Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown

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I am starting this review of The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown with this statement: Brown has an agenda with this book, but that is not a bad thing.  It is a complicate book with a complicated theme, yet also, straight forward.  I will add, I have rewritten this review too many times. I was well over 600 words at one point. This book was upsetting, enlightening and a not an all together unpleasant journey, but not one for just anyone. […]

And to think, when I was her age, I was learning to ride a bike

My Name is Bana by Bana Alabed

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My Name is Bana is not a memoir, but it is the story of Bana Alabed. She was a young girl who saw that things were not right in her war-torn homeland of Syria. And she stood up and did what modern kids did. She Tweeted. This is not that story. This is a story about Bana and how she is as strong as the tree she is named for. Bana’s mother tells her how the Bana tree grows strong. And how it is strong […]

I have a secret I want to share

Nour’s Secret Library by Wafa’ Tarnowska

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Nour’s Secret Library is a book that is about the power of books, the power of one person, the power of a community and how we can learn from each other instead of fighting. The emotional and chaotic images by Vali Mintzi show the ugly of war but also the hope people can find when looking. Wafa’ Tarnowska took a true event (children of Syria finding books and making a hidden library for anyone who wished to partake of books of many languages and subjects, […]

Poetic Migrant Journey

A Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar

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Joukhadar’s novel follows twin stories in alternate timelines, one set in recent Syria and North Africa during Islamic State and another set in the same are during the 1300s. Both stories feature girls who pose as boys, allowing them to do things that would otherwise be prohibited or unsafe for women. Nour is our present day heroine, and she has returned to Syria with her mother and two older sisters following her father’s death from cancer in New York City. Although Nour was born in […]

“Every day that year, on average, 42,500 people became refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced, a fourfold increase in just four years.”

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When I didn’t manage to read a book I had selected for 2017’s Read Harder Challenge I left the library request in as these were books that I had put onto the list for several reasons. Following ElCicco’s detailed and extensive review of A Hope More Powerful than the Sea I knew I needed to read this book in order to bear witness to one woman’s experience as a refugee from the Syrian war as it is one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of my […]

Nevertheless, She Persisted

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…[R]efugees would not risk their lives on such a dangerous journey if they could thrive where they were. ~Melissa Fleming, office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Too many people in the West, particularly in the US, seem to think that refugees are moochers who want to selfishly come here to get something for nothing. We have little to no idea how refugees become refugees, and more tragically, we often just don’t give a damn. It’s not our problem, right? “If these people would […]



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