Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Der Papierpalast by Miranda Cowley Heller

1 review

avelavalamp's review against another edition

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This book is about WASPs, but the author made casually racist choices in her descriptions of non-WASP characters. She lost me when she said “the Puerto Rican girls eyefuck me.” Why say this about nameless characters in a health clinic and only appear in three lines? Why use this extremely harsh language when
the narrator’s stepbrother is ACTUALLY molesting and raping her or when the childhood friend she loves ACTUALLY does want to f*ck her and she wants him to?! The term “eyefuck” would’ve been appropriate in both scenarios, and yet it’s never used—it’s reserved for the Puerto Rican girls seeking reproductive care—to make them seem “scary” for no reason
?! Add to that using terms like “crackhead” to describe an actual human, women consistently insulting one another with “don’t be such a cow” (fatphobic) and mid-book randomly assigning Jewish identity to the main family with no development? Microagressions abound. 

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