When I told my therapist that I was reading this book and what it was about she was thrilled because, according to her, I needed to adjust my own attitude toward death. Suffice to say Let’s Talk About Death Over Dinner certainly succeeded in this purpose. Despite the universal truth that we are all going […]
When I first picked up what became my copy of Landwhale, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. To my own shame, I did not know very much about the body positivity movement, and I’d never even heard of Jes Baker. All the same, I’ve made a commitment to myself to read broadly and engage […]
THIS is the book review that I’ve been excited to write for weeks. Not just because the author is one of my favorite professors (hi Steve!) but also because My Ex-Life is a genuinely fantastic book. I stumbled across it while waiting for my fiancée at one of our favorite book shops and just from […]
I usually try to start off these reviews by relating to the text in question, but the fact of the matter is that as a cis person I can never fully understand the experience of being trans, just as a white person could never fully understand my experience of being mixed. Marginalized identities are not […]
“Lady, my one regret / is that we don’t have appetite enough / to make you break every damned plate inside this room.” As a person of color, I am undeniably drawn to works that discuss race in a way that does not skim over the harsh realities that we face every day. As someone […]
I have to admit that I chose to read this novel almost entirely because of how entranced I was by both the title and the cover. The idea that anyone could have seven husbands seemed foreign to me, at least until I encountered the character of Evelyn Hugo. The story starts not with Evelyn, but […]
The world is fraught with racial tension, and has been for a long time now. Having meaningful discussions about race is important because they are the first step towards creating real and positive change. Unfortunately, many people struggle with finding the language needed to communicate with one another, which is why I consider So you […]
I will freely admit that romance novels are not typically to my taste. I don’t like romcoms, and my least favorite part of any book or movie is almost definitely the romantic subplot. That said, the often heteronormative plot of the majority of romances is what least appeals to me, not the concept of romance […]
From the first line about Monday mornings and having an existential crisis I just knew that I was going to love Noteworthy by Riley Redgate. The premise of what is now my new favorite YA novel is that Jordan Sun, a student at the fictional Kensington-Blaine Boarding School for the Performing Arts, has been rejected […]
Like many black girls in 2012, I loved the video Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls, posted on the channel Chesaleigh. It was funny and on point, and to be honest I forgot about it within a year or so, too busy living my own life to pay much attention to the internet. Meanwhile Franchesca […]
Note 12/13/2018: I recently emerged from my finals frenzy to start engaging with the news again and am greatly disturbed by the allegations made against the author of this book, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I absolutely #believesurvivors, and I want to make it clear that I do not want to support those who engage in sexual […]
As with many of my interests these days, I first came across Trevor Noah via YouTube. More precisely, through a YouTube video embedded in a New York Times video. Upon watching the video I laughed more than I had in a long time. The fact of the matter is that I don’t remember which video […]
I first encountered the figure of Circe at the age of nine as I worked on a project detailing Greek and Roman myth. At the time, she was just another mythological entity, but thirteen years later she has blossomed into being for me through Madeline Miller’s Circe. I had never thought to wonder what Circe’s […]
This is the GIF I sent to my group chat as soon as I finished reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: Half of the tears were because of the story itself, but the other half were for the fact that I went a whole six years of my life without having read this […]