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A review by anxious_librarian
Brave Chef Brianna by Sam Sykes
1.0
This was a weird one for me. On the surface, it's a somewhat cute comic. The only daughter of a successful chef goes off into the world to start her own restaurant. She deals with feelings of inadequacy - a literal voice in her head telling her she'll fail, that she's fat, that's she's not good enough - while trying to get her restaurant off the ground in a town with laws against human food. The plot wasn't anything exciting, though I enjoyed Brianna learning not to listen to the negative voice in her head and let the expectations of her family direct her decisions. The illustrations are cute, nothing too new but the characters have fun designs and I loved the variety of monsters and myths. Would love to see the illustrator do something for middle grade as I think the style is a good match.
It's once you go a little deeper into things that the story really starts to feel problematic. I looked at a couple of other reviews and apparently others feel this way too. So there are laws against certain human ingredients in Monster City (I can't remember if the specifics of this are ever explained but I think it has something to do with preserving monster culture and cuisine after all the persecution they've faced). Rather than trying to expand her skills as a chef Bianna just ignores the laws and starts serving monsters human food without telling them. When another chef - a monster who was persecuted and fought for their rights - learns what Brianna is doing, she becomes the villain in trying to expose what Brianna is doing.
This just screams culture erasure, not to mention allusions to Monster City being a ghetto of sorts. There's a lot more regarding racism, and I encourage you to look at some of the other reviewers who are more qualified than I am to speak about this.
I can't tell if this was intentional or if I'm reading too much into this, but the whole reading experience made me very uncomfortable.
It's once you go a little deeper into things that the story really starts to feel problematic. I looked at a couple of other reviews and apparently others feel this way too. So there are laws against certain human ingredients in Monster City (I can't remember if the specifics of this are ever explained but I think it has something to do with preserving monster culture and cuisine after all the persecution they've faced). Rather than trying to expand her skills as a chef Bianna just ignores the laws and starts serving monsters human food without telling them. When another chef - a monster who was persecuted and fought for their rights - learns what Brianna is doing, she becomes the villain in trying to expose what Brianna is doing.
This just screams culture erasure, not to mention allusions to Monster City being a ghetto of sorts. There's a lot more regarding racism, and I encourage you to look at some of the other reviewers who are more qualified than I am to speak about this.
I can't tell if this was intentional or if I'm reading too much into this, but the whole reading experience made me very uncomfortable.