Who did R.F. Kuang write Babel for?

A review, and also a meditation.

My first introduction to R.F. Kuang’s writing was Yellowface. I had heard controversial things about it — mostly from butthurt white people on Twitter — and decided to read it for no other reason than to be able to know what was going on with the Goodreads review bombing. I didn’t know what to expect, but ended up really enjoying it. I was thrilled by how vicious it was — Kuang did not pull her punches — and, honestly, I’ve been itching for a fictional thriller that hits out at white victimhood.

Sure, it had some problems — the story’s exploration of class was lacking to say the least, and its conflicts felt terminally online and more like Kuang’s personal grievances than widespread issues. Plus, wealth is never really interrogated as a contributing factor to success, which takes the bite out of what could have been a really incisive satire. YouTuber @withcindy summed it up well: “To have this character in Yellowface become this instant literary star because now her manuscript has a good story, is to imply that publishing is a meritocracy, where the best books make it. Not because of class, or race, or any kind of advantage, but because their writing was just so damn good. Now THAT’s a fictional story if I ever heard one.”

Still, Yellowface was one of my favourite reads of the year, simply because it was so fun. I love mess! I was excited to discover Kuang’s other writing, and Babel — her mammoth standalone fiction novel set in an alternate Oxford with a unique magic system — made it to the top of my to-read list.

However, upon reading Babel, I admit I was a little disappointed, especially given how promising the premise was: the British Empire uses a magic system dependent on silver and foreign languages to increase its power. In order to have access to these languages, it steals children from their native motherlands and raises them to be scholars, exploiting their connection to their identity and language for profit. These scholars live in the belly of the beast, and capitulate to their colonisers for the sake of wealth and upward mobility — but at what cost?

There were elements of the story I really loved. While I know some people felt frustrated with the magic system because they thought it was too simple or underdeveloped, I disagree. Simplicity in magic is necessary in standalone novels, otherwise you risk things getting too convoluted. And anyway, I thought translation magic was an intriguing concept that had clear roots in real-world mining of foreign resources.

“They dug through languages as they dug through mines, searching for valuable veins of common heritage and distorted meanings,”

— R.F. Kuang, Babel, page 167.

The novel’s characterisation of translating texts as a double-edged sword, one which both makes the world larger and more connected but also acts as a medium for cultural theft, was incisive and thought-provoking (bring back gate-keeping!).

The highlight, however, was translation as an interpersonal practice we all engage in everyday. I recently read Translations by Jumaana Abdu (another 5 star read, and possibly the best book of 2024), so the politics of translations have already been on my mind. I was genuinely delighted to see these concepts explored with such empathy and earnestness in Babel, and the following passage was one I highlighted because it gets to the heart of things:

“Robin wondered how much of Anthony’s life had been spent carefully translating himself to white people… He wondered if there would ever be a day that came when all this was unnecessary, when white people would look at him and Anthony and simply listen, when their words would have worth and value because they were uttered, and when they would not have to hide who they were, when they wouldn’t have to go through endless distortions just to be understood.”

— R.F. Kuang in Babel, page 406-407.

The characters in Babel were also compelling, complicated, interesting — though I do think Victoire was done an injustice with how little development she was given. She should have taken centre-stage after that scene, but it’s a minor gripe. The point is, there’s a lot to love about Babel, and I can see why this novel has such a cult following.

What frustrates, or rather confounds, me is how much the above philosophical meditations in Babel contrast with how little the author believes in the intelligence of her audience.

Babel is comprised of an offensive amount of exposition — I honestly believe you could cut out 100 pages of lore and be better off for it. Kuang spends a remarkable amount of time explaining the harms of colonialism, and the way the British Empire maintains its grip on the marginalised, to the point where it feels preachy and heavy-handed. Am I crazy in believing that we shouldn’t need it drilled into us that racism is bad, because we should simply know this to be true? And if a reader doesn’t know that racism is bad, the book should ignore rather than cater to them? I found it so tiresome that I almost didn’t finish the book, which felt ridiculous because I actually cared about the plot.

It soon became clear, though, that Babel is genuinely confused on who it is seeking to speak to, and this all came to a head for me in the last 100 or so pages of the book.

On page 484, there is a scene where Abel, a labourer and community organiser who is leading the workers' revolt in solidarity with the tower strike, teaches the Oxford students to build a viable rebellion with the use of street barriers and other tactics designed to slow down the impending army invasion. It’s a great scene in which the students finally ally up with older and more experienced workers who understand resistance in a material sense. They aren’t just sheltered academics who live insular and privileged lifestyles. That is, until you read the footnote at the bottom of the page:

“If this organisational competence strikes one as surprising, remember that both Babel and the British government made a great mistake in assuming all antisilver movements of the century were spontaneous riots carried out by uneducated, discontent lowlifes.”

— R.F.Kuang, Babel, page 544.

Huh?

This note assumes and suggests the reader might find a working class labourer’s knowledge of how to resist oppression surprising, as if most of us share the kind of prejudice associated with Oxford and the British ruling class. Naturally, this confused me — why would I find this man’s competence to be a surprise? Why would I have such an uncharitable view of workers in general, especially when this man and his people have been set up as some of the earliest critics of the silver industrial revolution in the novel? Perhaps this was a prejudice Kuang held when she was a student at Oxford which she herself had to unlearn (which is probably likely given what we know about her own class position) but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. It makes you wonder who Kuang imagines us to be.

Up until that moment, Kuang explored prejudice against oppressed classes in Britain via the perspective of Robin, an unreliable narrator of mixed heritage. From his group of non-white friends, he has the most proximity to whiteness and thus is the most sheltered and at risk of supporting the state. Much of the book follows Robin’s journey as he slowly unlearns the colonial myths he has internalised, and joins his peers in becoming radicalised against the British Empire.

Robin is a stand-in for the audience, or at least for white people or people with class privilege who are not already radicalised. He might be racially oppressed, but he makes his money off the colonial regime, like many of us settlers living on colonised land do. Kuang convinces us through Robin’s arc from complicit to revolutionary that merely speaking out against colonialism is not enough; violent resistance is the only effective means of bringing an empire to its knees.

But the complication with this is that once Robin GETS it, he stops being a vessel for education for the reader. Kuang can no longer correct racist or classist misconceptions by assigning them to Robin, and so she assigns them to us instead, so she can still make her politics known in the footnotes. The result is unfortunately a condescending and defensive tone that feels wholly unnecessary.

It’s worth noting that the above footnote appears at the 89% mark of the book. The insistence that we still can’t possibly understand how we are pit against each other amidst a colonial and capitalist machine 484 pages into a 544 page novel really solidified that this book was not written for me, or at the very least that I am not Kuang’s target audience. I mean, if the author can believe the reader will not understand the book’s politics in the final 10% of the story, why are we even here?

Who was this book actually written for?

Babel was almost exclusively recommended to me by my non-white bookish friends, all of whom are progressive and/or radical, and all of whom wish death upon the colonialist regime. I assumed this was the target audience: smart, political people from marginalised backgrounds who want a historical fantasy that not only acknowledges but challenges colonialism — something surprisingly uncommon in fantasy fiction.

But upon reading, I realised this was not the case. The never-ending exposition, the constant over-explaining, the defensiveness, the condescending tone, the hand-holding and spoon-feeding simply to explain that racism is bad and colonialism is violent…these are not things myself and my friends would need to be told or have trouble deducing from the events of the novel. These are concessions made for white readers. Specifically, white readers who are not already convinced that racism and colonialism are wholly bad and in need of eradication. But this is confusing because the radical (and beautiful) ending of this novel, and its focus on violence as the only legitimate and effective means of resistance, already alienates these kinds of readers. Its premise alone would surely attract the kind of people who are itching for a story that rails against the British Empire, especially from the underrepresented perspectives of ethnic diaspora. So, again, who is this book for?

Kuang’s assumptions about her readers (namely that they are stupid) gives away her position as someone who isn’t working class and hasn’t been around a lot of working class people. Which isn’t damning on its own, but given the footnote analysed above and the unnecessary exposition, it appears to me that she genuinely thinks the rest of us do not understand colonialism or have class consciousness, despite the fact that change has always come from below. Ironically, this is also acknowledged in the book constantly with references to slave revolts — and yet the leaders of this revolution are well-paid scholars.

Between the odd choice of having academics lead the revolution, and the limited exploration of class and poverty in the story, I think there is a lot of inside baseball at play in Babel. R.F. Kuang is so close to hitting the mark, but she is held back because she cannot kill the white liberal in her head. She is haunted by the white people who frustrate her in real life, and not only does this show, it also makes Babel disappointingly myopic despite its grand premise.

Babel had potential to be a perfect read. Kuang is a talented story-teller and her plots are unmatched. However, its pitfalls are Kuang’s failure to believe in her reader. Undoubtedly this stems from very real experiences she’s had as a person from a marginalised background in white-dominated spaces — she’s probably become quite jaded with people’s ability to understand her, and over-compensates with heavy-handed exposition and a condescending tone.

The day Kuang stops catering for and centering the upper class white gaze is the day she moves from good to great. When she ditches the fear of being misinterpreted and just goes for it, I know I will truly love her work.

Yellowface certainly is a movement in the right direction. It was wonderful because it actually leaned into the white gaze, instead of pretending it was above it — Kuang was fairly open about the fact that this is inside baseball; a jab at the publishing industry and the white demons she has had to battle within it. She was unapologetic about the fact this is autofiction (to a degree). Babel pretends to be something more, but I’m not always sure if it is.

Still, I am excited for Kuang’s upcoming release. I think she gets better every time she writes, and I also remind myself that she is young and still learning, too. Hopefully as her career progresses, so too does her confidence that her books will find the right people. We are here, and we are ready!