Babel

by R.F. Kuang

History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.’

Show the world what they want; contort yourself into the image they want to see, because seizing control of the story is how you in turn control them.

Nothing was pushing this arrangement off its course; there were too many private interests, too much money at stake. They could see where it was going, but the people who had the power to do anything about it had been placed in positions where they would profit, and the people who suffered most had no power at all.

Robin Swift was an asset, and assets should be undyingly grateful that they were treated well at all.

who professed always to love her, to absolutely adore her, but who failed to hear anything she was saying if it didn’t comport with how she already saw the world.

Why, he wondered, did white people get so very upset when anyone disagreed with them?

‘This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.’

‘That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.’