Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 13

A Review of Laura Gao’s Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American (Balzer + Bray, 2022).

Posted by: uttararangarajan

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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

As I gear up for my introduction to Asian American studies course, I’ve been reading up on as many new offerings I can! One is Laura Gao’s Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American (Balzer + Bray 2022), which is yet another excellent addition to the Asian American graphic narrative canon. This area/ genre is simply bursting with so many excellent offerings now that you could easily teach a course on Asian American graphic narrative and continue to swap out texts occasionally just for parity. Gao’s graphic novel opens with a kind of frame narrative, which begins in the period that COVID first emerges. From that point forward, Gao’s memoir moves back in time, detailing her upbringing in Wuhan and her difficult acculturation in the United States, where she grows up in a region with few other Asian immigrants or Asian Americans. Gao eventually begins to suffer from forms of internalized racism, attempting to shed any relationship to her Asian background in order to fit in: she adopts an American name, attempts to dye her hair, and she promotes American acculturation in her family through the celebration of holiday traditions like Christmas. In order to remove herself from assumptions that she is model minority, she pursues basketball as a sport. Yet, this desire for American inclusion is of course a kind of fantasy, one that begins to be deconstructed as Laura ages. She returns to Wuhan to visit extended family members, realizing that she has more connections with her roots than she might want to admit. When Laura goes to college, and she begins to explore her sexuality and her racial identity, she naturally finds community amongst fellow people of color and other queer individuals. In this respect, the novel is ultimately a bildungsroman, with Laura realizing that she must embrace the multifaceted nature of identity over and above the external validation she earlier sought via the desire to conform. The graphic narrative is ultimately a very teachable text, and I will certainly add this one to my future course offerings.

 

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A Review of Alice Wong’s Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life (Vintage, 2022)

Posted by: uttararangarajan

 

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

 

In 2022, Alice Wong published Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life. This publication is mixed genre, with various essays, excerpts from different op ed pieces, blog posts, and original writings that chronicle Wong’s life. A fair number of the pieces directly engage with how she goes about dealing with a serious disability stemming from spinal muscular dystrophy. This neuromuscular disorder is degenerative and requires Wong to use supplemental oxygen as well as a motorized wheelchair. The expansiveness of this multigenre publication is in its breadth; its generic plasticity enables Wong to cover a variety of topics and certainly covers the critical importance of mutual aid and interdependence not only for the disabled community but for associated groups who face precarity.

 

In “I’m Disabled and Need a Ventilator to Live. Am I Expendable During This Pandemic?” Wong writes “Vulnerable “high-risk” people are some of the strongest, most interdependent, and most resilient people around. We may still face significant disparities in political power, which result in being left out of policy making, but we know how to show up for each other. Disabled communities, queer communities, and communities of color have been hustling and providing mutual aid since time began. Many of us know the safety net has gaping holes and the state will not save us, so we’re going to save ourselves with abundance, wisdom, joy, and love.” Wong’s larger point in this piece is to remind healthcare policy providers and political leaders that those who are disabled have a right to life, even in the context of the pandemic. The limit on resources, including ventilators, is not a rationale to delineate disabled communities as expendable.

 

While the content of Wong’s text clearly explores the importance of considering various communities who face erasure and marginalization, the formal properties of this publication, with its many individual pieces, accrues meaningfulness through juxtaposition. Indeed, the text begins with some autobiographical pieces. A number of interviews are strewn throughout, which reveal Wong’s commitment to disability activism, justice and the various communities she cultivates —especially through the use of the internet. Wong’s powerful voice continually resonates throughout the different pieces, lending unity to what could have been a sprawling, untethered collection of individual pieces. An important, crucial work, and a timely one, given our inability to engage fully the need to rise to the moment that COVID provided for us: the understanding that our health is reliant upon access and interdependence. A brilliant work of keen insights. As an aside, I’m not sure why this book was not given a traditional hardcover release, but it would have been a nice option.

 

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A Review of Charmaine Craig’s My Nemesis (Grove/Atlantic, 2023)

Posted by: uttararangarajan

 

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

I’ve been meaning to review at least one publication by Charmaine Craig, and I’ve finally rectified my reading oversight with this review of My Nemesis (Grove/Atlantic 2023). This novel really packs a wallop through a very crafty and complicated first-person perspective. Let’s let the marketing description help us get situated: “Tessa is a successful writer who develops a friendship, first by correspondence and then in person, with Charlie, a ruggedly handsome philosopher and scholar based in Los Angeles. Sparks fly as they exchange ideas about Camus and masculine desire, and their intellectual connection promises more—but there are obstacles to this burgeoning relationship. While Tessa’s husband Milton enjoys Charlie’s company on his visits to the East Coast, Charlie’s wife Wah is a different case, and she proves to be both adversary and conundrum to Tessa. Wah’s traditional femininity and subservience to her husband strike Tessa as weaknesses, and she scoffs at the sacrifices Wah makes as adoptive mother to a Burmese girl, Htet, once homeless on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. But Wah has a kind of power too, especially over Charlie, and the conflict between the two women leads to a martini-fueled declaration by Tessa that Wah is ‘an insult to womankind.’ As Tessa is forced to deal with the consequences of her outburst and considers how much she is limited by her own perceptions, she wonders if Wah is really as weak as she has seemed, or if she might have a different kind of strength altogether. Compassionate and thought-provoking, My Nemesis is a brilliant story of seduction, envy, and the ways we publicly define and privately deceive ourselves today.”

 

It’s interesting that the description ends with the phrase, “privately deceive ourselves today.” The reason why I bring it up is that this novel is masterful in its suffocating use of first person. We can’t ever get out of Tessa’s perception of the world, so much so that we only get a sense of the inaccuracy of some of her conclusions only at the end of the novel, when we begin to establish Wah’s own motives as a writer and as an artist. Tessa seems to desire mastery of the web of relationships in which she is entangled, but it becomes evident over time that she hardly has a grasp on the networks surrounding her, some of which are far more frayed than she even realizes. The first line of the novel also unveils a major plot point that won’t be fully engaged until you are well into the novel: “the martini-fueled declaration” that involves a major insult that Tessa throws at Wah is certainly the most incendiary scene that Craig imagines. This event results in a serious disintegration in the complicated ecosystem of relationships that the novel is depicting, including Tessa's marriage.   

 

What is really clear about this novel is that it establishes the ways in which we generate fantasies around the relationships we create in order to construct a measure of social stability, however precarious this artificial world might be. As Tessa grapples with the fallout, the novel revises the way in which we understand the title. Who is Tessa’s actual nemesis, we end up wondering. Craig’s work is the ultimate study in the way in which the first-person narrative can become a destructive hall of illusions.

 

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A Review of Sarah Lyu’s I Will Find You Again (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2023)

Posted by: ccape



Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

I’ve been woefully behind on all of my YA reading, but I am here to rectify some of that by reviewing Sarah Lyu’s I Will Find You Again (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2023).

The actual marketing description is quite curt: “Welcome to Meadowlark, Long Island—expensive homes and good schools, ambition and loneliness. Meet Chase Ohara and Lia Vestiano: the driven overachiever and the impulsive wanderer, the future CEO and the free spirit. Best friends for years—weekend trips to Montauk, sleepovers on a yacht—and then, first love. True love. But when Lia disappears, Chase’s life turns into a series of grim snapshots. Anger. Grief. Running. Pink pills in an Altoids tin. A cheating ring at school. Heartbreak and lies. A catastrophic secret. And the shocking truth that will change everything about the way Chase sees Lia—and herself.”

The reason for the brevity is that this novel contains QUITE a few major twists and turns, the likes of which I won’t fully reveal, only because I know some of you are going to read it! Thus, my review will likewise be on the shorter side. I will still place a partial spoiler warning here, precisely because I might divulge some information unintentionally. The premise is ultimately a kind of mystery: where is Lia, what has happened to her? Once we find out what has happened to Lia, more questions surface, and the novel becomes more of a kind of investigatory quest, with Chase attempting to line up the dots and figure out what’s really going on. Beyond the intriguing plot, I was really impressed by the fact that YA continues to trailblaze in terms of the topics it covers and for the diversity of representation it tends to engage. In this case, Chase is of mixed Asian ethnicities, while Lia is a Korean American transracial adoptee. Lyu is also clearly aware of a longer history of Asian American racial formation, as Chase’s background involves an ancestor who survived the Japanese American incarceration. The two characters are also engaged in a same sex relationship, and given the ways in which both characters can sometimes feel out of place, their shared racial backgrounds do prove to be a point of key connection. Indeed, the shift that the narrative ultimately takes in the last half will no doubt polarize readers (and for whatever reason, I tend myself not to enjoy these approaches to storytelling), but Lyu’s ability to weave an entertaining tale is unquestionable. Certainly, a great choice for those interested in mysteries!

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A Review of Vashnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi (Redhook, 2022)

Posted by: ljiang28

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang



Based on the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, Vashnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi (Redhook, 2022) takes on a revisionist approach by centering the perspective of the titular Kaikeyi, a figure who has sometimes been reviled. Let’s let the official marketing description give us some contexts: “I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me. So begins Kaikeyi’s story. The only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, she is raised on legends of the gods: how they churned the vast ocean to obtain the nectar of immortality, how they vanquish evil and ensure the land of Bharat prospers, and how they offer powerful boons to the devout and the wise. Yet she watches as her father unceremoniously banishes her mother, listens as her own worth is reduced to how great a marriage alliance she can secure. And when she calls upon the gods for help, they never seem to hear. Desperate for some measure of independence, she turns to the texts she once read with her mother and discovers a magic that is hers alone. With this power, Kaikeyi transforms herself from an overlooked princess into a warrior, diplomat, and most favored queen, determined to carve a better world for herself and the women around her. But as the evil from her childhood tales threatens the cosmic order, the path she has forged clashes with the destiny the gods have chosen for her family. Kaikeyi must decide if resistance is worth the destruction it will wreak—and what legacy she intends to leave behind.”

One of the most interesting deviations from some of the more standard renderings of the Hindu epic is the fact that Kaikeyi is born with a special ability that allows her to access something called the binding plane. This place is sort of a psychic location that involves the connections that are built between individuals. Kaikeyi has the capacity to influence the strings that link people together and artificially enhance these bonds. Such a power becomes particularly useful, especially as Kaikeyi involves herself in various political alliances. However, the main issue that the novel grapples with is a central issue that emerges in the Hindu epic concerning her relationship with her stepson Rama (Kaikeyi is the third wife of a king, and Rama is the child of another wife). In the most commonly understood storyline, Kaikeyi does not want to lose her power and when her attendant, Manthara, gives her information that Rama will eventually become king, Kaikeyi decides to trade in two divinely granted favors—called boons—that the king owes her based upon an earlier battle sequence in which Kaikeyi saves the king’s life. Kaikeyi uses these boons to banish Rama to the wilderness and install her own biological son on the king’s throne. Without this information, readers might have read this novel as a kind of interesting feminist depiction of power within a vaguely Asian context.

*spoiler alert here*
Thus, what Patel really offers is a kind of revisionist Hindu epic in which Kaikeyi’s motive behind banishing Rama emerges not in the context of protecting her own power but actually because of the danger that Kaikeyi perceives in the way that Rama is dealing with his emerging spiritual identity. Much like other feminist revisionist texts, such as Christa Wolf’s Cassandra, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, amongst others, Patel seeks to establish a different way of understanding Kaikeyi. What is most interesting to me is the fissure between readers who are aware of the Hindu epics’ most traditional depictions and the readers who are mostly unfamiliar with them. The marketing team behind the American version does not fully elaborate upon the epic contexts and instead, the marketing description focuses more on a kind of action-packed plot with a female lead at its center. Much, I think, of the force of Patel’s novel is blunted without the reader’s fuller awareness of the epic’s background, but the novel elements included—such as the binding plane—certainly provide much for anybody to engage with this intriguing work.

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A Review of Winter in the Blood (Penguin Classics, 2008; originally published 1974).

Posted by: ccape

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape



As always, at Asian American literature fans, we occasionally cast the net wider, to include other writers that we believe, at least, deserve a little bit more recognition and discussion. Our latest in Asian American literature fans+ is a review of James Welch’s Winter in the Blood. When I was in graduate school, we were assigned Fool’s Crow for our MA exam reading list. I remember really enjoying that novel, so when an opportunity came up to read another of his novels with a friend, I certainly jumped at that chance. In this case, I’m here to review Welch’s Winter in the Blood. While Fool’s Crow was set in a much earlier historical period, Winter in the Blood tends to more contemporary issues.

Let’s let the marketing description do some work for us: “During his life, James Welch came to be regarded as a master of American prose, and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is one of his most enduring works. The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana's vast emptiness. Winter in the Blood is an evocative and unforgettable work of literature that will continue to move and inspire anyone who encounters it.”

This rather pithy description does do a great job of condensing the poetic nature of this slim novel. The main character is leading an aimless life, working odd jobs from time to time, having short-lived sexual relationships with various women, while trying to figure out a path beyond his desultory day-to-day existence. Despite the many setbacks faced by this narrator, he always gives us a sense of quiet dignity that comes from a self-consciousness that there is something more to his life. Late in the novel, a series of analepses begins to put into greater context the apathy and general malaise that the narrator has been living in. We discover that, as a teenager, he was tasked with his brother to help bring in cows from various grazing lands. During this period, an accident occurs involving a horse, and his brother tragically dies. His brother's death has ultimately cast a pall over everything he has done since and helps explain his general lack of direction. A relationship to a blind man also helps clarify his ancestry and background as a member of the Blackfeet tribe. Here, we discover that his grandmother had endured a very grueling winter around the time that the tribe was forced from their lands primarily by white settlers. This knowledge is crucial, as it helps provide him with a more material sense of his past. The novel’s quiet power exists in its lyrical language and a narrator, who despite it all, endures.

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A Review of Jadie Jang’s Monkey Around (Solaris, 2021).

Posted by: ccape

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape



So, for those of you who didn’t realize: Jadie Jang is a pen name for the wonderful Claire Light. Way back in the day, I was such a huge fan of Claire’s work that I wrote on one of her short stories “Abducted by Aliens!” in my first book, Racial Asymmetries. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a standalone publication by Claire, so when Monkey Around (Solaris, 2021) appeared, I was massively stoked. The challenge for me, as I’ve taken a new job and adjusted to life on a new coast with an entirely different climate, is carving enough time to read. I’ve definitely slowed down, but I finally managed to complete this novel, which was read really over a period of a couple of months (over various subway and bus rides). Let’s let the official marketing description do some work for us: “San Francisco has a Monkey King — and she's freaking out. Barista, activist, and were-monkey Maya McQueen was well on her way to figuring herself out. Well, part of the way. 25% of the way. If you squint. But now the Bay Area is being shaken up. Occupy Wall Street has come home to roost; and on the supernatural side there’s disappearances, shapeshifter murders, and the city’s spirit trying to find its guardian. Maya doesn’t have a lot of time before chaos turns up at her door, and she needs to solve all of her problems. Well, most of them. The urgent ones, anyhow. But who says the solutions have to be neat? Because Monkey is always out for mischief.”

You really can’t beat a mystery. Boiled into the plot is the “whodunnit” element that drives you forward, but what Jang, aka Light, has in the bag is the fact that she knows just how to create a fully fleshed out, unforgettable first person narrator. Maya is hilarious and quite frank in the way that she relates to everyone else. Whether or not she senses that someone else is trouble, is attractive, must be considered with care or not are all a part of the lush interiority that Jang provides us. The other element that I found striking is the effective use of the chapter structure. Each chapter is like an episode of a procedural, where we are following along as the mystery deepens and is eventually resolved. Once I understood the structure, I realized that this type of novel was one I could relish over a longer period of time because I knew that each chapter was building its own mini-plot. While reading the novel, I got the sense that there were going to be many sequels. For instance, there’s a huge unresolved element that the marketing description details related to the “city’s spirit,” which reminds us of the contemporary work of N.K. Jemisin in her own city series. In the case of Monkey Around, the city’s spirit leads Jang to explore discourses related to indigenous identity as well as indigenous land dispossession. So, beyond the crackling plot and Maya’s spritely narration, we do get a very intriguing and politically engaged context concerning interracial and interethnic alliances. The final thing I wanted to comment upon was the fun world building aspects that make this work a speculative fiction. Of course, Asian Americanists will well be familiar with the monkey king and its various configurations that have emerged in literature (Tripmaster Monkey, American Born Chinese, etc.), but Jang’s version gives us the opportunity to explore a whole host of shapeshifting and paranormal figures from various cultures. This aspect of the novel really makes the speculative dimensions robust, especially as you see the variations in the power of these characters. Of course, given the fact that the entity that seems to be attacking these shapeshifters is intent typically on sucking out their souls and killing them, many of these “supernats,” as they are called, are not long for the fictional world. Ultimately, the plot concludes in a satisfying way, with the exception of a couple of elements that seem to be open for future installments. As of this time though, a little birdie told me that sales are not great, so the likelihood that we see these sequels is still a question. Whatever the case, I hope I’ve intrigued you enough to buy a copy and read this work, so that we can put Jang to work to finish out the series!

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A Review of Weike Wang’s Joan is Okay (Knopf, 2022).

Posted by: ljiang28

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang



I absolutely loved Weike Wang’s Chemistry, which is one of those slim novels you can easily teach in the quarter system. When I saw that Wang had a new book out, I saved it for a period when I knew I would need a break! So, here I am reviewing Weike Wang’s Joan is Okay (Knopf, 2022). The marketing description is robust: “Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations. Once Joan and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, her parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined. Deceptively spare yet quietly powerful, laced with sharp humor, Joan Is Okay touches on matters that feel deeply resonant: being Chinese-American right now; working in medicine at a high-stakes time; finding one’s voice within a dominant culture; being a woman in a male-dominated workplace; and staying independent within a tight-knit family. But above all, it’s a portrait of one remarkable woman so surprising that you can’t get her out of your head.”

I’m going to put my spoiler alert here, so turn away unless you want to find out a little bit more about the novel. The rather vague phrasing—again, spoiler alert—connected to “health crisis” is of course none other than the COVID-19 pandemic, which emerges in this text in a little bit of an understated way. Though the book is set in NYC, there isn’t much in the way of covering the eventual fallout that Trump’s usage of the China Virus would have on city residents, where microaggressions and outright material violence on Asian bodies have become a pattern more than the exception. In any case, the title evokes the concept of normative personalities. Joan’s dedicated to her work, so much so that at one point, she’s forced to go on a sort of wellness vacation. What works to her advantage in terms of the upper administration—that is, her tireless work ethic—is simultaneously the very thing that becomes targeted by human resources at a later point. One of the most interesting aspects of this narrative is that Joan likes her isolation, enjoys her introversion, and really relishes her spare existence. Her “life as work” motto doesn’t bother her in the slightest. It is everyone around her who finds her approach to be a problem. In some sense, you might see Joan as a model minority stereotype: she’s a doctor, whom others perceive as too hard-working and too robotic. Frankly, Joan doesn’t care much about how she’s perceived as a racial minority. She just wants to work, and that’s exactly what makes her feel okay. Whether or not the reader agrees with her approach to life, Joan would tell you: back off, this approach makes me feel fulfilled.

In any case, in some ways, I loved Wang’s approach to the Asian American who could be perceived as a stereotype. The problem that Wang’s novel reveals is that the internal processes of this type of individual involve a way of looking at the world that others diagnose, label, and then try to fix. Could a kind of nonstop work ethic be something productive for some individuals? Wang’s novel seems to suggest that it could be, but even after all was said and done: I still occasionally did wonder about Joan’s occasional level of isolation and rage at how others sometimes try to interfere in the way that she lives her life. The depiction of the COVID-19 pandemic was of course interesting because it’s one of the first novels that I’ve read that has squarely integrated this event into the narrative, thus connecting our actual temporality with a fictional temporality. These days, I’ll watch television shows etc., which are supposedly set in a realistic world, yet no one wears a mask indoors, and I find myself finding these productions more fictional than some of the space operas I’ve been reading. In any case, Wang’s prose and her ability to mine the depths of first-person interiority is ALWAYS a delight, so read for that reason alone.


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A Review of Mike Chen’s Light Years from Home (MIRA, 2022).

Posted by: ccape

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape



I was really excited to read Mike Chen’s Light Years from Home (MIRA, 2022), as the premise was just up my alley. I will let the marketing description get us situated, as usual: “Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused—and convinced he'd been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. The women dealt with it very differently. Kass, suspecting her college-dropout twin simply ran off, became the rock of the family. Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob. When Evie's UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate. And discovers Jakob is back. He's different—older, stranger, and talking of an intergalactic war—but the tensions between the siblings haven't changed at all. If the family is going to come together to help Jakob, then Kass and Evie are going to have to fix their issues, and fast. Because the FBI is after Jakob, and if their brother is telling the truth, possibly an entire space armada, too. The perfect combination of action, imagination and heart, Light Years from Home is a touching drama about a challenge as difficult as saving the galaxy: making peace with your family…and yourself.”

One of the most interesting things about this novel is the way in which Chen uses what I would call incidental ethnicity. The fact that the main characters are of mixed race background does not bear on the plot in any significant way. Nevertheless, what I really appreciate about Chen’s work is his focus on characterological relationships. The tensions that exist amongst the multiple characters always drive the plot ahead. The main issues arise around the fact that Kass has essentially been providing all the carework for their mother, and she finds Evie’s obsession with the UFO network to be at best unproductive and at worst completely escapist. When Jakob returns, it is naturally Kass who is the most suspicious of these circumstances and does not believe the circumstances that revolve around his reappearance.

So, I’ll leave it here with my requisite spoiler warning: turn away should you not want to find out other plot details! Chen’s novel is ultimately a kind of family plot, with the entire Shao family—at least what is left of them—having to come together in order to support Jakob. As is the case with many science fictional novels, there is a larger political heft to the plot: there is an alien species intent on destruction, so the family must help avert any potential fallout from that species taking too much of an interest in Earth. If I do have any critiques, it’s only that I would have loved to have more world building elements on the alien side. Most of the novel is set on earth, with very good reason: Chen is working on the character dynamics that have caused a family to disintegrate. At the same time, there is so much more material to work with that you’ll hope there might be a sequel just so you can find out what is fully going on in outer space!

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A Review of R.F Kuang’s Babel (Harper Voyager, 2022).

Posted by: ccape

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape



Ah, so I am reviewing R.F Kuang’s Babel (Harper Voyager, 2022), which is Kuang’s first major publication after the epic trilogy that started with The Poppy War. Let’s let B&N provide us with some basic information about the text: “1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…”

For a 500+ page novel, this description is pretty pithy. Robin Swift arrives under fairly mysterious circumstances, forced to learn a number of languages in preparation to study at Oxford. As one of the titular “babblers,” Robin is tasked with helping to find new translation pairings to power silver, the magical metal that powers the empire. Along the way, he makes a number of friends, two of whom are fellow minorities (these are Victoire, Ramiz/ Ramy, and Letitia). There is a period of time in which the four are bosom buddies, and it seems like their educations are full of privilege and possibility. Yet, a dark side begins to emerge when Robin is approached by an underground organization. The main contact is none other than Robin’s half-brother, who like himself, is likely half-Chinese. As Robin begins to find out, the whole apparatus of Oxford is powering the inequalities produced out of Empire, so Robin must figure out what side he stands on. At first, Robin tentatively works for this revolutionary organization, helping to do what he can to smuggle out bars of silver, but as this work gets increasingly dangerous, Robin decides that he cannot go further. Yet, the designs of Empire remain, and the story shifts ever closer to the actual historical contexts that propel the Opium Wars. In light of this particular event, the novel moves into its darkest stretch, as friendships are tested and eventually terminated.

I’ll pause here for the requisite spoiler warning and to state briefly that I absolutely ripped through this book. There’s something about a dark academic fantasy book that I can’t put down! In any case, so now that you know we’re moving onto the spoilers: when Robin and his three classmates travel to China to help out with some diplomatic issues, they inadvertently help initiate a war between China and the United Kingdom. In the process, it is revealed that both Victoire and Ramy have been working with the same revolutionary organization that initially had recruited Robin. When Robin ends up killing his father, the four ultimately realize that they cannot return to Oxford and must join the revolutionary organization. Unfortunately, they do not realize that there is a traitor in their midst: Letty, in fact, has become an informant and ends up killing Ramy, while Victoire and Robin end up prisoners. The concluding arc of the book has a naturalist feel, as characters must make incredibly difficult decisions involving social revolution and social upheaval. Kuang never backs off the stakes of the grave and epic actions of her characters. It was not a surprise to find out that Kuang was influenced by the work of Lisa Lowe, as the imprint of The Intimacies of Four Continents is all over this book. Kuang seamlessly weaves together a story of friendship, a story of colonial revolution, a story of global capitalism gone awry into a dark academic fantasy that will rivet you from the beginning to end. One of my favorite recent reads, perfect for the dreary weather that is sure to befall us as winter looms on the horizon! =)

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