Katherine by Anchee Min
Dec. 14th, 2008 04:36 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
50books_pocI have not read this, but I'm curious if anyone here has and what your thoughts on it were. I came across it noodling around LibraryThing and it caught my eye because it was tagged as queer and by a PoC author.
Almost all the reviews on Amazon are glowing, but there are two things that make me really reluctant to give it a try. First off, the Chinese names are all translated. I hate this! It's so othering. Almost all names have meanings, even western ones; there's no reason to translate a name other than to make it seem more ~*~exotic~*~. So I'm already iffy just because of that. But it also seems like the plot is that this Mary Sue white girl (dude, she has "cat-like eyes") comes to China and changes the lives of the Chinese people.
I wouldn't even be giving this book a second look if it were by a white author, but I keep thinking, well, the author is Chinese, maybe it's not as horrible as it sounds?
Almost all the reviews on Amazon are glowing, but there are two things that make me really reluctant to give it a try. First off, the Chinese names are all translated. I hate this! It's so othering. Almost all names have meanings, even western ones; there's no reason to translate a name other than to make it seem more ~*~exotic~*~. So I'm already iffy just because of that. But it also seems like the plot is that this Mary Sue white girl (dude, she has "cat-like eyes") comes to China and changes the lives of the Chinese people.
I wouldn't even be giving this book a second look if it were by a white author, but I keep thinking, well, the author is Chinese, maybe it's not as horrible as it sounds?
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