More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
‘Very good. Robin Swift you’ll be. Mr Swift, good to meet you.’
Its very interesting to me that we never even get to know what his name is before this moment in which he has to choose a new one. Erasing his previous indentiy so swiftly (pun unintended) and thoroughly later in the book I'll probably barely remember he even had a name before this. To me, this is definitely how colonization of the mind begins.
they had grown increasingly common over the past several years as the demand for indentured Chinese servants grew concurrently with overseas difficulties with the slave trade.
Will trick and force anyone to do their work but themselves. This made me so incredibly irritated and salty so quickly.
This all hinged on him, Robin realized. The choice was his. Only he could determine the truth, because only he could communicate it to all parties.
Absolutely nothing to do with this book but this encompasses perfectly my feelings about the Bible. It has been translated soooo many times by so many different people with not only different interpretations (which can completely change the meaning) but also different intentions.
I grew up in a Christian household and I'm not even trying to say that the Bible doesn't hold ay good teachings or whatever, but its nuts to me that our religious institutions teach to have such a blind faith in it wihtout examining things like this.
When thoughts popped up in Chinese, he quashed them.
In weeks, no one seemed to remember he was Chinese at all.
‘Good.’ Professor Lovell nodded to the waiting cab. ‘Get in, we’ve got to make you an Englishman.’ He meant this literally. For the rest of the afternoon, Professor Lovell took Robin on a series of errands in the service of assimilating him into British civil society.
Consider the Bible. The original Hebrew text never specifies what sort of forbidden fruit the serpent persuades Eve to eat. But in Latin, malum means “bad” and mālum,’ he wrote the words out for Robin, emphasizing the macron with force, ‘means “apple”. It was a short leap from there to blaming the apple for the original sin. But for all we know, the real culprit could be a persimmon.’
But Professor Lovell was adamant. ‘Languages are easier to forget than you imagine,’ he said. ‘Once you stop living in the world of Chinese, you stop thinking in Chinese.’ ‘But I thought you wanted me to start thinking in English,’ Robin said, confused. ‘I want you to live in English,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘This is true. But I still need you to practise your Chinese. Words and phrases you think are carved into your bones can disappear in no time.’
‘Well, that’s one good thing about you,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘When you’re beaten, you don’t cry.’
Im fucking horrified right now
‘I hoped, based on Miss Slate’s reports, that you had grown to be a diligent and hardworking boy. I see now that I was wrong. Laziness and deceit are common traits among your kind.
As if not relizing the time once means laziness. This mans aggresive confirmation bias and racism is giving me the biggest migraine. My heart has been pounding this entire scene. First from fear and now in anger.
Canton meant poverty, insignificance, and ignorance. Canton meant the plague. Canton meant no more books. London meant all the material comforts he could ask for. London meant, someday, Oxford.
Some other child suited to better, kinder treatment might have realized that such nonchalance on the part of adults like Mrs Piper, Mr Felton, and Mr Chester to a badly bruised eleven-year-old was frightfully wrong.
When you look at another person as less than. Less evolved. Less civilized. It becomes so easy to treat them brutaly and defend such bahaviour. I wonder if Professor Lovell would have done that if the boy he took in was white. Would Mr Chester and Mrs Piper had cared more?
to Professor Lovell and his friends in their remote walled estates, the epidemic was something to mention in passing, wince about in sympathy, and quickly forget.
‘But without ownership, it takes the teeth out of it all.’ ‘Perhaps that’s for the best, though – freedmen do work better than slaves after all, and slavery is in fact more expensive than a free labour market—’
This entire conversation is giving me hives. To them it is a simple loss of capital and a debate on what labour produces the best outcomes. For the knewly freed enslaved Africans its life.
It's absolutely terrifying that this was genuinely how human lives were considered and it's even more horrifying that we are literally starting to repeat this history right now.
And with that, the conversation turned to the absurdity of women’s rights.
Ok, going into this book I knew I would be reading about a lot of topics that would personally bother me but I'm realizing I need to slightly switch my metality. I did not anticipate the seething hatred and rage I'm starting to feel and since this is only the second chapter I really need to work on my inner peace. I'll rant about it in class.
The English are never going to think I’m posh, but if I fit into their fantasy, then they’ll at least think I’m royalty.’
Ever since his arrival in London, Robin had tried to keep his head down and assimilate, to play down his otherness. He thought the more unremarkable he seemed, the less attention he would draw. But Ramy, who had no choice but to stand out, had decided he might as well dazzle.
Orientalists are fascinating. Classicists are dull.
And the thousands of African languages and dialects are nothing
editions of every dictionary published in what Anthony claimed was every language spoken in the world.
I seriously doubt it
Similarly, you’ll find most of the African Grammaticas are translated into English from German – it’s the German missionaries and philologists who are doing the most work there; we haven’t had anyone doing African languages for years.’
More than I thought but also exactly what I expected
‘You’ve noticed by now, surely, that Babel alone among the Oxford faculties accepts students not of European origin. Nowhere else in this country will you find Hindus, Muslims, Africans, and Chinamen studying under the same roof. We accept you not despite, but because of your foreign backgrounds.’ Professor Playfair emphasized this last part as if it was a matter of great pride. ‘Because of your origins, you have the gift of languages those born in England cannot imitate.
I noticed that literally all of the new translators cohort have "guardians." They can't do it as effectively themselves and lack certain understandings of the text so go to different countries they don't even respect to find children to do it for them. Will only allow them in their institute when they can provide something.
(I'm a salty person by nature and this book is bringing all the salt out lol)
She turned her gaze on Ramy before he could. ‘And you – Madras? Bombay?’ ‘Calcutta,’ Ramy said pleasantly. ‘My father was stationed in Calcutta,’ she said. ‘Three years, from 1825 to 1828. Could be you saw him around.’ ‘Lovely,’ said Ramy as he slathered jam over his scone. ‘Could be he pointed a gun at my sisters once.’ Robin snorted, but Letty blanched. ‘I’m only saying I’ve met Hindus before—’ ‘I’m Muslim.’ ‘Well, I’m just saying—’ ‘And you know,’ now Ramy was buttering his scone with great vim, ‘it’s very irritating, actually, the way everyone wants to equate India with Hinduism. “Oh,
...more
Obsessed
They’d been chosen for privileges they couldn’t have ever imagined, funded by powerful and wealthy men whose motives they did not fully understand, and they were acutely aware these could be lost at any moment.
‘Like yours. Otherwise, Richard thinks . . .’ Professor Chakravarti was using this construction quite a lot, Robin noticed, ‘that the Chinese tend towards certain natural inclinations. Which is to say, he doesn’t think Chinese students would acclimatize well here.’
Mans lets his prejudice affect his outlook so much its a detriment to the whole institution
‘We take their languages, their ways of seeing and describing the world. We ought to give them something in return.’ ‘But language,’ said Professor Lovell, ‘is not like a commercial good, like tea or silks, to be bought and paid for. Language is an infinite resource. And if we learn it, if we use it – who are we stealing from?’
And he wondered at the contradiction: that he despised them, that he knew they could be up to no good, and that still he wanted to be respected by them enough to be included in their ranks.
He hated this place. He loved it. He resented how it treated him. He still wanted to be a part of it – because it felt so good to be a part of it, to speak to its professors as an intellectual equal, to be in on the great game.
He felt a crush of guilt then for loving them, and Oxford, as much as he did.
‘So you’re here to ship silver back to those mutinying sepoys, are you?’ Perhaps he should, Robin almost said. Perhaps that’s precisely what the world needs. But he stopped himself before he opened his mouth. Not because he was afraid of breaking Griffin’s confidence, but because he could not bear how this confession would shatter the life they’d built for themselves.
The fear of breaking the status quo is all encompassing. Really the only way to make a system better is to completely dismantle it and build again from the ground up but that comes with so much uncertainty even people being mistreated by the system may not want to take that leap.
It makes me wonder what I'm willing to and not willing to give up in pursuits of better reform.
And because he himself could not resolve the contradiction of his willingness to thrive at Babel even as it became clearer, day by day, how obviously unjust were the foundations of its fortunes.
Never did he get the chance to wander out of the compound onto Heeren Street, where the Chinese residents lived; instead, those weeks were an unbroken stream of sun, sand, and endless Bible study meetings among white Protestants.
‘Languages aren’t just made of words. They’re modes of looking at the world. They’re the keys to civilization. And that’s knowledge worth killing for.’
And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.
Let him cook
Victoire proposed a number of West African languages she hoped to learn to the advisory board, but was rejected on the grounds that Babel possessed insufficient resources for proper instruction in any of them.
Say it with me kids - I CALL BULLSHIT
it was an absurdly heavy class load, especially when each professor assigned coursework as if none of the other courses existed.
Real
But they’re not meant to be shared. Would you be content to sit hour after hour with a white man as he asks you the story behind every metaphor, every god’s name, so he can pilfer through your people’s beliefs for a match-pair that might make a silver bar glow?’
Letty looked unconvinced. ‘But it’s not real, is it?’ ‘Of course it’s real.’ ‘Oh, please, Victoire.’
Letty continues to be the most frustrating characfer in this book. Unlike all the overtly racist people (which is expected) she, while experiencing some descrimination herself, actively refuses to listen and internalize the issues her cohort speak on in regards to thei expeirences. And then she has the audacity to get offended and pissy when they obviously don't appreciate her willful ignorance.
‘They need us,’ Robin marvelled. It was strange to think the functioning of an entire empire depended on just a handful of people. ‘They need us so terribly,’ agreed Professor Chakravarti. ‘And it’s good, in our situation, to be needed.’
‘Did you know Anthony was a slave?’ Letty asked one night in hall. Unlike Victoire, she was determined to raise the issue at every opportunity; indeed, she was obsessed with Anthony’s death in a way that felt uncomfortably, performatively righteous.
I hate her so much
Robin found it was actually quite easy to put up with any degree of social unrest, as long as one got used to looking away.
Yet this was utterly appropriate. Oxford, and Babel by extension, were, at their roots, ancient religious institutions, and for all their contemporary sophistication, the rituals that comprised university life were still based in medieval mysticism.
yet in that moment he knew perfectly and, from the look on Professor Chakravarti’s face, his supervisor did too.
Wtf kind of vibe did I just get from that? I have a theory but I don't think I'm right aboutit
‘Oh, dear.’ Letty rubbed her shoulder. ‘Did they let you try a different one?’
I can only say it so many times before I start getting sick of myself but I cannot stand her. She encompasses so many people I've met in real life and it's grating on my nerves every time she speaks.
‘Please, darling, it’ll be no fun without you. I’ll buy your ticket.’
I understand there are things she just wont think about, but how tone deaf she is isn't even something she's attempting to unlearn because she knows she doesn't actually have to
Without looking at her, Colin held his wineglass out in front of Victoire’s face. ‘Get rid of this and get me a burgundy, will you?’
Even with her very obviously dressed as a guest of the party the first and only thing he sees is her race, then making assumptions about her position based on his meagre worldview
‘We’re sitting here because we’re already barely tolerated, and because as long as we don’t move too quickly or speak too loudly, we can blend into the background or at least pretend to be serving staff. That’s how this works, Letty. A brown man at an Oxford ball is a fun curiosity as long as he keeps to himself and manages not to offend anyone, but if I dance with you, then someone’s going to hit me, or worse.’ She huffed. ‘Don’t be dramatic.’
Again she's at this point being purposefully obtuse. He is telling you what could happen to him and why he has to be cautious but because it inconveniences her she isn't listening. I know her character is here to show the very real reality of people like this (just because you face one type of oppression does not mean you can understand or sympathize with others as you actively benefit from the other aspect of your identity) but I am a very unforgiving easily irritated person and she drives me crazy
‘Don’t you know why?’ Their eyes met. Robin felt a prickle at the back of his neck. The space between them felt very charged, like the moment between lightning and thunder, and Robin had no idea what was going on or what would happen next, only that it all felt very strange and terrifying, like teetering over the edge of a windy, roaring cliff.
Omfg they're so gay it hurts, just kiss already!
‘They had a go at me too, you know.’ This was a bizarre line of argument, and Robin was not sure why Letty made it at all, but she said it with vehemence. Her voice went up by several octaves. ‘It wasn’t just because she’s—’
I could write a 25-page essay, single spaced detailing every instance Letty pissed me off, why she was wrong, and how she is the epitome of the kind of people I can't stand. I'm not gonna shut up about her for the rest of the book istg.
And he remembered sitting on the stairs deep into the night with Letty, who wept furiously into his shoulder. ‘I wish he would see me,’ she kept repeating through her hiccups. ‘Why won’t he see me?’ And though Robin could think of any number of reasons – because Ramy was a brown man in England and Letty the daughter of an admiral; because Ramy did not want to be shot in the street; or because Ramy simply did not love her like she loved him, and she’d badly mistaken his general kindness and ostentatious verve for special attention, because Letty was the kind of girl who was used to, and had
...more
There were rumours of a grand dinner to be put on for Oxford’s poor and homeless, but the city authorities argued that the richness of roast beef and plum pudding would put the poor in such a state of excitement that they would lose their ability to properly enjoy the illumination.*
