by James Baldwin

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In reading the two previous essay collections by Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name and Notes of a Native Son, you can feel where Baldwin’s thinking shifts throughout at times from an inner understanding of his own place in society toward a more clear understanding of his role as a writer. After those two books, you get The Fire Next Time, which clearly reads like a full reckoning. This essay collection feels like the fully articulated thoughts of someone so much more secure in his understanding, […]

About Those Kids

The Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin

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When writing about James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates said that Baldwin had the ability to talk through you. What I took that to mean is that Baldwin’s words were such a focused fury, combining intellect and rhetoric that it connected with the reader in a deeper way than most. I felt that somewhat in The Fire Next Time, but I especially feel it in this one, which is almost more personal. Baldwin doesn’t let his foot off the gas for this book-length essay. Drawing on American history, […]



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