Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

two shorter reviews as I try to get ahead of the queue

The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr

Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot

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The Prophets A recommendation by the delightful Evin, who did indeed tell me to read this many eons before I actually did! If, like me, you found it hard to pick this book up, then perhaps this review is for you. This book is: – not as trauma porn-y as Whitehead at his peak (The Underground Railroad or looking at you, The Nickel Boys) – not a glossing over of America’s worst sin – beautifully written – not easy per se to get through but not a […]

CBR11Bingo: Own Voices

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot

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Terese Marie Mailhot is a First Nation Canadian from Seabird Island. In Heart Berries, she writes about her experience growing up on Seabird Island First Nation reservation (Own Voices) and how writing helped her through hospitalization as an adult due to post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder. It is a beautiful, painful book. “In white culture, forgiveness is synonymous with letting go. In my culture, I believe we carry pain until we can reconcile with it through ceremony. Pain is not framed like […]

She Doesn’t Owe Us Her Story, I’m Glad She Chose to Tell It.

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot

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 I heard an interview with the author of this book just before it was published and knew from that interview I wanted to read this book. I am really glad I did. It is extremely raw and brutal but so powerful and real. Mailhot does not give two shits if you like her or not and thank god she doesn’t because the truth of the story is what makes it amazing. The book is basically a stream of consciousness letter to her white boyfriend, the […]

Her Bloody Heart Tumbled Into My Lap

Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot

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Some books are so unremittingly personal that I am driven to distraction. This collection of achingly intimate essays—not quite chronological, in broken narrative, shifting between past and present tense—are addressed to “you” (me?!), which unnerved my inner WASP. TMI, dear author! Put a tourniquet on this open vein, you’re going to die and stain the carpet. Things are intense from page FOUR: The ugly truth is that I lost my son Isadore in court. The Hague Convention. The ugly of that truth is that I […]

A sin committed; a prayer answered

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This book is absolutely the real deal. This is incredibly strong and beautifully written memoir. And unlike other recent ones I have read, seems to have fully considered and engaged with the memoir, as a form, is, and what the particularly story and writing should encapsulate. This is thoughtful, painful, pained, and completely realized. Mailhot, as you would discover reading this, is a First Nations woman from Canada who married when she was sixteen, had a child early, lost that child to custody hearings (while […]



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