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A review by gigireadswithkiki
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Did not finish book. Stopped at 29%.
DNF-ing at 29%
HONESTLY the writing style is perfectly adequate there’s nothing blatantly wrong with the writing itself. But Z(S)adie Smith is so clearly fatphobic and a hater of Chinese people (for no reason? Perhaps a side effect of being British and simply having haterade injected into your system from such a young age) that I truly hope for her sake I never cross paths with her.
Both the Fatphobia and Sinophobia are so blatantly blunt & direct, which is such a SHARP contrast to the subtlety of Smith’s other critiques on Black racial dynamics and academic sociodynamics. Along comes a scathingly satirical paragraph espousing the stuffy egotism of academics, but by contrast the next paragraph will have “the round Chinese with the slanted diagonal eyes” or “her husband couldnt put his arms around her” or “her obsidian eyes struggled under the pressure of folded skin from above and below” or “you’re mistaken my mother is not glamorous, she’s too big for that”.
Truly such a bafflement to me how Smith has acquired such a cult following when contemporaries of her age have achieved similar accolades without smearing entire demographics of human society.
HONESTLY the writing style is perfectly adequate there’s nothing blatantly wrong with the writing itself. But Z(S)adie Smith is so clearly fatphobic and a hater of Chinese people (for no reason? Perhaps a side effect of being British and simply having haterade injected into your system from such a young age) that I truly hope for her sake I never cross paths with her.
Both the Fatphobia and Sinophobia are so blatantly blunt & direct, which is such a SHARP contrast to the subtlety of Smith’s other critiques on Black racial dynamics and academic sociodynamics. Along comes a scathingly satirical paragraph espousing the stuffy egotism of academics, but by contrast the next paragraph will have “the round Chinese with the slanted diagonal eyes” or “her husband couldnt put his arms around her” or “her obsidian eyes struggled under the pressure of folded skin from above and below” or “you’re mistaken my mother is not glamorous, she’s too big for that”.
Truly such a bafflement to me how Smith has acquired such a cult following when contemporaries of her age have achieved similar accolades without smearing entire demographics of human society.