Do You Have Birdbrain In Red Leather?

Some books you read not for the experience of reading them, but for the information within. Such is the case with Gulbahar Haitiwaji's memoir, How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp: A Uyghur Woman's Story. As the title suggests, this is a first-person account of Haitiwaji's experience in Xinjiang, where she was subjected to "reeducation" on suspicion of terroristic activity. This book was written with the help of Rozenn Morgat and Haitiwaji's daughter Gulhumar, and translated from French by Edward Gauvin.

 

To quickly summarize for anyone unaware, the Uyghurs (also spelled "Uighur") are an ethnic minority in China, inhabiting the northwestern region of Xinjiang, which is quite large. They are predominantly Muslim, and speak Uyghur, a Turkic language, and frequently have more culturally in common with neighboring Kazakhstan and Tajikistan than with the Han in eastern China. For many decades, the Chinese government has viewed Uyghurs with suspicion and since the 1950s has continually ramped up levels of surveillance against Xinjiang. I wrote a paper on this situation in graduate school several years ago concluding that China is enacting a slow genocide against Uyghurs, with the intent of fully wiping out their culture.

 

Uyghurs are subjected to relentless video surveillance, intrusive police home visits, regularly summoned to the police station for interrogation without any suspicion of a real crime, forcibly sterilized. and punished for any excessive displays of religiosity such as wearing a hijab or visiting mosque too frequently. Some years ago, "reeducation schools" entered the picture.

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I first read The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison last year, but I never got around to reviewing it, in part because I didn't know what to say about it. My friends had loved it, and while I'd found it enjoyable, I was still percolating on what I liked (or didn't!) about it. Listening to The Witness for the Dead, a book in the same universe, got me thinking about TGE again, so this month I gave it a re-read. This time, it all clicked.

 

This book is truly such an enjoyable read. The basics of Maia's tale are not unfamiliar—a seeming nobody is thrust into a position of power no one ever expected them to have—but Addison puts her own fascinating spin on it. It has the same feeling I got from The Witness for the Dead, where the story prioritizes doing the right thing and many if not most of the characters in it are striving to be good people (whatever that means for them). It makes a nice contrast to the very selfish, dark fantasy where you know from the start every character is just in it for themselves (and I do enjoy those too, not to say one is better than other!) The protagonist Maia in particular is put in any number of positions where he could misuse his power for personal gratification—such as imprisoning or executing his abusive former guardian, Setheris—but he, with conscious effort, chooses differently. That is not the kind of person—not the kind of emperor—Maia wants to be. And honestly—there is very gratifying fantasy, particularly today, in the idea of someone obtaining power and being committed to some kind of principles of proper governance, of having some code of honor above their own personal enrichment.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Oof. Today I threw in the towel on Margaret Killjoy's The Sapling Cage because I'd rather be alone with my thoughts than sit through another three hours of this book. This is a fantasy book about a "boy," Lorel, who disguises herself as her female friend to join a witches' coven (She's a transgirl, but her journey on that understanding is part of the book, and she refers to herself as a boy for much of the story.)

 

First, I will say that I think Lorel is a protagonist written with love; clearly Killjoy wanted her to be relatable and sympathetic, and someone eager for a trans fantasy protag may be willing to forgive the book's many weaknesses for that. That said...

 

I was shocked to realize this book is not categorized as Young Adult/Youth literature. Lorel is 16 at the start of the book and she's very sixteen. She makes all the sorts of stupid, immature mistakes you would expect from a teenager, which makes her a realistic character, but also deeply frustrating to read as an adult, particularly since the first-person narration puts us right in her head. The book feels young even for a sixteen-year-old; it reads more like a preteen novel about teenagers.

 

The book itself feels incredibly juvenile, both in prose and in narrative. The writing is simplistic, the narrative barely there, and the worldbuilding painfully thin. The book infodumps on the reader constantly, going into detail about things that are then never relevant again and don't connect into any kind of overarching picture of what this world is like. Reads very much like the author just throwing a bunch of things she thought were cool at the reader without actually thinking about how they would impact her world or the characters in them.