Lowkey feel a little bad for this guy because he got called a racist on Tik Tok for not liking The Poppy War and Sword of Kaigen and that he “didn’t understand” the books.
This is coming from someone who is Pakistani, I LOVE Rf Kuang and ML Wang’s work, however I understand if people don’t like their writing or novels. It’s not for everyone. The Poppy War was a debut novel and of course it did have its flaws. He DNFd the books as well, people saying he “didn’t understand the historical context” he most likely didn’t read chapter 21 otherwise he would have mentioned it. And his reasons for DNFing it were justifiable. The characters didn’t jell with him and he just didn’t understand it properly. Thats fine.
What really annoys me is that a lot of RF Kuang fans cannot handle constructive criticism and seem to obsess over pulling the race card when somebody has anything in the slightest bit negative to say about her work. Yes I know that we all saw that infamous idiotic white Babel reviewer who claimed that Kuang was “racist” and “offensive” to white people for making all the white characters in a novel about violent colonialism and the British Empire violent, racist colonisers and claimed to sympathise with Letty. And yes that was a super offensive review. However, it appears that a lot of fans now seem to think that anybody who doesn’t like Kuang’s work is automatically another copy of that reviewer and so, a racist.
RF Kuang is not exempt from negative reviews just because she’s a successful author who also happens to be poc. She’s super talented and yes, whilst the question of “privilege” seems to come up a lot for her, there’s no denying her novels are amazing, however automatically accusing somebody of racist just because they don’t like her novels is pure ignorance.
People become extremely defensive when her private education and privilege is brought up. I agree that when talking about privilege in the writing community, it’s slightly annoying that Kuang, an Asian author, seems to be the example everyone makes and yet we seem to ignore the amount of class privilege a lot of the book community’s white faves seem to have but I see the mentions of class and privilege being made by people of colour in the book community themselves. When talking about diversity in the publishing industry, class is something that should be brought and the dimension should be criticised. When people bring up Kuang’s class the discussion isn’t on whether or not that makes her a valid or talented author. She was 19 when she began to write the Poppy War. A 19 year old sat down and studied the massacre of Nanking, Imperial Japan’s treatment and colonisation of China, the effects of British Imperialism and the rise of Mao Zedong and developed the plot of the Poppy War. That is talent. She IS talented. But the question should be on why the most successful marginalised authors come from the most privileged backgrounds. Is the publishing industry truly inclusive if the most successful authors of colour need to have expensive private school education and need to go to Ivy Leagues AND Oxbridge (yes Oxbridge because she’s gone to BOTH Oxford and Cambridge) to obtain book deals.
This same argument can be used for Alex Aster, who has a writing style that is very…interesting. (It’s a shiny cliffy thing. It’s so poetic I feel like running. I ran like I was running from something 😍) Aster blew up for her Lightlark series, managed to bag a movie deal with Universal Pictures, had a first print run of 200,000 copies and sold 24,000 in the first week despite her poor plot, mediocre writing style and lack of editing. Again people are quick to call out her privilege and how she’s a nepo baby (her sister was a millionaire her parents owned Florida Toyota). Yet I think the question we should be asking ourselves is again, how inclusive is the publishing industry if one of the current most successful authors from the Latin American community right now, (her writing is awful but you cannot deny she’s made a name for herself and that in itself is success), is a giant Nepo Baby who already came from a privileged family?
Class seems to play such a vital role in what opportunities authors of colour can have and where they end up. No wonder so many have to self-publish.
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