Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

We, Ourselves, and Us

Namesake by N. S. Nuseibeh

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It’s sometimes a strange feeling to live overseas. No matter how settled you feel, how well you feel you’ve gotten under the skin of where you are, there are always voices whispering how you’re not of that place. These whispers talk of ancestral roots and ideas of home that Nuseibeh constructs into a series of essays linking to the fierce Islamic warrior, Nusaybah.   Nuseibeh explores her own identity as much as the near mythical figure of Nusaybah.  Navigating multiple identities, a woman, a secular […]

“We haunt them. They want to kill us but we will not die.”

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

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After years away from Palestine, actress Sonia returns to visit her sister and takes a role in a West Bank performance of Hamlet, where she must grapple with her delicate relationship with her homeland. I’ve never read a book set in Palestine, which is why I requested this book on NetGalley. This book came out in 2023, but the intervening years have only made it more important to read. Hammad does an excellent job of capturing both Sonia’s alienation from and longing for Palestine and […]

A Kids Book About Israel & Palestine

A Kids Book About Israel & Palestine by Reza Aslan

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I bought this for the children’s room I work in. And then I read it, because I am very much an “explain it to me like I’m six years old” person. The book very simply lays out the facts that led to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have been fairly outspoken about Palestinian rights, and most of my Jewish friends have been too, but I have some who stand up for Israel and I am trying to understand why. I don’t know that the book sold […]

Three-Four-One

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Despite the backlash due to Coates’ writing and speeches on his time in Palestine, there are really three narratives in this travelogue. The Palestine one is the third one and it’s the one I’m going to spend as little time as possible on because I don’t want this page to be a forum on what’s happening there right now. I actually think the best essay here is the first one, where Coates finds himself in Dakar, Senegal. He has written at length about the rejection […]

Godwin’s Law Doesn’t Apply

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There is likely no rule in internet debate as well known as Godwin’s Law. The semi-satirical law coined in 1990 by author/attorney Mike Godwin states (essentially) that the invoking of Hitler or the Nazis by any participant in a debate causes the participant doing so to lose the debate. Godwin’s Law is not without its detractors: Kevin Drum of Mother Jones and liberal firebrand Glenn Greenwald have each argued for its repeal, noting rightly that since WWII analogies are so universally known they can be […]



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