bahareads's reviews
1071 reviews

Nathan Connolly explores the more durable world that held and harden under the feet of marchers and rioters as Jim Crown died and segregated. The point of the book is to see the shared assumptions between how real estate and white supremacy nurtured in their subjects, regardless of skin colour or class. He focuses on the political and commercial transactions that inspired events like concrete parks.

"Order meant, among other things, protecting white commercial interests under the banners of capitalism, democracy, and modernity."

Connolly argues that Americans, immigrants and indigenous made investments in racial apartheid that helped govern growing cities and unleash the value of land as real estate. He says Black and White landlords worked together to bind real estate to structural racism and white supremacy to political power.

Overall it was a fascinating book.

In the most recent preface, Knight writes that The Caribbean focuses on social and economic factors to tell the story of Caribbean. He moves away from political history and telling the story of national heroes or great men. He also does not focus on specific dates to tell his story.

I only recently became familiar with Franklin Knight’s work, and I was pleasantly surprised by The Caribbean. His writing style was quite enjoyable. He does a great work of incorporating other prominent scholars on the Caribbean and primary source material into his narrative. While Knight covers the entire Caribbean, a hard task, he tends to focus his narrative heavily on the Anglo Caribbean then the Spanish and French Caribbean. The Dutch Caribbean is mentioned from time to time, but it is more neglected in the narrative. Particularly when Knight mentions statistics, he focuses on Anglo-Caribbean.

I did not totally buy into his idea of the two major social groups in chapter four. The separation between Maroon and Pirates as one group, and everyone else as another group seems to neglect the fact that merchants and free people of colour were also transient people in the Atlantic. I did not know that The Bahamas had one of the highest percentages of Free People of Colour in the Atlantic. It was neat to learn.

Knight states multiple times throughout the narrative that settler colonies and exploitative colonies were not always distinct but that sometimes they changed from one form to another or were both simultaneously. I see where Knight is coming from with his distinctions, and I lean on agreeing with him. I think it depends on the majority of the population in the colony. Many White settlers from Europe wanted to create their own micro-metropoles to model the society they left, while other Europeans wanted to extract as much as they could from the land which (usually) meant no modeling after their previous society.

I agreed with Knight’s observation that in British territories “to excel according to the criteria of the mother country’s culture was the ultimate achievement.” You can still see it in the British Caribbean today. When talking about education in the British Caribbean, Knight mentioned the high literary rates. I cannot help but wonder what the rates in the modern-day Caribbean are today. As this book was last updated in 2011, I cannot help but point out that Barbados is also now a republic within the Commonwealth.

Towards the last few pages of the book, Knight mentions the diverse challenges that the Caribbean faces. He points out specifically natural disasters. I believe it is important to note that the region is experiencing a lot of issues due to climate change, such as sea levels rising but also (and something that affects us in Miami) stronger hurricanes. Last hurricane season was ridiculous.

While I was reading, I couldn’t help but think about a number of great books that have come out quite recently that cover some of these countries. Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer, Puerto Rico: A National History by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, and Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut (She also just published a biography on Henry Christophe).

Zong! is the most experimental poetry I have had the pleasure of reading. It is a book to be savoured and read piece by piece. At times, Philip had me in tears while in other places I marveled at the way she pieced words together. This read -in and of itself- can be exhausting though. It is not just the content but also the way Philip has written it. It's hard to put into words the experience of Zong!. That's because it is just that - an experience!

 I ate this book up. It was super readable; very free flowing. 

 

I'm obsessed with paranormal creature media like vampires and werewolves, but only the light media version of them. not necessarily the dark media of them. 

 

Fang fiction was a very light fun read. I enjoyed it but that's all it was, a fun light read. There was the subject of S.A. that plays a part in the plot, but my mind did skip over it some what. 

 

There wasn't a lot of depth to the characters, the characters were either good or they were bad. There was no humanizing complex emotions to them. The twist of who the writer of blood feud was really nice. 

 

Overall I liked Fang Fiction. It hearkened back to my wattpad days and it was just a really fun, quick, light read. 

3.5 stars - 2025
I enjoyed reading Meyers, it was like a welcome back home. The book is a tad long, though I feel like every point of the plot was necessary. Though I agree with my sentiments from before that while each of the characters were in danger at different points of the book they were never enough danger to die and that took away the suspense. 

The POVs were well done. It was never confusing. I enjoyed listening to it on audiobook. 

5 stars - 2016
Let me just say that the Lunar Chronicles has been one of the best series I've read to date. 

I've been dying to get my hands on this book as you'll see in this video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkMDckaE89o

So when I got Winter I just had to dive right on in. I picked it up and was immediately transported back to the Lunar Chronicles universe. This book was everything it needed to be and so much more. I loved seeing all the conflicts the characters had to go through. I love how many OTPs there were in this book. The writing was great, the switched POVs were so well done so it wasn't confusing at all. The ending was everything it needed to be. Queen Levana was an AWESOME villain. She'll be one of my favorites forever I think. 

On the downside I must admit that while the characters were in danger at almost every turn. (It seemed like each one got

captured by the queen at least once.

)  It didn't really feel like they were going to lose or die. (Especially towards the middle end.) I have no other grievances that that. 

I will buy any book by Marissa Meyer..

 

Imani Perry writes a book about blue threading through the history of blackness and the concept of blackness. Perry roots the book in black America; she traces history all over the place from Africa to Latin America but she always comes back to Black American history.  She draws her own experiences and memories into the narrative running them into the history that she traces. 

 

The chapters are quite short. Perry’s chapters have a loose theme of blue but chronologically they bounce all over the place. It was jarring in places. They did not seem well connected but more a jumble of thoughts attempting to be coherent by the vague theme of blue. 

 

I wished Imani Perry cited or had a references page in the back. Even though this is not a strictly academic book because my academic mind kept wondering “where are we pulling this from?” 

 

However Perry’s writing is like water. It flows. It ebbs. It runs over you in a way that you feel like you have to keep reading. The blue theme covers not just material items, but also the environment around us, the mental and emotional blues, the musical blues among other blues. 

 

The Black in the Blues forces you to be more aware of the world around you. Perry weaves a narrative that forces you to be very imaginative. 

Dunn's book is a look back at Miami's first century through black eyes. It tells the story of Black Miami through the events of lives of Black people; it is not meant to be comprehensive. Dunn has certain organization but the narrative does jump around in certain sections. I also thought the Early Bahamian history narrative was kind of rush and wrong. He kept making comments like "Bahamian roots are still apparent" but did not elaborate on what he meant by it. Overall though, I enjoyed reading the history of Black Miami, especially after the 1950s. The photographs he had in the book were so shocking.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone was just like I remembered! The plot unfolded slowly but in such a meaningful and impactful way. The romance - some call it insta-love - had all the yearning and love I desire in a book. Taylor the genius that you are!  

A good end to an okay series. I thought the book was long for my taste, and once again I was skimming to get to the parts I wanted to really read. I enjoyed the world building AND I was surprised at the twist. I did not see it coming. I did get annoyed at Serilda reasonings for many of her actions. I was pissed off at her for multiple things. I hate dumb main characters. I also hate pregnancy tropes.

Backman had me TORN UP. What a grey cloudy mess this book was! You will have all the feelings coursing through you. I teared up in places. The book was tad too long for me. I though it slowed up in places. But overall I'm excited for the final book.