Reviews tagging 'Cultural appropriation'

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

11 reviews

jaysaysnope's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny inspiring mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I want to love a place the way N.K. Jemisin loves New York City. The ending was a little anticlimactic for me, but

the betrayal of Staten Island

was so good (and honestly, realistic to the character), I cannot wait to find out how it’s dealt with in The World We Make.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Cultural appropriation, Body horror, and Violence

Moderate: Classism, Islamophobia, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Colonisation, Hate crime, Sexual assault, Misogyny, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Police brutality

litliz's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Misogyny, Racism, and Sexism

Minor: Addiction, Alcohol, Cultural appropriation, Fire/Fire injury, Islamophobia, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Fatphobia, Hate crime, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Lesbophobia, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Alcoholism, Cancer, Car accident, Cursing, Death, Deportation, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Abortion, Antisemitism, Cannibalism, Classism, Colonisation, Gaslighting, Racial slurs, and Rape

kshertz's review against another edition

challenging informative mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Definitely take this review and rating with a grain of salt. I have heard so much about this author and this book so I definitely wanted to read it. The concept is brilliant and there are so many brilliant lines in this book. I really feel like a lot of it probably went over my head but I did enjoy the parts of it that I understood and caught. It was a little bit too slow of a read for me and very long but overall definitely glad I got to experience this writer and their writing style.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Body horror, Abandonment, Genocide, Misogyny, Racism, Racial slurs, Violence, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Classism, Colonisation, Death, and Pandemic/Epidemic

tangleroot_eli's review

adventurous emotional funny tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

How much do I love this book? I love it so much that when I finished it, I set it down and stared into nothing for a few minutes, just to feel all the weird feels I was feeling. I love it so much that I didn't write down a single content warning while I was reading, because I didn't want to stop long enough to make a note of it. I just... love it, OK?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Racism, Classism, Toxic friendship, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Sexual assault, Violence, Body horror, Homophobia, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, and Police brutality

Minor: Cultural appropriation, Abortion, and Fatphobia

martinatan's review

adventurous lighthearted tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I was intrigued by the premise but the execution was not entirely satisfying. I was mainly surprised by the conclusion of this book (the first of an upcoming trilogy), but it didn’t really delight me—I thought it was mildly clever.

I could sense a lot of research and creative license went into writing this, and the concept must make it hard to really flesh out the characters, but ultimately the writing voice rubbed me the wrong way with almost all of the characterizations. Especially when

trying to speak to some very particular identities, I felt the author was not handling every characters’ background to the degree of sensitivity that I hoped for. There were many times that the description of East Asian characters, especially, fell short of what I feel is a culturally nuanced understanding of being from East Asian. That’s all I really can articulate about it for now, but ultimately there was a buildup of instances throughout the novel that gave me an overarching feeling of distrust in the author’s ability to inhabit characters of other cultures.

Also, I felt really unbalanced by the amount of “screen time” given to each character, as some did not get many POV chapters and it left me hyperfocused on why. Even if they get more focus in future installments, I wish they had all been developed to the same degrees in the first. Additionally, the ordering and pacing of how information is revealed felt really off to me, there were times where even how a scene was established rattled my immersion in the characters’ point of view.

Slight ramble ahead. On the premise itself, what I started labeling it in my head early on was

weird fanfic about New York City. I’ve lived near and visited New York my whole life, and only after reading this did I realize I don’t really need “New York fanfic” in my life. Sure it’s an homage and all, but I don’t know that I can get behind the metaphor for white supremacy and colonization being a literal extraterrestrial entity. Maybe it’s because I feel sensitive to this subject, and I had hoped it might be somewhat cathartic to see it play out in a fantasy setting, but after reading this I want to say say that it actually feels kind of disrespectful to people facing actual prejudice, displacement, and hate crimes. Like when the Enemy is vanquished, the implication of how this book ends is that this alien source of white supremacy and therefore the magnitude of injustice in the world is significantly diminished. I just can’t vibe with that after all. Or maybe this is the point, for me to get uncomfortable about how racism and gentrification are still out there. Idk, it just ended up too far removed from a productive or interesting take on society that I would have appreciated.

Anyway. Being someone from New Jersey who has lived close to New York City all my life, perhaps a contemporary fantasy story with this setting wasn’t the right book for me to pick up. Even though I’ve enjoyed the Broken earth trilogy in the past. Hard for me to say!

I can say overall this is somewhat worth reading if you want to explore the base concept of living cities a little, but because of the reasons above, I ultimately didn’t get too much pleasure or satisfaction out of the story.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Emotional abuse, Racism, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Toxic relationship, Ableism, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Colonisation, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Racial slurs, and Xenophobia

Minor: Alcoholism, Cancer, Child abuse, Confinement, Addiction, Miscarriage, Police brutality, Transphobia, War, Cursing, Cultural appropriation, Drug abuse, Abortion, Alcohol, and Cannibalism

toyin_'s review

adventurous challenging funny tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Body horror, Sexual harassment, Classism, Racism, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Eating disorder, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, Antisemitism, Police brutality, Misogyny, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Ableism

laurenkimoto's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

As per usual some disjointed thoughts about this book 

• Amazing cover: the matte city scape with the shiny tentacles and colour detailing ties in so nicely to the story *chef kiss* The person who designed the cover deserves an award
• Chapter titles really should make a comeback 
• We love some reluctant heroes who really just want to say to hell with saving the world just let me live my life in peace 
• I am a fool I did not realize this was part of a series and now I’m sitting here waiting for the next book :(
• The petty book hill I will die on is that short chapters are superior to long chapters 
• This is different than other fantasy books partially because it’s urban fantasy but also because the first half of the book the characters don’t know what’s going on so you don’t know what’s going on. Jemisin doesn’t info dump or use a naive character at the start to explain this world but rather you learn as the characters learn which I find is a fresh take. 
• This book has the most diverse set of characters I have ever come across and it does so without any “token” characters because their identity and diversity is tied in to who/what they are. With this comes addressing so many timely and everlasting issues and Jemisin does so without sacrificing plot, pacing or anything else. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cursing, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Racism, Police brutality, Gaslighting, Abortion, Body shaming, Addiction, Alcohol, Antisemitism, Homophobia, Islamophobia, Lesbophobia, Racial slurs, Rape, Transphobia, Bullying, Drug use, Religious bigotry, Biphobia, Classism, and Violence

thepassivebookworm's review

adventurous challenging dark funny slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cultural appropriation, Sexual harassment, Racism, and Xenophobia

macknificent's review against another edition

adventurous funny hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

It pains me to say it, but this was a 3 star read. There were issues with pacing and the author didn't trust the reader enough in some areas. I loved the concept, the characters, and what the story was speaking on; the execution was just a little off.

Still, Jemisin is like pizza, even when she's bad it's still pretty good. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, Racial slurs, Racism, Religious bigotry, Xenophobia, Classism, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, and Toxic relationship

linaanderson's review

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Cultural appropriation, Cursing, Hate crime, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, and Violence