Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Native American DNA – Kim TallBear (2013)

Native American DNA by Kim TallBear

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I don’t always feel this way, but I really appreciate how much this book treats its readers as adults. There’s a lot of early work in this book that looks to situate itself and its methods, and in doing so, spends an appropriate and generous amount of time explaining to readers (which I found especially useful as an educated person with no particular experience in these topics and methods) explaining how the methods of anthropology were considered, why they were considered, and what limits and […]

WHAT DID I JUST READ

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

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THIS BOOK IS BONKERS. My husband had so much fun watching me read it, especially when a Part would come up that made me shout “Oh, no!” or give a start at something that had just unfolded. I texted my sister throughout with many exclamations or observations. I noted that this book reminded me a LOT of Jordan Peele’s movies or Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. I’m not a usual fan of horror, but this book compelled me from beginning to end. I’m not going to say […]

Cohesive beauty that’ll knock you off your feet

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

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Joy Harjo a member of the Mvskoke Nation and is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. In An American Sunrise, Harjo skillfully crafts a collection poems that are deeply personal to her own life, highly informative of the Native history and experience, and wonderfully universal in truth and beauty. What I found the most beautiful of the entire collection was Harjo’s ability to weave not just consistent themes throughout the entire collection but her ability to layer details, events, and people throughout the […]

Pivotal but not admirable

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

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I’ve read a lot about how awful Andrew Jackson was, especially the last four years. Jackson owned slaves and believed unequivocally in the “supreme race”. His racism almost certainly fueled his desire to remove Native Americans from their homes and force them away from white settlements. This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for what author Jon Meacham’s hometown newspaper, the Chattanooga Times Free Press call “an unflinching portrait of a not always admirable democrat but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose […]

“The world’s richest people per capita were becoming the world’s most murdered.” (Bingo #6!)

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

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American History is chock full of tales of terrible people doing terrible things protected by terrible governmental structures or terrible public servants. One of the benefits (drawbacks?) of my History degree and work in History museums is that I am not often surprised anymore with how terrible it truly all is, and I’ve got at least a passing familiarity with many of the darker chapters in our history. A few years ago when reviews of Killers of the Flower Moon started showing up on Cannonball […]

“Because, my girl you are sacred, valuable, indispensable, and irreplaceable”

#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women by Lisa Charleyboy, Mary Beth Leatherdale (editors)

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I keep doing reading challenges for a couple reasons, but one of them is that it tends to point out areas that my reading habits need to expand. This year the Read Harder Challenge includes tasks for both YA Non-fiction and to read a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author. I’ve already read one YA Non-fiction this year, but while I was hunting up titles I came across #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women edited by Lisa Charleyboy and […]



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