Racism

Get Out

The Expendable Man by Dorothy Hughes

January 10, 2019 by Jake Leave a Comment

I need a valium after reading this. I’ve written in this space before and in other places about my concern when white authors write from the perspective of non-white characters. Obviously, people writing trans-racially is not uncommon, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. Many great works of literature would be lost without folks doing this. And yet, considering the strong power dynamics of white supremacy in the United States (and frankly, the globe), a more natural distance separates colonizer from the colonized, no matter how well intentioned. Fortunately for the reader, Dorothy Hughes is keenly aware of the power […]

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1/10/2019 | Jake's CBR11 Review No:4 |

Welcome to the modern world

Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed--and Why It Still Matters by Andrew Gumbel & Roger G Charles

December 15, 2018 by ingres77 Leave a Comment

I was in the sixth grade when the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. I was a little too young to be fully aware of Waco, Ruby Ridge, or the first World Trade Center attack, and, as an army brat, while the first Gulf War affected my family personally, I only really saw it as something that might take my father from me. So the 1995 terrorist attack was the first real event that captured my interest – and not least because I grew up in Oklahoma. But the intervening 23 years has left this event […]

12/15/2018 ingres77's CBR10 Review No:44 |

#CBR10Bingo: Home, Something, Home (double Bingo!)

Tante Ulrikkes vei by Zeshan Shakar

November 21, 2018 by Malin Leave a Comment

#CBR10Bingo: Home, Something, Home (this book is set at Stovner in Oslo, three stops away from where I live on the metro. It also concerns exactly the sort of pupils that I teach.) Two youths, both living in the same tower block in a suburb on the east side of Oslo, in Stovner (where the large majority of inhabitants are immigrants or the children of immigrants). They start out going to the same high school. Starting in the year 2000, the framing device consists of these two teenagers, later young men, being asked to take part in a social studies survey, […]

11/21/2018 Malin's CBR10 Review No:99 |

#CBR10Bingo: Fahrenheit 451 – The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

October 29, 2018 by Malin Leave a Comment

#CBR10Bingo: Fahrenheit 451 (one of the ten most banned or challenged books in 2017) Starr feels like she’s living two lives, and in a way she is. She goes to a prestigious private school along with her siblings, where they are among the only black students. She has a white boyfriend, who calls her “Fresh Princess”, thinking she’s a bit like Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. She lives in a poor and rough neighbourhood, where drug dealing and gun violence isn’t unusual. Her black friends wonder if she thinks she’s too good for them. Starr’s father spent much […]

10/29/2018 Malin's CBR10 Review No:92 |

Racism is Racism, No Matter What Time Period

The Secret River by Kate Grenville

October 29, 2018 by Ale Leave a Comment

Last summer I helped my boss chaperone his student study-abroad trip to Australia, and the class read this book on the plane going over. I was far more enticed with Air New Zealand’s extensive on-flight entertainment package, and so I spent my plane ride in the iron-a** challenge watching all six (extended) Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films instead. Since returning, my boss has been passively placing The Secret River in obvious places on my desk, which I’ve learned is his silent way of saying it’s a book I really need to read. He’s adorable, my boss. Bingo seemed […]

10/29/2018 Ale's CBR10 Review No:23 |

I’ve been waiting for this moment for Cannonball my life, oh Lord

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

September 8, 2018 by dAvid 17 Comments

CBR10Bingo: Backlog (Cannonball! and Bingo! Woohoo!) After reading a few Sherman Alexie books a few years ago, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony started popping up in my suggestions, and for some reason, I thought it was poetry rather than a novel. Once I read the description, I put it on my wishlist, where it languished for several months until I finally bought a copy last summer at The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles on a long lunch break from jury duty. I’ve pulled it off my bookshelf a few times when looking for my next read but never quite pulled […]

9/8/2018 dAvid's CBR10 Review No:52 |

Every time I laugh I know that I am laughing into the darkness

The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah

July 31, 2018 by dAvid 1 Comment

Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory is a remarkable and taut exploration of prejudice, history, and of course, memory. The book’s narrator and namesake, Memory, is an albino woman on death row in a Zimbabwean prison who is encouraged by her new lawyer to write her story for an American journalist who may be able to help win her freedom. Memory writes of the stark everyday life in prison and of the circumstances that have brought her there. But to fully explain, she must begin with what she remembers of her own history, centered around one pivotal, traumatic event: her […]

7/31/2018 dAvid's CBR10 Review No:39 |

I don’t want to review this book

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

June 29, 2018 by dAvid 4 Comments

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee’s novel following multiple generations of a Korean family through most of the 20th Century, has received a lot of positive attention: finalist for the National Book Award, 10 best books of 2017 for the New York Times Book Review, Roxane Gay’s favorite book of the year (according to the Washington Post). And from what I’ve seen, the reviews here at CBR have been universally positive. So I’m at a bit of a loss, because I really didn’t enjoy it. At all. I was bored, and it took me forever to slog through it. Yet I also […]

6/29/2018 dAvid's CBR10 Review No:34 |

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...