📖: babel x r.f. kuang (2022)
genres: historical fantasy
review in one sentence: i won’t be accepting any critiques of this book -thnx, management
“’I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live… I want to live,’ she repeated, ‘and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future. I don’t think death is a reprieve. I think it’s — it’s just the end. It forecloses everything — a future where I might be happy, and free.’”
i never fully understood the desire to rate a book 6 stars until this moment. here are some reasons why i LOVED this book…
🕯️ history & portrayal of colonialism • this must be the year of historical fiction for me! my knowledge of the british empire is very minimal but those footnotes gave me so much context. post-read, i really want to find out which parts were truly fiction and which were historically accurate. there were a few characters i had to look up to see if they were real.. there are some really terrible people in history. even though i didn’t know much about the british empire, the characteristics of colonialism were fairly easy to spot based on what i know about it as a whole. i truly love a story that can teach me history and simultaneously keep me invested in the story!
🕯️ character evolution of robin • i was so nervous about the length of this book but it was absolutely necessary to show robin evolve as a person, especially since he was raised and trained to be a tool of british colonialism. it was cathartic to seeing him slowly unlearn the logics that he was taught to believe about himself, his heritage and the english. from beginning to end, robin is a character whose story i may never forget.
🕯️ academic setting • before 💩 really hit the fan, the portrayal of robin and his cohort as students was spot on. it didn’t surprise me to find out that r.f. kuang has both a masters and a phd bc at certain moments, i felt like i was back in grad school while reading this. the cyclical nature of the academic school year. the naiveté of being a first year. the transformation into a shell of a human by second year. the temporary reprieve of the summer months. it all felt too close to home.
🕯️ language & etymology • growing up, i swore i would be a polyglot and this fueled part of those delusions. it’s interesting having read this book right around a lot of tiktok users flocking to xhs/red note and learning mandarin. don’t be surprised if you see me with a mandarin language notebook
if you like this, you might also enjoy…
📖 discourse on colonialism (1950)
📖 the wretched of the earth x frantz fanon (1961)
📖 freedom dreams: the black radical imagination x robin d.g. kelley (2002)
📖 third world studies x gary y. okihiro (2016)
📖 decolonization and afro-feminism x sylvia tamale (2020)
