bahareads's reviews
1031 reviews

characters were meh. No tension or chemistry

Writing was drab and the POVs were indistinguishable. 

I enjoyed listening to this book immensely. The narrators did a fantastic job, and their accents worked well. The family saga itself was great. I enjoyed the timeline, the back and forth of it all, and seeing how the plot connected. The ending was great for me. I found it to be very suitable for the entire book. I did question 'why' on a few things that came up in the plot but I could only take the characters at their word. There's a lot of loss and grief but there are also so many bits of happiness in there that tie it all together. It could have been a bit shorter.

I have so much to say about Yellowface. It lives rent-free in my mind. RF Kuang did her thing with this book. I found it to be hilarious, frustrating, and at times almost outrageous. BUT I know these things do happen so that made it even more mindblowing. A read that is worth binging, I ATE this book up. As most people know RF Kuang is using this book as commentary on the world of publishing. I have not been following Kuang's author trajectory up to this point so I know nothing about her journey or struggle.

June is an insane White woman. I alternated between feeling like she was evil and slightly insane to feeling sorry for her. By the end of the book, I was in June's head and I could see how she thought her thought process made sense. As the book continued and we went down the rabbit hole of Juniper's mind I had to question reality myself. I had to remind myself of what I knew to be true from earlier in the book. Usually, I hate when I don't like any of the characters but the plot was so insane that it did not matter to me. The absurd and unhinged showing of the book community and publishing is so funny because of the Cait Corrain incident (which is a great example of everything Yellowface is).

There are a few topics that either the characters mention or Kuang adds to the plot that I have to talk about.

(1) June says "Why should I read primary source material" when she's editing the first book. I need her and anyone else who has ever thought this to BBFR. If you are writing historical fiction you should be reading primary source material. Not only will that help you with shaping the world you are trying to create but it also adds historical authenticity and realness to your work. I would never say I'm going to write about the Romanov Royal Court than just watch Anastasia for research. You see how dumb that sounds? Even when you're writing on historical actors on the margins, using primary sources can help beef up what is known and allow you to make EDUCATED guesses about what is unknown.

(2) it’s so hilarious how June is not “reading against the grain” anymore when it comes to negative reviews regarding historical inaccuracies and instead pointing to historical sources without any kind of contextualization.

(3) The politics of historical photos was RIFE in this book, especially when June uses some of the photos to justify her racist ways.

(4) I have heavy thoughts on how the book world markets books into a certain niche. I'm thinking of Asha Bromfield's Hurricane Child as a prime example. It was marketed as a book from the Jamaican Diaspora (which Bromfield is from the diaspora) and the book itself is centered on a girl who visits Jamaica to see her father and his family for the summer. It was a terrible book that tropicalized Jamaica into an undeveloped 'otherness.' All Jamaican women were portrayed as evil and jealous of the MC. There were so many problematic things in this book that Akilah wrote a whole article on it. BUT my main point is that by trying to fit into a niche with BIPOC, it can be harmful to whatever subsection publishing is trying to reach.

Susan Smith writes a history of Black women's health activism and demonstrates the contributions of laywomen to public health work. Laywomen played a key role because segregation limited the number of black medical experts. Health programs Black women created reached a wide audience. Smith explores gender, class, and political dynamics of one phase of the Black struggle for improved health. Smith uses her book to place her topic in the idea of the long civil rights movement.

"The history of Black women's health activism shows that the lines of continuity stretch from the Progressive Era to the New Deal and on into the civil rights era."

Black health reform was gendered. Men held the power and women did the grassroots work. Black health activism in the US emerged at a time when the welfare state was expanding and Black rights were decreasing. Smith shows that middle-class Black activists shaped government policy by injecting concern for Black health into Southern and National public health agenda. The book is split up into two sections: (1) tracing the development of 20th-century Black health movements and (2) investigating the implementation of health policy by discussing case studies of Black women's public health work in the rural south.

My favourite part of this book was the last chapter which looks at the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and its involvement in health activism. She looks at them specifically in Mississippi and how in working for health activism they were setting the foundations for civil rights activism that was to come. Smith says The AKA sorority volunteers were an advance guard of a future army of activists who sought to transform the South in the coming years.

Smith ends by showing that African Americans created their solutions to Black health problems. She shows that the healthcare arena continues to be a site for social change and political activism as the nation grapples with how to meet the needs of underserved and uninsured Americans.

French starts the book on two premises (1) all conflicts emerge from socioeconomic realities that find their way through speech acts and (2) law is a powerful locus for discourse. He is examining the creation and functioning of legal instruments and institutions that deal with workers as well as words about by Consolidation of Labour Law (CLT). He takes a holistic approach that encompasses the structural, conjunctival, institutional and discursive on his topic. French is historicizing CLT and it is interesting. This wasn't my favourite book, but it's a great legal history book.

Suarez-Potts writes a history of the development of labour law in Mexico from 1875-1931. He is concerned with the articulation and application of legal norms through govt branches, legislature, and federal courts. He suggests that the importance of labour law for the new state and worker's organization, federal judiciary adjudication of labour disputes and interpretation of new legal principles were significant to the evolution of the nation's political and social contours after 1917. This wasn't my cup of tea (I had to read for class). It was hard to understand what was going on because I had only a base knowledge of Mexican history. If you KNOW Mexican history, this book should be a breeze for you.

Lavrin says the history of feminism is intellectual and social and she traces ideas and activities that constituted social change. Placing feminism within the history of social change in the southern cone nations, Lavrin charts the spectrum of intellectual and social ideologies of the first half of the 20th century.

It was an okay book but charting these ideas across 3 different countries, Lavrin spreads herself a little thin.

A book with no plot. I wondered many many times where Atakora was taking us but in the end I still could not figure it out. At times I thought I was wasting my time reading this book. I did enjoy the historical setting and certain details in the book. Details like characters seeing the rise of the KKK, parents (Black and White) fearing body snatching from doctors, and the communal reliance on healing women to serve the Black community, especially AFTER the American Civil War. Atakora does a great job of showing the symbiotic life of a plantation. All of these made the book enjoyable. None of the characters were enjoyable to listen to though, my spirit een take to none of them. The only one that stood out to me was Miss May Belle. I wish the book had been centered around her and not Rue. 

Vol. 1 shows the major differences between Anglo-American and Luso-Brazilian legal traditions into explicit focus underscoring how the meaning of bastardy historically imposed a distinction between two sub-systems of European inheritance. In Vol 2, Lewin examines and interprets how Brazilian legislators, during the first three decades of independence, proposed to rewrite those inheritance rights vis-a-vis illegitimate individuals and revised or discarded portions of the enduring national code of law received from Portugal. She uses the process of making law as the focus for concluding how public power confronted illegitimacy and inheritance rights during Brazil's crucial passage from colony to nation. She also connects law to customary values and family patterns.

Lewin's book is THICK and dense. Interesting historical information but not relevant for me so I did not enjoy it much.

"it is important to appreciate the legal watershed defined by Law No. 463 of 1847. Not only was it the nineteenth century's most important piece of legislation pertaining to the inheritance rights of illegitimate individuals…but it also stood as a reaction to earlier efforts to liberalize the legal position of illegitimate individuals."