Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Anything But

Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo

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What are we doing—we’re constantly holding up the mediocre white man as the standard and then bending to it at the detriment of good ideas, fairness, and equity. Mediocre is a must read. It was inappropriate to yell “Yes!” after every sentence, but that’s how I felt. In some ways, it’s telling you what you already know, but it’s also explaining how deep the problem really is and also affirming that no, it’s not just you. I remember so clearly arguing with my brother when […]

“White supremacy … is gravity. It is a ceaseless pressure intended to keep blackness ground-bound and sick.”

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young

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Damon Young is a Black Pittsburgh writer who has gotten national attention thanks in part to a blog he co-writes called Very Smart Brothas (now part of The Root). I started following it on social media a few years ago and have found it to be funny, entertaining, informative and a source of sharp social criticism. The local story that really put Damon Young and VSB on my radar had to do with a local white female newscaster who stepped in it with some horribly […]

More Essential Reading

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power by Ijeoma Oluo

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Best for: All the people, but I think white men really need to read and sit with this one. In a nutshell: Author Oluo explores the ways in which the elevation of the mediocrity of white men harms everyone (including white men). Worth quoting: “What I’m saying is that white male mediocrity is a baseline, the dominant narrative, and that everything in our society is centered around preserving white male power regardless of white male skill or talent.” “How can white men be our born […]

You should read this book even though I did not like it

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

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Aster is low-deck woman on the spaceship Matilda. The citizens of Matilda are stratified across racial lines: darker people of color on the lower decks with lighter skinned citizens occupying the upper decks. As you might guess, the lower decks have increased police presence and poor living conditions. The upper decks have more freedom and significantly better quarters and living conditions. Sound familiar? The citizens of Matilda were long ago promised that they were on a journey to a new land, yet that promise seems further and further […]

The Voices of the Ignored

The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History, Immigrants, women, & African Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle by Margaret S. Creighton

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Until I joined a reenactment group about 6 years ago, I’d never had any interest in the Civil War since its most popular focus is white men shooting each other. Now, this isn’t to say that the experiences of the white, male soldiers consumed by the jaws of war aren’t important, it just means I don’t particularly care what Gen. So-&-So did at noon on July 2nd, 1863. And unfortunately, at least at Gettysburg, ninety-nine percent of the focus is what white men did in […]

“Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”

Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

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This was really interesting to read back to back with How to Be an Antiracist; they shed light on each other in weird ways. But they are also two very different books! My main takeaway from Caste is that Isabel Wilkerson is a great writer. I’m set to read her first book next month, and I’m now looking forward to it even more. She employs metaphor and other literary techniques in a way that you don’t normally see from non-fiction writers. It brings a depth […]



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