books about culture – Equal Opportunity Reader

[REVIEW] Can You Sign My Tentacle? by Brandon O’Brien

A Black woman's (my) hand holds the paperback of Can You Sign My Tentacle up in front of a fancy hotel elevator. The cover depicts an elder God, half human half writhing tentacles, eyes fathomless, purple dreadlocks poppin', holding a sharpie marker in one outstretched, ageless hand.

(Buy this book.) The author of this speculative poetry collection is from Trinidad and Tobago. I’ve never been there, but I imagine that being islands, there are beaches there, with waves that flow across the sand and lap against the rocks in the same way that these poems flow across your eyes and lap againstContinue reading “[REVIEW] Can You Sign My Tentacle? by Brandon O’Brien”

[REVIEW] A Woman Is No Man, by Etaf Rum

A photo of the paperback classic edition of A Woman Is No Man. The cover is black and red and depicts the a silhouetted hand dropping a book into another hand.

(Buy this book here.) This book is all about lovelessness, and I wasn’t really ready for it. When Isra is 17, a man from New York comes to Palestine to marry her. She has hopes, dreams, and an overwhelming desire to be loved, but when she returns to the US with her husband her innerContinue reading “[REVIEW] A Woman Is No Man, by Etaf Rum”

[REVIEW] Fledgling, by Octavia Butler

(Buy this book here.) *Content warning* Not every written word ages well. Every author has something in their catalog that gives readers of the future the ick. Sometimes it’s the whole catalog. If they’re lucky, it’s just one book or part of a book. Octavia Butler got lucky. Fledgling has been called Butler’s vampire novel,Continue reading “[REVIEW] Fledgling, by Octavia Butler”

[REVIEW] Decolonization: A Very Short Introduction, by Dane Kennedy

A Kindle ebook displaying the text-only cover of Decolonization:A Very Short Introduction is on a white faux-marble table, propped up on the edge of a small gray platter of Thanksgiving food.

(Click to buy it on Bookshop.) How’s this for seasonal reading? I’ve done a little bit of work around the subject of decolonization. I’ve contributed to papers, taught class units, and read a lot of writing from Africa, Asia and Indigenous Oceania on the subject. Yet it never really dawned on me that the academicContinue reading “[REVIEW] Decolonization: A Very Short Introduction, by Dane Kennedy”

[REVIEW] White Ivy, by Susie Yang

A Black woman's hand holds the ebook of White Ivy up in front of a little island cottage in New England. The cover depicts an Asian woman with her arms wrapped around herself on a black background. The top half of her face is not in the picture.

(Buy it on Bookshop here.) I moved to Boston recently, and as a result I’ve been slurping up books set there. Most of them are not diverse, to put it mildly. White Ivy, a book about a Chinese-American immigrant in the city, was a refreshing surprise. There are a lot of reviews of this byContinue reading “[REVIEW] White Ivy, by Susie Yang”

[REVIEW] Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest To Buy Black In America’s Racially Divided Economy, by Maggie Anderson

(Buy it on Bookshop here. Or not.) To cut right to the chase, this book really pissed me off. On its face, it’s a real life account of an affluent, educated Black family in Chicago who decided to spend all of 2009 buying from only Black businesses in order to demonstrate the ethnic disparities inContinue reading “[REVIEW] Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest To Buy Black In America’s Racially Divided Economy, by Maggie Anderson”

[REVIEW] Homey Don’t Play That!: The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution, by David Peisner

Tablet displaying colorful cover for the book Homey Don't Play That. The tablet is lying on a red blanket, surrounded by multicolored balls of yarn.

(Buy it HERE.) I’m often grateful that I came of age during the 90s. While I didn’t have the easiest of childhoods (who did?) there was something magical about the Black cultural renaissance happening in that decade. Hip-hop, neo-soul, comedy, tv shows, literature, films–there was something special happening then and I’m glad it was theContinue reading “[REVIEW] Homey Don’t Play That!: The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution, by David Peisner”

[REVIEW]Jews, Confucians and Protestants: Cultural Capital and the End of Multiculturalism, by Lawrence E Harrison

(I can’t imagine why you’d want to, but find this HERE) (This is a slightly-edited form of a review originally posted in 2014 on Goodreads. Were I to write this now, it would be better organized, but even more scathing.) It’s taken me a long time to write a review of this, because I’m tryingContinue reading “[REVIEW]Jews, Confucians and Protestants: Cultural Capital and the End of Multiculturalism, by Lawrence E Harrison”

[REVIEW] Black Indian, by Shonda Buchanan

(Find it HERE.) Why don’t I like this book? ⠀⠀ I really wanted to. It’s a memoir of the author’s multiracial family, who were coded Black by American caste norms but felt culturally closer to their Choctaw and Coharie Indigenous ancestors who purchased and integrated African slaves, then expelled their mixed descendants in a bidContinue reading “[REVIEW] Black Indian, by Shonda Buchanan”

[REVIEW] Too Many Tamales, by Gary Soto, illustrated by Ed Martinez

(Buy it HERE.) **This book is also available in Spanish as ¡Qué montón de tamales! Thing I said approximately 337 times while reading this book: Awwww, my HEART! 🎄⠀Christmas is a great time to create, remember and celebrate childhood memories and this beautifully illustrated picture book is great for all three. Little Maria is feelingContinue reading “[REVIEW] Too Many Tamales, by Gary Soto, illustrated by Ed Martinez”