Naima > Recent Status Updates

Worlds Largest TW for that description of csa that had like. no lead up wow that’s something

god the audacity of the author to think they have the ability to joke abt white guilt when the entire novel is. an exercise in how two white women can make themselves feel better by editing the entire timeline for everyone else

you really gotta b kidding me w this “plot twist”. so you’re telling me tess was lizzy instead of beth. what does that add. what does that contribute.

gotta love how the author really loves employing racial violence for her white MC to oppose for conflict to make her look better. and by ‘gotta love’, i mean i find it so cheap i could buy a better rising action with a nickel

w........ was the grandfather's antisemitic backstory necessary at all. like in any way.

love seacake showing back up to be a plot device to literally carry tess and morehshin TO the plot

god forbid hamid be a decent male character. couldn't have that in this book

not morehshin talking like starfire from the teen titans cartoons.... not them all condemning her wanting to kill a violent misogynist that destroys the future for women's rights.... my brain is melting. how do you write all of this and never look at your cast of characters of color and notice that you've written them to always b portrayed as aggressive and needing to be led along by your white MC

(spoilers) a new brown woman character who's introduced immediately as 'i'll die for your cause'.... i'm going to have a stroke. this book is really just [introduces nonwhite character as a plot device] [introduces nonwhite character as a plot device]

this is a good book but like. god if only the author ctrl+delete'd the heavy incest undertones. yeah these are weird english folks but i am not weird and english. leave me alone

it's crazy that like. berenice has absolutely no characterization other than 'was murdered' and 'enid's girlfriend'. the chapter with enid going back and saving her 100% should've been from berenice's perspective, so she's not just a cardboard cut out to prop up the story

like is there one character of color that isn't just a prop for tess or beth? like just one. even anita here is just used as a soundboard for tess to be able to voice her concerns about the machine, and then the rest of the scene is devoted to "venting about politics with Anita".

alskfdj sorry it's just so funny to me that this 'hardcore anarchist chicana' band's strongest message is 'go to the polls :)'. god.

the idk... white fragility manifests in this writing so blatantly in that when the white MCs are put in the same room as characters of color they have to be shown to be Better or in trivial moments, the MC puts on a show of lamenting being white. "[...] listening to the girls behind us move between Spanish and English [...] Suddenly I could hear my suburban white girl accent clearly. [...] I felt like an interloper."

(spoilers) tess and beth being the same person..... god. this book. UGH!

(spoilers, cw pedophilia, eye gore) not sure how well it settles w me that heather (implied turkish/arab thru her cousin hamid) and soojin (korean) are portrayed as the ones super into the fact that they murdered their pedophile teacher, while beth (white) miserably laments the morality of committing murder, when she was the one that dug her fingers into his eyes and ultimately killed him

(spoilers) oh thank god they saved her. at the very least that's something redeemable about the book, though there was NO need to start the novel off by killing her

annoyed w this book's constant assertion that violence is bad when returned to oppressors. (spoilers) you have this literal transphobic serial killer kidnapping trans women to kill them and enid, who isn't even a MC, still goes :/ idk how i feel about *murder* though....

(spoilers, cw transmisogyny) 86 pages later we finally follow up to the fact that the only introduced trans woman was murdered........

how is newitz not at all aware that the feminism they criticize is the exact same they employ by having a white woman speak for several brown maghrebi women....

i haven't taken so many notes on a book since high school. i'm screaming w my mouth shut. "I needed something that would lead them gently away from that Great Moments in White Feminism playbook. If they met Aseel and Salina and the others, they might find it harder to team up with Comstock to destroy their sisters on the Midway. What would appeal to these women?" what kinda white savior bullshit...

"It was like we were defending a little town in the Maghreb against the Alexandrian army." not to be moroccan on main but [vomits]. what an orientalist and trivializing way to phrase that. every time a character other than tess or beth has a problem, it's minimized.