Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

slick with sweat, thick with hate-and I love it

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

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Somehow, this incredible little novella flew completely under my radar until last year. Luckily, the folks over at Lit Hub are absolutely obsessed, and I was unable to remain in the dark for much longer. When it’s in a book I don’t think it’ll hurt any more …exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them. While not entirely an “autobiography”, Duras tells the tale of a very young girl who grew up in an unstable household in French-colonized […]

Memoir and misogyny

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I picked up The Woman Warrior (1976) by Maxine Hong Kingston because it was on my list of 50 Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40 and it looked relatively short. I thought it would be good to read while on my backpacking trip. Unfortunately, this book was a little hard to follow at times, so reading on my phone, in my tent, wasn’t the best option. I also discovered that even when my phone is on airplane mode, it apparently knows when my Kindle books need […]

Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people

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I wasn’t actually planning on responding to my previous criticism of books that “rewrite” fairy tales, myths, and legends with a TWIST as boring and banal too much of the time with a review of a book that did it well, but here we are. IF you’re going to rewrite a myth, don’t simply tell the story again, but inscribe that myth onto a new set of contexts and characters to show continuity of the ideas and narrative, not simply put your own spin on […]

A Warrior Armed With Words

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Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (published in 1976) is known for its feminism and for giving voice to the experience of being first generation Asian American. It is an intersectional masterpiece that is part factual memoir and part “talk-story,” i.e., creative storytelling, not just about Hong Kingston’s childhood but also about her female relatives. Through these women, we see the juxtaposition of strength and powerlessness, of warriors and ghosts, of Chinese and Chinese-American. For Hong Kingston, being able to use one’s voice meant being […]



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