Lady Tan's Circle of Women

OK, don't love doing this, but DNFing it pretty early, at 14%. I started it, was horrified - HORRIFIED - by the BLAM! footbinding! opener, and then kept reading and... something felt off. My antennae were vibrating. I looked up the author, and was surprised (and, okay, disappointed) to learn that Lisa See is 1/8th Chinese. I'm probably like 1/8th Serbo-croatian so I imagined myself writing about feudal Yugoslavia and... I felt weird.

But, okay, I also DON'T believe in policing identities - we may all contain multitudes! and our imaginations even more! - especially if it's written well, and with an eye for historical accuracy (which I was told this was!) - but, I decided to browse some of the negative Goodreads reviews. A couple Chinese speakers noticed that, for example, See literally translates the Chinese word for “uterus” as “child palace” - one review said this would be like translating the German word “Handschuhe” to “hand shoes”, instead of “gloves”. Like, yes, that's the literal translation (and, yes, that's kinda adorable) and even, YES, the etymology of words is super interesting and often enlightening BUT... also, yes, it's definitely exoticizing, maybe even romanticizing? By this point, I had lost trust in this book and the author. This review made me laugh and confirmed that I had ventured a little too much into, ahem, Concerned White Lady-ville (a land I know well!).