Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

The Violence Will Be Televised

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

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What I’ve learned from dystopian/speculative fiction books, including this one, is that the revolution may not be televised, but the human rights abuses, the cruelty, the inhumanity, the degradation, and the state-sponsored violence will be streamed to the masses. On its face, Chain-Gang All-Stars is about “Links” of one prison chain-gang versus Links from other chain-gangs from other prisons. Prisoners who “voluntarily” enter the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment (CAPE) program legally murder each other, in packed arenas and on pay-for-view, for the enjoyment of a […]

Locked Down

The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison by Hugh Ryan

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Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: black cover Greenwich Village is perhaps the most beautiful neighborhood in the world’s greatest city. I love walking through it: the winding streets, the townhomes, the cafes and bars, the rich history. It feels like the best the city has to offer. I remember passing by the spot where the Women’s House of Detention was and thinking how beautiful the new building looked. I was curious to see where Mae West had been locked up and assumed when I […]

Bondage

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness by Michelle Alexander

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I feel like I’m the last person in my circle to have not read Michelle Alexander’s landmark work The New Jim Crow. It’s one of those books I’d always meant to get to but never had the chance. I borrowed it from someone in my family over a year ago and since I’m going to see them this weekend, I figured there’s no better excuse than that to finally read it. I’ve heard a lot of arguments adjacent to it in favor of ending the drug war […]

A must read.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

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“We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all […]

“The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.”

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

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I wouldn’t make this your first anti-racism read, but it’s a must-read after you have some basis of the history of Black people and anti-Black racism in America. Two books I read previous to this one were particularly helpful: Stamped from the Beginning, a comprehensive history of anti-Black racism in America (and, by extension, Black history), and Locking Up Our Own, which has an interesting perspective on the War on Drugs, the justice system, and the history of mandatory minimum sentencing. If you just want […]

cbr12bingo – UnCannon

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

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Jordy Rosenberg is a transgender writer and scholar. He teaches 18th century literature and queer/transgender theory. He is clever as all get out, well-researched, funny, and overflowing with empathy- all of these things brought into vivid color in his debut novel, Confessions of the Fox. I’ve selected “UnCannon” for this Bingo Square- but it was close call between UnCannon, Debut, Violet, and Pandemic (plague ships ahoy). I also almost gave it an “I Wish”, because good gravy, do I wish I could sit in on any […]



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