We’ve all seen the memes: 2020 is canceled, person throws garbage labeled 2020 in a dumpster, etc. So much about 2020 has been so strange, the wildfires, the pandemic, the fact that it took so many people this long to realize what life is like for those of us who are Black and the fact […]
Over the course of my time writing this blog I’ve reviewed a lot of books, many of which center blackness including books that discuss racism as a larger topic and thus also include marginalization on a wider scale. I thought that, seeing as how this is my last post during Black History Month, it would […]
When I told a colleague of mine that I was reading An African American and Latinx History of the United States, they were surprised, because they assumed that an African American history is distinct from a Latinx history, and therefore they should each be afforded their own book. My explanation to this person was the […]
Last Friday night I was invited to participate in what ended up being a great Twitter Chat organized by Black Girls Create to discuss critical fandom as part of their month-long #BlackWizardHistory campaign. I really enjoyed the discussion, but I realized afterward that because it was such a great back and forth, the cohesiveness of the responses I had created got a little lost, and after reading what other people had to say, there is even more that I want to say. So I’ve strung together below an archive of my responses to the questions, with a short paragraph afterwards digging a bit deeper into the experience.
I’ll admit it, I picked up this book because of the title. But beyond being provocative, the ways in which Sollée illuminates the connections between witchcraft, feminism, and sex within Witches, Sluts, Feminists are powerful and incredibly enlightening. I found this book to be an intriguing mix of things I knew, things I didn’t know, […]
Whenever I review a nonfiction book like How to Be an Antiracist I always feel as though I’m in at least a small part also writing an informational and educational essay about the subject of the book, rather than simply reviewing the book itself. In large part that’s because when reviewing a nonfiction book, I’m […]
I’ve been on a bit of a nonfiction kick lately but This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story brought me right back in to remembering why I love YA fiction just as much. There are many epic love stories that are threaded throughout this book, which is representative of so many kinds of love. […]
Critical Race Theory. Of the classes I’m taking this semester it is probably the simplest and the most difficult. I’m undertaking this task of trying to explain this discipline as I understand it because I want to share why I think that this movement and its key writings should be required reading and study for […]
It has been a little over six months since I posted my first book review on this website, I and in that time I have written about fiction, nonfiction, poetry, books I’ve read for fun, books I’ve read for class, and books that fall in between. There have also been several books that I’ve read […]
I have been wanting to read The Hate U Give for over a year now, and I am so glad that I finally got around to doing so. My hesitancy in reading this book was not insignificant. I was assured of its quality, and of that I had no doubt, but I knew that this […]
Considering the fact that Sense8 as a series has already been completed, I am a little late to the game in writing a review of it. That said, I binge watched season one in lieu of reading a book this week, so this is what you get. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I suppose that it would be disingenuous […]
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 […]
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 […]