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Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

November 9, 2022

carlotta

Carlotta has had a time of it. She was sent to prison for 23 years because she was holding a gun nearby when someone was murdered. Worse, when she got there, she was a young man who knew he was meant to be a woman. Something the state had no interest in hearing and something that brought her a world of misery because they would not transfer her to a women’s prison. Now, she’s ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary fiction, contemporary life, literary, social issues

NSFW: A Novel

September 9, 2022

nsfw

I recently read NSFW a debut from Isabel Kaplan and I’m fairly certain my visceral reaction to the novel is a response becoming more and more common to me and to many of the women I know given recent events in America. Which is to say, I found the novel to be triggering in a way that I would not have felt so strongly in the past. NSFW’s narrator is unnamed—an interesting and ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, debut, new adult, social issues, women

Nightcrawling: A Novel

August 22, 2022

nightcrawling

At a time when most teenage girls are busy with dating, hanging out with friends, and choosing colleges, 17-year-old Kiara is facing a rent increase that is likely to render her homeless. She lives in a rundown East Oakland apartment with her older brother Marcus. Their father is dead and their mother is in prison. This is the world explored in Leila Mottley’s gritty debut ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, debut, social issues, teen years

The Woman They Could Not Silence

January 21, 2022

silence

The general consensus among people who know me is I don’t need more reading that could make me angry. This might be true, but as history is written by the victors and the victors for centuries have been men we all need to read nonfiction that challenges the prevailing history. This was the case when I read The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore. I thought my head was ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: book clubs, history, social issues, women

Unbound by Tarana Burke

September 17, 2021

unbound

It’s likely you don’t know who Tarana Burke is, but almost impossible you’ve never seen the words that became the hashtag that defined one of the biggest social justice movements in American history. #MeToo appeared in 2019, attached to serial sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein. I heard it, read it, used it, but had no idea where it came from. Now, thanks to her memoir, ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: memoir, racism, social issues, women

Dear Miss Metropolitan

July 6, 2021

dear miss

I was a prisoner for so, so long. Years. How was that humanly possible? Why didn’t anyone find me? How had my page been torn out the book for so long?   Sometimes, when I finish a book, the review flies right out of my mind onto the page. Then there are the books that need to marinate, where putting words and thoughts together cohesively takes more time. This is where ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: crime, debut, literary, social issues

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