Currently: Babel

This week on Currently, News editor Terika Williams (senior, English and Spanish) reviews a book that has slowly started gathering more and more attention over the last few weeks. Enjoy!

Since its release in August 2022, “Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution” by R.F. Kuang (Rebecca F. Kuang) has garnered much attention, both good and bad. The book debuted at the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list, spending many weeks on the list, and won multiple awards such as Blackwell’s Book of the Year for Fiction in 2022. Online communities such as Booktok, Booktube and Bookstagram have lauded the book for its unique look at the issues within British colonialism and imperialism. But of course, with praise comes criticism. Many have said that the novel lacks nuance, and is an ambitious epic that doesn’t trust its audience enough. That being said, I’m going to share with you my opinion about “Babel” and R.F. Kuang.

Kuang is a big name in the niche world of Booktok, Bookstagram, and Booktube. In all honesty, I think she is a genius. She attended Georgetown University, then earned an M.Phil in Chinese Studies from University of Cambridge and an M.Sc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford. Now she is working towards a PhD at Yale University in East Asian Languages and Literatures. She is a translator of Chinese literature along with being a New York Times Bestselling author. As a Chinese American herself, it’s safe to say that R.F. Kuang knows what she’s talking about when it comes to portraying Chinese identities. All of Kuang’s work, from the “The Poppy War” trilogy, to “Babel,” and the soon-to-be-released “Yellowface,” center around Chinese individuals as they navigate a colonial or postcolonial world.

“Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution” is a work of speculative fiction, set in England during the 1800s at the height of the British Empire. Speculative fiction, a subgenre of fantasy, gives Kuang the leeway to come up with possible impossibilities. Essentially, “Babel” follows a young Chinese-English man, Robin Swift, and his friends Ramy, Victoire, and Letty, and their experiences in the fictitious Babel program at the University of Oxford. The Babel program trains scholars, Babblers, that excel in multiple languages to use their talents for harnessing the magic of silver. In this world crafted by R.F Kuang, silver can carry the lost meaning between languages to make magic. For example, the word mingbai, 明白, in Mandarin means to understand—but in the Chinese characters, mingbai alludes to a visual white light that is not translated to the English word “understand.” Therefore, silver is able to take this lost meaning and become a flashlight or maybe something else that illuminates the darkness. As you can imagine, the silver in this speculative world can be used to enhance the life of those who can afford silver and to aid England in imperialistic endeavors. In “Babel,” England takes silver from around the world to suppress slave revolts, colonial revolutions, and to win wars against the “other,” a term used to describe anyone who isn’t them. Ergo, the Institution of Babel uses language and translation as a means for subjugation of the poor and those of color. The novel shows how Robin and his friends come to terms with that. Please note that I am withholding information from my summary of the book due to its multilayered and profound plot points. I don't want to spoil anything.

It is abundantly clear that Kuang did her research for this project. No one can argue about that. Each character, a part of Babel, is fluent in Latin, English, and Greek. On top of that, they specialize in a language of their choosing. Robin works with Mandarin and Cantonese, Ramy with Arabic, Letty with German, and Victoire works with Haitian creole and French. Not only did Kuang incorporate all these languages into her book, but she conducted extensive research on the time period by reading Charles Dickens and James J. Moore. Almost every page contains footnotes about the history of the 1800s and context for the institution of Babel. Kuang does an awesome job of portraying the found family trope in Robin’s friend group. As students studying in a city far away from their families, they band together during the numerous grueling finals seasons and strenuous work of studying multiple languages. She represents the communities that can form between multiple people groups with the same oppressor.

There are a lot of people who hate this book. Some say that, “everything in this book is painfully obvious from start to finish,” and that “Babel” “reaches its intent by promoting racism to fight racism and violence to obtain positive social change”.  They claim that it's too hard to relate with the protagonist, a Chinese young man, who experiences racism. These reviewers also feel as though Kuang created caricatures instead of characters, who do not have an arc or transformation. All in all, some do not think Kuang allows them to read with the freedom to make their own opinions.

But, for me,“Babel” is a work of art.

In fact, I give “Babel” a 5/5. To those who say that the book is overly educational, I say, “As it should be.” The work of decolonization through literature must be dealt with head on. There is no room for nuance or subtlety when declaring the wrongs of oppressing others. I think many readers are missing the true objective of “Babel.” Not only does the book call out institutions that perpetuate colonialism but it queries the methods for dismantling these systems. Kuang is very clearly conversing with the works of Frantz Fanon. Fanon and others have advocated for decolonization through violence. Their reasoning is that colonization is a violent effort so therefore it must be undone through violence. Others call for a different approach similar to Audre Lorde’s saying, “The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.” In other terms, those who fight against colonialism, or any repackaged version of it, must utilize strategies that diametrically oppose the ones of the colonizers. Kuang explores both of these approaches in “Babel.” Personally, I think Kuang takes an incredibly ambitious idea and aces it in “Babel.” The full title of the book, “Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution,” uses the word arcane to describe the store. Arcane means mysterious or unknowable by some. The truth of the matter is that if you’re not going into “Babel” with an open mind, then you’ve already lost.

I highly recommend “Babel” and hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to reach out to me if you want to discuss this further. I would love to hear your thoughts.