coolfoolmoon's reviews
313 reviews

A Chorus Rises by Bethany C. Morrow

Go to review page

adventurous reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Bethany C. Morrow, you MUST be a good writer, because I hated this girl so much, I really did, and I still kept reading! Miss Morrow MUST be TALENTED because there are real life people like Naema who I'd have no problem humbling, I don't care for their perspective for how bad or disrespectful of a person they are, and yet I had to finish this one! Props to Morrow!

I am being dramatic; I love me a story from the villain's perspective (although it is weird to call a kid a villain, even if it's true). In fact I couldn't go 5 pages without leaving a note about something that made me laugh or made me angry or a comment about something happening in the world. Usually if something is so bad it's good I'll comment that but this book and series are just good. Like okay good not excellent or superb. Like a pleasant okay good.

I had similar issues for this book as I did the first one (the world building isn't fleshed out (although I do understand it more the second time round now), the back half of the book hooked me a lot more than the first half then it was over so quick). I think it's a good message for the youths to be aware of though, and my teenage self would've ate this up.

For the third book, let Naema say fuck. She needs it, PLEASE. Let her express herself!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
When They Call You a Terrorist (Young Adult Edition): A Story of Black Lives Matter and the Power to Change the World by asha bandele, Patrisse Khan-Cullors

Go to review page

dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.25

Raw. Emotional. Very personal. Very close to home for me on a lot of issues. I can't really sum up my feelings for this one. It was really heavy but VERY good, very well done, and gave me hope for the future.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

Go to review page

dark informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.75

Amazing. Excellent. Superb.

Historical nonfiction, in my experience, is very repetitive, but here it works. It also works that the books begins (in either the foreword or the preface, idk, 68 pages before we get to the meat of the text is crazy) with whichever writer mentioning that critics of the book have complained that the book doesn't give a good enough blueprint on what revolutionary actions they should take nexts. You fools. You spineless clowns. Fanon literally says over and over here's how the colonizer distracts you and the way forward is not gonna be the same for everyone. The repetition is to show that while every story and its circumstances are different, the root of all their problems come from the same source.

It's depressing that this book published when my grandmother was born (and has since passed) is still relevant to today. I hope it is not relevant by the end of my life time. I hope that people look back at this book as a cautionary tale, a reminder of our history we cannot forget and always, constantly relearn to remember what not to do and how to move forward. 

Also kinda fucked up his parents named him Frantz. Sounds like France. Is / Was that a common name?

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Created Within the Hearts of Tigers by Rabitt, William James

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective fast-paced

2.5

Of the two zines I picked up at the Little Free Library in Hayward, this was the better one. Once again, poems that are just okay, but also a few of these were good. Not good enough that I'll keep the zine or reread it but good enough to be passed on. Hopefully some angsty teen in my area picks up the zine and resonates with this book and feels inspired to write their own angsty poems!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum

Go to review page

emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I read Evil Eye last month and gave it 5 stars, and it's near impossible for me to give things 5 stars, so I figured this woman must be amazing I gotta read what else she has. Only one other book?! How heartbreaking! I need more! Etaf Rum the woman that you are!!!

I do feel that if I had read this book first and Evil Eye second, I still would've given Evil Eye 5 stars. These books were written for the culture. Not my culture, but the importance of them, the weight of them, were not just to represent Palestinians and Arabs, but to show other Arabs "this is who we are, we have stories to tell, and we have to be honest with ourselves" and I love that SO much. Etaf Rum you will always be famous!!!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Are You Free? A Collection of Verbal Liberations in a Gritty City by Kellee Maize, DJ Brewer, Carolyne Whelan

Go to review page

informative reflective fast-paced

1.75

Poems that are just okay. Only two stood out to me: One about how we are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn and the other about how capitalism / fascism is bad. That one was interesting since the zine was made in 2009 and things keep getting worse.

I found this (and another) zine in Hayward, CA, and it must have lived quite the life to travel from one coast to the other. I thought that was worth saying.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

Go to review page

dark informative sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

To be a woman is to suffer at the hands of a man! Good message to teach kids about abusive relationships and self harm very early!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff

Go to review page

funny lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Bad message to teach kids don't share or else they'll keep asking for more. The capitalist indoctrination starts VERY young I see. Negative points! Cute art though!
Girasol by Vianney Casas

Go to review page

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

2.25

My rating and review is biased because Vianney is / was my friend. I knew her in the Friducha era, I bought the book years ago when it was first publisbed and only just found it again and finally read it.

That being said, with a lot of my own poems they aren't very good they're just something I had to get out of my mind. Raw thoughts, raw emotions and feelings. Sometimes nonsensical. When I go back and read them I go ew that's never seeing the light of anyone else's eyes but mine and even I don't wanna look at it. You're going deep into my google drive folders.

Not that Vianney's poems here are necessarily like that, but they are just raw emotion. It's very real, deeply personal, very much something she had to get out there or else she would go crazy. As she said Friducha was a character she made when she thought she wouldn't survive. The poems are not for me, I don't think they have rereadability, but I feel like I know her, or at least the person I knew in 2016-2019, more now. Whoever she is now  and the state and contents of her poetry, I hope she's alright!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

Go to review page

hopeful mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

I'm not a fan of this style of mixing fantasy and reality. Like, why would the Disney princess Ariel exist in this universe? If mythical creatures are real, why in the real world would you call them mythical beings? Surely there would be some other term. Also, the writing tries to be mysterious to be point where it's confusing. Like. Just tell us what's happening instead of telling us what happened 3 pages later.
Also!!! A quarter into the book, my journal entry for page 73 is "medusa?!" I guessed it that quick! Which isn't bad but is funny. In a world where "mythical creatures" are real and there's real stigma around them, even though no one's ever seen a gorgon or whatever why didn't they think of that?! I did!!!
But anyway. It really hooked my attention after the halfway point, which isn't good, but I had fun. The fantasy element just clearly wasn't thought out thoroughly enough, but before the book was over I rented out the sequel at my library because I wanted to keep the ball rolling!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings