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sophiaroesler's review against another edition
Moderate: Racism, Racial slurs, Sexual harassment, and Cancer
sektaufeis's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
So scharf und zielgerichtete geschrieben - wow.
Graphic: Racism and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Death, Racial slurs, and Cancer
peachani's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Cancer
fiaharringbook's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Racism, Colonisation, and Gaslighting
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Cancer, Colonisation, Sexual harassment, and Racism
Minor: Racial slurs, Alcohol, Deportation, Slavery, Genocide, Racism, and Police brutality
quantumponies's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Cancer and Suicidal thoughts
safymo's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
it's the story of a black woman living in the UK. a woman who has "made it" and now ponders the question "what was this all for?". it's about the inherited grit, guilt, self-effacement, characteristic of people of immigrant descent in a Western, white male-dominated world – "what was this all for?". when you've merged your work and identity "but what it takes to get there isn't what you need once you've arrived." then what?
this glimpse into a single week in a fictional character's life is sadly reflective of many of our lives. Brown uses many devices to convey the impersonal and perennial value of the text – dialogues without quotation marks, imprecise but evocative descriptions of entitled Janes and Johns Smith. she uses form for a similar goal – poem-like passages, legends of infographics depicting casual racism and "an organised, systematic brutality that their soft and sagging children can scarcely stomach – won't even acknowledge".
the writing is eloquent but challenging at times – some sentence structures eluded my comprehension which made these reflections feel private (to the author) and exclusive but not untrue.
Moderate: Slavery
Minor: Cancer and Death
chsm8's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Moderate: Cancer
jennanaps's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Graphic: Cancer, Medical content, Racism, Terminal illness, Chronic illness, and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Hate crime, Classism, Colonisation, and Medical content
carly_reads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
5.0
How do we examine the legacy of colonization when the basic facts of its construction are disputed in the minds of its beneficiaries?
How can we engage, discuss, even think through a post-colonial lens, when there’s no shared base of knowledge? When even the simplest accounting of events - as preserved in the country’s own archives- wobbles suspect as tin-foil-hat conspiracies in the minds of its educated citizens?
But what it takes to get there isn’t what you need once you’ve arrived.
I feel. Of course I do. I have emotions. But I try to consider events as if they're happening to someone else. Some other entity. There's the thinking, rationalizing I (me). And the doing, the experiencing, her. I look at her kindly. From a distance. To protect myself, I detach.
These directives: listen, be quiet, do this, don’t do that. When does it end? And where has it got me? More, and more of the same. I am everything they told me to become. Not enough. A physical destruction, now, to match the mental. Dissect, poison, destroy this new malignant part of me. But there’s always something else: the next demand, the next criticism. This endless complying, attaining, exceeding – why?
It’s evident now, obvious in retrospect as the proof of root-two’s irrationality, that these world superpowers are neither infallible, nor superior. They’re nothing, not without a brutally enforced relativity. An organized, systematic brutality that their soft and sagging children can scarcely stomach- won’t even acknowledge. Yet cling to as truth. There was never any absolute, no decree from God. Just vicious, random chance. And then, compounding.
Why subject myself to their reductive gaze? To this crushing objecthood. Why endure my own dehumanization?
Graphic: Racism and Cancer
tamaramo's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Moderate: Cancer
Minor: Deportation, Infidelity, Racism, and Colonisation