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DNF at 60% but I skipped around until the end. Dark academia is hot right now, and Babel was supposed to be THE dark academia novel of the year. However, I absolutely despised Babel, and here's why...

RANT INCOMING:

What a boring, mean-spirited book. It had little charm and came from a place of hate. And can this author write about anything other than one person starting a revolutionary war? Even her dark academia novel ends up going in the same direction as her Poppy War trilogy. Sis hasn't gotten over her Hunger Games phase, it seems.

This book is SO dull. The only creative aspect was how the author managed to find different ways to say the same thing on every page: white people suck and they're evil. By the billionth time, a white person came along to crap on the main characters or say something stupid, I was like, 'Okay, we get it: whitey = evil.'

And the footnotes were annoying and useless. They didn't add anything to the story, and you could predict exactly what they were going to say before you even read them because 90% of them were just there to tear down every aspect of British history and culture. They'd pop in every now and then to tell you that some random thing was 'problematic.' No shit, Sherlock. Everything from 200 years ago (Sherlock Holmes included) is problematic. That's just history for you.

The characters:



Quick note: I remember seeing this fan art when Kuang announced on Twitter that she was writing a dark academia novel a couple of years back. It got me so excited to read this book, and I'm really disappointed that I ended up not liking it.

These are some of the most boring, one-dimensional characters I've read about in a while.

Robin - The author legit forgot to give Robin a personality. His defining trait was basically just noticing and reacting to racism.

Victoire - She was a perfect human with a flawless personality, which made her annoying. If she ever got mad at someone, the story would bend over backward to make her point of view justified.

Ramy - Ramy's defining trait was that he hates British people and their culture with every fiber of his being, but gets really upset when someone questions why he chose to study in Britain. The author was trying to do something with the hypocrisy of this, but because she was so hell-bent on portraying whites as evil and everyone else as good she missed the mark.

And then there's Letty, the blonde-haired white girl...

Letty breathes

Everyone in her friend group: 'Will this fcking btch ever shut up?'

Also...

Robin kills someone

The gang: Let's keep it a secret.

Letty: Hey... is this really the right thing to do?

The gang: I knew this btch was going to betray us at some point.

Letty was the author's favorite punching bag and outlet for all her hatred of white people. It was weird because Letty was created to be bullied and ostracized by the others. Was I supposed to enjoy this dynamic? There were scenes where the other three couldn't wait for Letty to leave the room so they could talk freely among themselves. It took all of their efforts to tolerate Letty being in their presence.

At one point Robin says that he feels sorry for Letty and describes her as the innocent one in the group. I thought the author was giving her favorite chew toy a break. But actually, this whole section was about how Letty's innocence came from her ignorance. She could never understand the others or truly experience things alongside them, and her attempts at caring and trying to connect with them were portrayed as annoying. When she grew impatient with their bad moods, it was supposed to be like a 'gotcha' moment, a confirmation that she's not one of them. Maybe this is a dig at white allies and the suggestion is that they'll always benefit from white culture. Even if they think they're being helpful, they're still part of the problem and will always be. See what I mean about this book being mean-spirited? lol

The cherry on top of this crap sundae was Letty's inevitable character arc. It turns out that Letty had a huge crush on Ramy, but Ramy could barely tolerate her presence. Because she couldn't have him, her entitled, sociopathic white rage finally came out for everyone to see. She betrayed her friend group and got Ramy killed (I don't know the full details because I was skipping around by this point). She destroyed him because she couldn't get her way with him. Maybe Kuang's message here is that the white woman's true self will come out when she's denied something because white culture teaches her that she can have anything she wants and minorities must fall in line with her will. Jesus... what a point of view lol. Then, to drive the point home, Victoire reflects back on her friendship with Letty and says that Letty was always a horrible, abusive person and now she finally sees it. Well I didn't see it. In the beginning anyway, I mean, Letty was acting like a fairly normal person. Does that mean the author wanted us to read negatively into everything she did just because... she's white?

All I wanted was for Kuang to present a more balanced view of humanity through the inclusion of Letty in the friend group. But nope lol! She thoroughly destroys any chance of that by making sure we know that all along Letty was a bad person, which means she was never really friends with them.

Another aspect of Letty that frustrated me was that the only sympathetic quality she was given was her minority status as a woman in college at that time. It was the only thing allowed to be good about her. So basically in the world of the book, if a character had a minority status they were allowed at least one point for sympathy. But unfortunately for Letty, being the whitest of whites gave her about minus 99 points automatically.

It was almost impressive how Kuang made sure that not a single white character is remotely likable. Even the cook, who was initially nice to Robin when he arrived in Britain, is later revealed to be a terrible person because she saw Robin getting beaten and didn't do anything about it. So yeah, kudos to the author for her dogged determination to make sure no white gets away seeming likeable.

The Message:

The book's message about the harmful effects of British colonization is important and worth discussing. It's undeniable that the countries under British rule suffered greatly. But while I can understand Kuang's strong feelings on the matter, I personally believe that British colonization is a complex issue that cannot be reduced to a simple dichotomy of good or bad.

I come from a culture that has been affected by British colonialism, too. My mother is from a small South Pacific island that was colonized by the British in the 1800s. The traditional customs of my mother's culture were replaced with western ones, and the actions of the British at the time caused trauma that still affects my mother's culture today. However, the reality is that if things had not happened as they did, I and many others would not be here now. We also might not have had the opportunities we have right now to create a positive future for ourselves and others.

While it's important to acknowledge historical injustices, dwelling on them and harboring resentment towards white people today is not right. The thing I don't like about Babel is that there are very few gray areas (from what I read), it's like 545 pages of encouraging the reader to see white people as one-dimensional caricatures, and embracing feelings of resentment and victimization and then feeling justified in these thoughts.

I think this book might encourage POCs to adopt a victim mentality. When I was younger I bought into the idea that as a POC, I had been wronged in some way because of the past. But these beliefs aren't even true and they also caused a lot of unnecessary insecurity and deppression. And I realized that there is no end to the blame game. I deeply regret wasting my energy on all of that. So I hate seeing my fellow POCs waste theirs by buying into victimhood and resentment when they could be doing things to actually bring themselves up. I understand that people are at different stages of healing, and I'm not saying that people should just shut up and be happy. I'm also not saying that my people's relationship with British colonization is equal to other nations. All I know is that this book tries to make it okay to judge others based on their minority status, rather than on just being who they are. This is a terrible way to view others. Further, I believe the book promotes a victim mentality, which, from my experience, only harms mental health in the long run.

Anyway so yeah, if you were to study at Oxford in the 1800s as a non-white international student, you would have been treated poorly by the locals. But even the book admits that at that time, Robin's home country of Canton was rife with misogyny. Every nation was committing vile and foolish acts 200 years ago. For example, my people used to literally eat their enemies. The last time I visited my mother's island, I purchased a history book about people being kidnapped and eaten by rival clans. This was not only for revenge, but it was also believed that the person consuming the victim would gain some of their powers. When the British arrived, they condemned cannibalism (and some of the missionaries were even speared and eaten as a result). The British may have butt in, but their decision to act as custodians over the islands set off a chain of events that led my mother's people into the modern world.

Last thoughts:

Each to their own, but I find myself side-eying the white people who are so eager to give this book five stars. Perhaps they're far less irritable than me or they enjoy masochism. Or maybe after reading 545 pages of white-people bashing, they've been worn down?

Additionally, many might be feeling like they need to be cautious when discussing the book because they know they'll be attacked for expressing their true opinions on it. It doesn't need to be said, you and I just know that calling out a minority's resentment of white people is not the done thing and opens one up to being attacked.

We've just accepted that white people are now punching bags for minorities in order to make up for the past. And whites have accepted this role and are expected to endure it because they supposedly "come from a place of privilege". When a POC spews hatred over whites, they're punching up, and therefore whites shouldn't be offended.

Firstly, that is not my idea of equality.

Secondly, I understand that white people mean well when they say they come from a place of privilege, etc, but it's cringey and minorities don't need to be coddled like that. If anything, the fact that we are bending over backwards to avoid calling out a minority author for this type of bigotry does not imply that whites are the privileged ones, now does it? Kuang is free to write whatever she wants, but her mean-spirited approach in this book is ultimately destructive. At least for me, it completely destroys any interest I had in this book or any of her future works.

Summing up:

Considering how popular this book is, it will likely encourage more people to buy into the blind hatred that leads to a lifetime of anger, suffering, and victimhood. That's sad because I would rather see minorities breaking the cycle of our intergenerational trauma by living well and thriving. You can't achieve that by being vengeful and expecting others to tolerate you, sorry.

This book was engaged in a mean-spiritedness that felt fundamentally gross to me. I call out gross shit when I see it, and if that makes me an uncultured swine, so be it

*Edited on 1/09/23 to make my points a bit clearer*