giancarlo :
i like reading Kuang informatively. As someone who lived in a colonized country, I had an idea of how colonization affected my culture. But, because I've only read about things that went on in my country, I didn't know how colonization affected other cultures; which Kuang informs well and in a digestible manner in Babel. Other than that, I found Robin to be incredibly naive (which works for the story and the point of his character, but got tiring for me since you're constantly in his head), and I found myself liking Griffin and Victoire a lot more. While Kuang's writing definitely has a lot of tells and not enough showing, I think that's part of her charm--why she works. Babel would definitely be a classic in the future in the same breath as how Dickens writes about classism and the abuse of children in his time, Kuang will be held in the same respect but for different social topics. Other than that, I find her prose to be straightforward (especially comparing her to the likes of Donna Tartt, Austen, and Shelley whose prose just sing), and I find her writing to be informative rather than immersive. Still, I respect her for how she writes about complex topics and presents them in an accessible manner--Colonialism criticized in Babel, war crimes in history and the effects of war in Poppy War, the commercialization of literature (or art in general) and the fucked up nature of social media together with racial commentary in Yellowface, and then now the torturous culture of academia in Katabasis. I'm glad she's writing in our age where these topics need to be explored and in a way that's accessible especially for people who have the attention span of a squirrel. Kuang fans and Kuang haters both need to chill tf out lmao
2025-09-29 19:59:41