Race – Cannonball Read 11

Mirrors that don’t reflect reality

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

December 29, 2018 by teresaelectro 3 Comments

I received Boy, Snow, Bird from an earlier CBR book exchange, but it had been collecting dust for a few years. I finally had a reason to pick it back up when my Mocha Girls Read book club selected it for a fairytale’s retold theme. Helen Oyeyemi’s novel is a VERY loose version of Snow White set in the 1950s. Boy Novak runs away to a small town to escape her abusive father. She meets a man named Arturo who isn’t quite a prince, but he adores her. After sort of wearing her down and her own loneliness, she marries him […]

12/29/2018 teresaelectro's CBR10 Review No:14 |

Have you found your color?

Honeysmoke by Monique Fields

December 28, 2018 by BlackRaven Leave a Comment

Honeysmoke brings up an interesting question: If you mother and father are two different colors, what is your color? Simone wants her own color. She is not black or white or peanut butter or any other color. Her friends and parents try to help her, but Simone is determined to give a name to what color she is. The how she comes up with her color is pretty special; just like she is. It shows that she is a little bit her mom, dad and herself. Monique Fields works in many areas (on air, print and online) promoting race and […]

12/28/2018 BlackRaven's CBR10 Review No:488 |

My favorite book of 2018

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

December 4, 2018 by dAvid 2 Comments

It’s official: I have the yips. I finished reading this book three weeks ago, but every time I’ve tried to write a review, I freeze, not because I have nothing to say but because I can’t seem to calm my mind enough to write the review this book deserves. For you see: Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is my favorite book of the year. Chee shares essays about his life and writing career, keeping the subjects separate at first, then integrating them more and more as the book progresses. He writes about a summer exchange program in […]

12/4/2018 dAvid's CBR10 Review No:64 |

It’s a thin line

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons

August 4, 2018 by dAvid Leave a Comment

CBR10BINGO: Under Represented This past weekend, I went to a family wedding where my first cousin’s daughter was one of the brides. I have a complicated relationship with most of my family, but the one person with whom I’ve always felt closest is this cousin. I was able to go a day early and got to spend some extra time with just her and her husband. The subject of birthdays came up, with mine just a few days away, and I told her that I’ve never paid much attention to them until the last few years as I approach the […]

8/4/2018 dAvid's CBR10 Review No:42 |

One little Mix up….or was it?

Mixed: A Colorful Story by Arree Chun

July 26, 2018 by BlackRaven Leave a Comment

In the beginning the three colors Reds, Yellows and Blues lived in Harmony. That is, until one day a Red says, “Reds are better!” Of course, Blues and Yellows will not stand for that and the three colors each make their own section of the city. That is until the day that two of the colors find themselves feeling good when they are with the other one. Of course, many did not like the colors mixing, but soon Yellow and Blue make a new color and the other Colors realize, hey maybe we can make other colors, too! Mixed: A […]

7/26/2018 BlackRaven's CBR10 Review No:278 |

The end of the Joe Dillard series

Due Process (Joe Dillard Series Book 9) by Scott Pratt

July 2, 2018 by kfishgirl Leave a Comment

So this is the last book of the Joe Dillard series. I’m torn about it, because it covers two very important topics. It tackles race in the South, including false accusations against black men, the Klan, and racism by police. I feel like this topic is covered well, but I’m white, live in the North, and have never had to deal with racism directed at myself (due to being white). The other topic is sexual assault. Here’s where things get sticky. I know that every time there’s a false accusation of rape (or someone falsely accused of rape), it makes […]

7/2/2018 kfishgirl's CBR10 Review No:33 |

A Short History of White Women’s Complicity

Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae

April 29, 2018 by ElCicco 2 Comments

In Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy, historian Elizabeth Gillespie McRae makes a strong argument for white women’s vital role in protecting and perpetuating white supremacy and thwarting integration in the US. One hundred years ago, woman began to organize in ways that we would recognize from today’s resistance movements. They developed grassroots campaigns reaching out to other women and encouraging them to organize, to write letters, to publish, to speak up and to vote. They did this, however, in the name of Jim Crow, as a way to shore up white power in […]

4/29/2018 ElCicco's CBR10 Review No:17 |

“These are the frail, imperfect ways of ordinary human beings in the teeth of a great epidemic”

Three-Letter Plague: A young man’s Journey through a Great Epidemic by Jonny Steinberg

March 9, 2018 by dAvid Leave a Comment

I finished reading this book a week ago today, and I’m still not sure how to write about it. I found it deeply moving, but it may still be too soon to put my thoughts and feelings into words, and anything I write here can only scratch the surface. Jonny Steinberg has packed so much into the 326 pages of Three-Letter Plague (published in the U.S. under the title Sizwe’s Test). He writes about his own literal and figurative journey to try to learn how Médecins Sans Frontières had introduced HIV testing and anti-retroviral medications to one of the poorest, […]

3/9/2018 dAvid's CBR10 Review No:12 |

badkittyuno on “[We’ll] never know how much of this book the squirrel wrote.”—Mindy KalingWanna borrow! Plano has it but the wait list is lonnnngggg
badkittyuno on “She did not like being a public person. She was happiest in her garden, at her country home.”" her grandfather invented Listerine and her father invented halitosis to market it" I don't need to read the book because it could not beat...
bronte1848 on Quick Charming Read to Start the YearIt is something some of the schools in the district I teach in are doing. You start with a survey that places you on a...
tillie on What a weird little bookOh I just did a book haul and considered this...it'll go to the top of the list for next haul!
Jen K on 12th Century Boss LadyI love Henry II. They are super long, but Sharon Kay Penman has a trilogy that starts When the Saints Slept that gets very detailed...