Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad is sitting atop the NYT bestsellers chart and is an Oprah pick. It is an amazing novel about race, injustice and the American way. The story of a slave named Cora’s quest for freedom from slavery is also the story of America’s racism throughout history. Whitehead imagines a mid-nineteenth century America where the Underground Railroad was an actual physical railroad existing beneath the earth. As Cora’s first station master says, If you want to see what this nation is all […]
Couldn’t the whole book have been about the Monkey King?
Fair warning, all. Over the next week or so (I can’t imagine it’s going to take me that much longer), I aim to read ALL the comic book trades and/or graphic novels that the husband and I own, and that I haven’t gotten round to reading. Actually, in all honesty, it’s not all of them, we have a ton of Hellblazer and Jack Kirby comics and all manner of things my husband owns that I have little to NO interest in, but there are 18 books […]
I Need To Talk About This With Someone
I originally posted a different review of this book. Two days after finishing it I’m still trying to gather my thoughts into a coherent commentary. This book includes two separate letters – one to Mr. Baldwin’s nephew. That letter is quite short. The second letter takes up the vast majority of the book, and tells stories of Mr. Baldwin’s experiences in Harlem, in the church, and meeting with the leader of the National of Islam. A book I read a couple of weeks ago, “Between […]
A Study of Grief and Dysfunction
Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. At first glance, Everything I Never Told You looks like a classic thriller. There’s a missing girl, a family with secrets, a lake, and a bad boy who knows more than he’s willing to say. It’s easy to think it’s a familiar story about catching a killer. That’s the first curve ball author Celeste Ng throws at you, but not the last. It turns out discovering who killed Lydia (and did anyone actually kill Lydia?) is […]