#ITS A FUCKING TRAGEDYYYYYY AND IMO IT RLY DOES MAKE IT CLEAR FROM THE BEGINNING

[kindlespark]

in shock hearing people say that babel only takes a turn and becomes heart-wrenching at the end because that experience is so incomprehensible to my chinese diaspora ass that felt like their heart was being torn from their chest in the very first chapter likeeeee babel is underscored by such immense amounts of tragedy and loss and horror around colonialism and imperialism from the very beginning it's so crazy that white people can just read the first half of babel and not feel like every bone in their body was being dissolved in acid by the centuries of unspoken grief written in robin's experience SORRYYYYYYYY. average poc reading babel vs average white person reading babel truly LMFAOOOO

#sam speaks #this is incomprehensible but do you understand me it's like. babel is about so so much fucking loss #a part of robin literally died when lovell found him and that is why we never find out his chinese name #even the cohort's relationships dont escape this like the empire literally brought them together to destroy each other. #this is what ramy tells robin on the bridge. they're turning my country into a drug factory to kill yours. #we have been thrust together by empire to kill each other and our countries. do you see it now do you see me? #ITS A FUCKING TRAGEDYYYYYY AND IMO IT RLY DOES MAKE IT CLEAR FROM THE BEGINNING #seriously though like. goes to show how people's personal experiences really do shape their interpretations of media #babel