Cannibalism is intersectional, I guess. Although, to be fair, if my mother started dating a vile racist named George who fetishised me, my looks, and Cannibalism is intersectional, I guess. Although, to be fair, if my mother started dating a vile racist named George who fetishised me, my looks, and my culture, I'd probably eat his eyes too....more
Are these the signs of a bestseller in the making? I wonder. They must be. Why doesn’t anyone tell I wonder what June would say about this review.
Are these the signs of a bestseller in the making? I wonder. They must be. Why doesn’t anyone tell you, right off the bat, how important your book is to the publisher? Before Over the Sycamore came out, I worked my ass off doing blog interviews and podcasts, hoping that the more sweat I put into publicity, the more my publisher would reward my efforts. But now, I see, author efforts have nothing to do with a book’s success. Bestsellers are chosen. Nothing you do matters. You just get to enjoy the perks along the way.
Who gets to tell stories? Whose stories get told? Who gets on the best-seller list? The publishing industry has been having its come to god moment over the past few years, what with controversies surrounding books like American Dirt, stories, and authors.
I've been a reviewer for fun for somwhere around a decade at this point, and I've been on the sidelines of, and occasionally party to some of the smaller controversies that have played out here, on Goodreads. And boy, have I learnt a lot. I get it, I know the publishing industry is absolutely brutal. Some books make it, and some just don't. Some authors become literary darlings, and others fade into obscurity. A lot of the time, it isn't about effort, or skill, or talent. It's about circumstances, luck, and telling the right story at the right time. June is right about that. What she's very wrong about though, is that more often than not, the "right" stories are told by white, predominantly cis-, male authors. By that argument, you may say, well, Anu, then isn't June right, that women, even white women, have it hard? Yeah, but also no. White women may have it harder than white men, but it is obviously nothing compared to what authors of colour experience. It's why "own voices" and the stories thus told by these voices are so important.
So of course Athena gets every good thing, because that’s how this industry works. Publishing picks a winner—someone attractive enough, someone cool and young and, oh, we’re all thinking it, let’s just say it, “diverse” enough—and lavishes all its money and resources on them. It’s so fucking arbitrary. Or perhaps not arbitrary, but it hinges on factors that have nothing to do with the strength of one’s prose.
Yellowface is one of those books that is so much fun to read, but also tells crucial, if rather harrowing tale about what I have come to learn is the brutal, solitary world of writing and publishing. After all, Writing is such a solitary activity.
June Hayworth, aka Juniper Song is a failed writer. Her first novel tanked, and her only friend, Athena Liu is the voice of the generation. So, when Athena dies in a freak accident, June decides to take Athena's latest manuscript, the one no one has heard about, and publish it as her own. She makes edits, rewrites whole chapters, and changes her nom-de-plume to Juniper Song--exotic, and ethnically ambiguous for a name if there ever was one. And lo and behold, this latest book becomes a bestseller, and June becomes the literary darling of her dreams.
What starts off as a literary exercise for June ends up becoming her most dangerous, and to some extent best kept secret. As she finds herself wading deeper into Athena's magnum opus about a deeply sensitive topic, June throws caution to the wind, and any semblance of morality she had left out of the window. The more she makes this story "her own", the more she begins to scoff at any disapproval levelled at the book and at her, both within her own head, as well as from her critics, justifying whitewashing the novel, justifying taking advantage of a grieving mother, justifying her choice to rebrand herself and not "come out as White".
For a while, June is able to enjoy her newfound fame. She gets new, professionally taken author headshots. Her editor actually knows her name, and importantly, listens to her and respects her. She ends up making what I like to call fuck-you money. She becomes a literary darling. She makes friends with famous authors. She's part of the zeitgeist. She is the zeitgeist.
Obviously, she isn't without her denigrators. Straight off the bat, some people, especially Asians and Asian Americans are suspicious about the timing of the book, its content, and her relationship with Athena. When asked to consult with sensitivity readers, to ensure that her book isn't offensive to the Chinese, June refuses, and vehemently at that. When the editorial assistant who recommended that she get a sensitivity reader leaves a rather scathing 1 star review of her book on Goodreads (meta, isn't it?), June goes as far as to get the assistant fired.
The juxtaposition of June's internal monologue, her slow descent into madness almost, with the sheer brutality of the publishing world and the toxicity of social media gives the book an almost gothic horror vibe. The lonely, wronged author high up in her ivory tower fobbing off her evil detractors.
The reason Yellowface works is because Kuang is very adept at toeing the line between the satirical and the serious. Where June could have been a caricature, she's a well-fleshed out character. Her backstory, her complicated relationships with her family, her fizzled out ambitions, the stories she wrote as a teenager, even her relationship with Athena add dimension to what would have been an otherwise very one-dimensional character. None of this actually makes June likeable, or even someone I can sympathise with, but it does make you uncomfortably question whether you yourself are capable of doing something like this if pushed too far. In a way, June sees her actions as justified, because Athena did a bad thing first.
For someone who only appears in the first chapter of the entire book, Athena's larger-than-life personality, her actions, and her fame loom over the story like a ghost stuck, unable to move on. Of course, it isn't possible to tell June's story without Athena's. But the reason that this works is because Athena has dimensions too. A prodigy of the publishing world she may be, but Athena had a dirty habit too, one that potentially made her into the star that she was.
Yellowface works because it exists entirely in the grey spaces within the black and white of our world. There's no hero, nor a villain. There's nobody to root for, nobody to label the boogeyman. It is truly excellent in a skin-crawling, uncomfortable sort of way. For the most part, at least. Where Kuang does a really good job of writing a poignant, darkly comical story, she fumbles the ending. It feels forced, trite, and cartoonish. She tries a little too hard to tie up loose ends, and at this, she fails. It feel anticlimactic and unnecessary. I think maybe, just maybe, the book would have worked better if she'd left the ends loose.
What more can we want as writers than such immortality? Don’t ghosts just want to be remembered?...more
I didn't think it could get better than the first one, but oh, it got monumentally better so. Pro tip: you're going to have to read the second one rigI didn't think it could get better than the first one, but oh, it got monumentally better so. Pro tip: you're going to have to read the second one right after the first, because it really won't make sense otherwise. Full RTC....more
Precisely why all the above (below, in this review, I guess) should be so is not clear, but goes some way to explain why, on the disc, the Gods arePrecisely why all the above (below, in this review, I guess) should be so is not clear, but goes some way to explain why, on the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.
Have you ever wondered about what would happen if you were merely a pawn in a game played by gods? Have you ever wondered about how living in a Flat-Earth would be? Would you like to learn about what failed wizards do in their free time? Are you curious about how dragons are born and how they rest? Do you want to understand what insurance actually means? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then The Colour of Magic is the book for you. However, if you're a pragmatist, and lack imagination, I would suggest you steer clear of the book.
Welcome to Discworld; the land of the strange and scary, of the weird and wonderful. It's important to know, before you enter this magical and frankly absurd land, that you are a pawn in a life-sized game of Dungeons and Dragons. There is no escaping that. Do not make deals with Fate, do not sing prayers for The Lady; perhaps, just perhaps, you might just survive. Though, well, you do start to question whether surviving is actually worth it. Journey along with sarcastic and cynical Rincewind, a failed wizard, and Twoflower, a tourist under his care. Rincewind is an extremely likable character, a rationalist, and quick-witted to the core. Rincewind often suspected that there was something, somewhere, that was better than magic. He was usually disappointed. Twoflower, who sells inn-sewer-ants polly-see, on the other hand, is a typical tourist - he gets excited at every instance, and would rather photograph a fascinating sight than run for his life. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the Discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant “idiot.” Together, the two make a hilarious and engaging pair, and their story is a definite laugh riot. There are books that employ elements of satire to prove a point; this book, and I believe the series by extension, are wholly satire, and I found myself literally laughing out loud at more than one point.
The story starts at Ankh-Morpork, a city so rife with accidents, nothing quite astounds their citizens anymore. A city of thieves, fraudsters and scoundrels. A city through which flows the filthy River Ankh. In a city where public executions, duels, fights, magical feuds and strange events regularly punctuated the daily round the inhabitants had brought the profession of interested bystander to a peak of perfection. The city of Ankh-Morpork perhaps best explains human beings as a species. Their casual nature, their inclination to defraud, rather than help people in trouble, and their undying love for gold. The journey from there is a meandering one, onto the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth, the temple of the Soul-Eater. There is an escape into the world of Dragons, through an actual aeroplane (like the ones we have on Earth), and onto the Circumfence, yes, Circumfence, not circumference, because you do need a fence at the rim of the Discworld. Our two friends here, they meet heroes and villains, and creatures we mustn't speak of.
In his dry and totally British way, Pratchett mocks religion, and the religious. ...the ravaged roof of the Broken Drum, was wafted high into the Discworld’s atmosphere on the ensuing thermal, and came to earth several days and a few thousand miles away on an uloruaha bush in the beTrobi islands. The simple, laughing islanders subsequently worshipped it as a god, much to the amusement of their more sophisticated neighbors. Strangely enough the rainfall and harvests in the next few years were almost supernaturally abundant, and this led to a research team being dispatched to the islands by the Minor Religions faculty of Unseen University. Their verdict was that it only went to show. He laughs at humans and their follies, at our propensity to regale ourselves with tales of heroes of yore. As says the resident Hero of the book: “I expect in a minute the door will be flung back and I’ll be dragged off to some sort of temple arena where I’ll fight maybe a couple of giant spiders and an eight-foot slave from the jungles of Klatch and then I’ll rescue some kind of a princess from the altar and then kill off a few guards or whatever and then this girl will show me the secret passage out of the place and we’ll liberate a couple of horses and escape with the treasure.” Satire at its absolute best, whole book is.
Learn about Dragons you can summon with your imagination, and the significance of the number 8. Experience the colour Octarine, and the 8-banded Rimbow. Communicate with different languages whose words make no sense at all. Understand how magic is actually, really, quite difficult. Have hair-raising adventures with Rincewind, Twoflower, and his sentient luggage, Luggage. Curse the gods, the ghosts and the monsters. Read Discworld.
It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going around to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows.
P.S., before I sign off, my good friend, The Doctor would like to explain to you what time is, because here, on Discworld, it's important to know what time is, and what it isn't.
Full disclosure: I never had plans of reading this; I found this "book" in the library quite by accident, and thought "why the hell not?". I say "bookFull disclosure: I never had plans of reading this; I found this "book" in the library quite by accident, and thought "why the hell not?". I say "book" because it is not a book per se, but the filming script for the movie. A movie which I absolutely adored. I am, by nature, a rather cynical person, so satirical, dark humour appeals to me deeply.
The director of the movie, Sam Mendes called it a 'kaleidoscopic journey through the American suburbia'. I'm not American, and I don't know how the quintessential American suburbia functions. What I do know, is that the script, and by extension, the movie, depicts dysfunctionality in a realistic and rather efficient manner. Before Walter White, there was Lester Burnham, a regular Joe going through a mid-life crisis. He's as average as it gets, as referenced by his beige cubicle which acts as an allegory to his life. His wife resents him, and his daughter hates him. "We used to be happy", he reminisces at one point, while looking at a photo of his family during happier days. His daughter, Jane is withdrawn, angsty, and insecure. Ashamed of her parents, especially her father. Carolyn, his wife, is ambitious, and somewhere down the line, let her ambition control other aspects of her life, turning into a bitter, self-loathing woman who constantly berates herself and slaps herself. There's the boy next door Ricky, who falls in love with Jane. Ricky lives with his controlling father and emotionally frail mother. Ricky, who sees beauty in everything, (view spoiler)[including the famous white plastic bag fluttering in the wind. (hide spoiler)]
I think in the end, that's what one gets from the movie; that there is beauty in everything. There is beauty in life, and in death. ...more
What can I say, I wish I lived in the 19th Century. Life would have been so much more interesting! *sighs* Also, black comedies FTW. Will review in fuWhat can I say, I wish I lived in the 19th Century. Life would have been so much more interesting! *sighs* Also, black comedies FTW. Will review in full if I get the time. ...more
Persepolis (Greek: Περσέπολις Persépolis; "the Persian City" or "City of the Persians") was the ancient capital of Iran. Of course, now, quite like muPersepolis (Greek: Περσέπολις Persépolis; "the Persian City" or "City of the Persians") was the ancient capital of Iran. Of course, now, quite like much of Iran, the place is in a shambles. I love history. I wanted to be a whip-cracking, pyramid raiding archaeologist when I was a child. I used to pretend to be a classy history student in an elite university, and I used to painstakingly copy "notes" from the many encyclopaedias at home. Yeah, I was a weird, rather jobless child. So sue me. My point is, I was obsessed with history; I was especially fascinated by the Middle-Eastern civilisations - everything from Hammurabi's Mesopotamia to Nebuchadnezzar's psychotic break to the Turkish Caliphs to Osama bin Laden. I devoured, I inhaled it all. It was a dream for me to visit the ancient, splendid cities like Persepolis and Aleppo and Palmyra and Nimrud...and the rest. I wanted to admire the Gate of Xerxes and the Ishtar Gate, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (why the word hanging?). I nearly cried when I found out I couldn't. Little did I know back then, that as an adult, I would choose to be fascinated by the same regions again, but for different purposes. One of my college papers was on the Syrian crisis. I took a bunch of courses so I could better understand the highly volatile situation there. Then Palmyra and Nimrud were destroyed, and I don't know why, but that broke me. And then I read Persepolis, and it broke me, yet again, in ways I couldn't imagine.
I need to recollect my thoughts on this. Full review to come....more
"I almost think we are all of us ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fI think this quote pretty much sums it up:
"I almost think we are all of us ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that "walks" in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light."
Because you see, Ghosts merely isn't about the ghosts of girlfriends' past inhabiting Mrs. Alving's residence, but more about the ghosts of her own past; the ghosts that affected her relationship with her son, and the ghosts that changed her views about the world. ...more
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