I reckon I let bookblr know whats going on on book twitter/ig cuz ngl its by far one of the most tone deaf things I’ve seen from book accounts
Two different book ig accts posted reviews of Babel and claim that RF Kuang and the book are “racist” towards the white characters. I’m leaving the screenshots here (not mine, courtesy of @/alliewithbooks and @/eminwords on Twitter)
I don’t even know where to start about how wrong these two accts are (one is a lit student and the other is a phd history student???).
Babel was never advertised as a fun romp, and it explores why violence is sometimes a necessary thing in revolutions. Which is something western countries don’t understand, as the countries sanitize the history of revolutions outside of their own. Robin even has internal and external dialogue about the consequences of Babel falling, and determined it was the only way to go. He and the other scholars were backed into a corner by years of exploitation. There’s a lot of back and forth on this and it’s also explored in Robin’s character arc from passive to assertive in the revolution. It’s also explored in his differences between Victoire and Ramy as well as his brother Griffin.
It’s also bizarre to accuse it of reverse racism (which doesn’t exist btw, you can prejudice agaisnt white ppl but racism is institutional), while also saying that the characters are “reduced to their skin color”. The irony of it all. The book is suppose to make you uncomfortable, Letty made ME feel uncomfortable because of how similar she was to people I’ve met in real life.
Finally, the book takes place in a fictionalize 1830s, do these people think white people were nice to BIPOC in the 1830s if they didn’t want something from them? And the fact that one of them is a history major too…
Anyway, rant over. Luckily people on Twitter have been roasting the shit out of them. Go read Babel its a good book.
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
