I enjoyed Mackin's realistic take on the war in Afghanistan and his pushback against Afghani women needing to be rescued by Western men. It is a really refreshing, if fever dream, look at America's War on Terror from an experienced vet.

It's not bad, but I am tired of hearing from the War on Terror from American men.

Hassan Blasim's world is one of explosive violence, unspeakable tragedy and moral ambiguity. This brief collection of short stories draws on a legacy of Arabic storytelling and asks the reader to critique the language which we use to describe and make sense of violence.

Alluding to Mary Shelly's Gothic masterpiece, Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad strives to reimagine how the monster would act in modern day Iraq. Along the way, there are not so subtle critiques of the media, the Iraqi police force, the American occupation and organized religion. While it is meant to be light, dry humor, I still found the description of women as sex objects to be somewhat demoralizing. Outside of the cringey fake romance scenes, this was a hell of a ride!

With more plot twists than an old fashioned pretzel, Victor LaValle's latest masterpiece is a journey to Mid Western America that you'll never forget. High in the frontier-lands of Montana, a mysterious Black woman, Adelaide, arrives with a fancy steamer. As she learns more about the town, deep, dark truths begin to appear. In this thriller, no woman is what she seems.a thoroughly enjoyable read.

I found the Magistrate's obsession with young women to be particularly disturbing

Through unedited interviews with Black feminist leaders of the past and present, Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor provides a moving illustrative history of Black feminist thought in the United States, particularly from the 1970s onwards.

I got so bored during the first quarter of the book and then the rest was totally bonkers.

This is my first bell hooks. I loved her writing style! It was so accessible and welcoming. This book made me feel hopeful.

Amazing amazing concepts, really clear writing, strong characters. The book starts off so simply but with each section becomes more and more complicated, getting closer and closer to the protagonist. I like how the protagonist becomes more explicit and three-dimensional as the book continues, how Kang keeps referring to a central moment in the book but examines it from a different perspective each time. Kind of like Six Degrees of Separation in that respect.