Naima > Recent Status Updates

the obsession w historical racism is unreal. there's no need to point out the orientalist nature of the taunts aseel faces when it's the narrative itself that's explicitly calling her them. the book constantly shoehorns historical racism and then goes in to comment on how its wrong, when there are ways it could simply avoid mentioning the racist part explicitly.

(SPOILERS) also the fact that the author often establishes the diversity in this book in the wake of violence.... like soojin lashing out at their social studies teacher and for the first time explicitly saying she's korean bc he fetishized her and called her a china doll.... tess being established as jewish only after an antisemitic hate crime.......

its crazy to me how every woman of color in this book is portrayed as more aggressive and violent than the white main characters. i thought maybe soojin would be the exception so there'd be some depth but....

cw pedophilia. there's just. so much this book tries to cover and it's not doing it very well. i don't think there was a need for the underground abortion clinic guy to be creepy or their teacher be a pedophile. like. there is too much happening at any point in this story

the lukewarm liberalism of all of this..... "'i like her ideas about free love, but violence is always the wrong way forward.' that gave me a pang of relief. i couldn't team up with people who liked to watch things burn." are you for real? at this point in time in-universe, slavery has Just Barely ended

something unsettling abt a white author putting the words "she's passing as white. i don't understand how she can say she wants freedom for all when she won't even admit what her real background is. i mean, a lot of people would benefit from seeing a colored lady telling white men what to do" into the mouth of a brown woman

have yet to be introduced to a character of color that isn't used as a tool by either white female protag... the only introduced trans woman was killed within the first 45 pages... was there no sensitivity reader?

lord if bernice could just shut the hell up for two seconds

this book is just [event that won’t affect anything too greatly] [poorly placed teenage love triangle] [every female character is more or less the same hollow shell]

the pov doesn’t stay still long enough for me to get attached to any of these characters... who cares if any of them are getting courted, the sisters are nearly interchangeable other than mirabella bc of her powers. almost the same character as the other two so far