Someone To Love is an interesting romance novel because it deals with two people who are highly skilled at concealing their emotions. This book is relatively slow and calm and quiet but with so much emotion just beneath the surface. Overall, I loved it, but when it had problems… boy, were they big ones.
The story involves Anna Snow, who was raised in an orphanage. Unlike many institutions of the day, the establishment was well run, and she had proper food and care, but she lacked love. Anna does not know who her parents were. As an adult, she teaches at the school, until she gets startling news.
It seems that once upon a time there was a rather unpleasant Earl who died. When he died, his solicitor discovered that Anna was the daughter of the Earl, and not only was she the daughter but she was a legitimate daughter. The Earl (an asshole who no one misses in the slightest) had married her mother without disclosing his rank. He then abandoned Anna’s mother, who subsequently died. The Earl remarried and had children, but he remarried while the first wife was still alive. Because Wife #1 hadn’t died yet, the marriage to Wife #2 is declared invalid. Anna is legitimate, but the Earl’s other children are not, and Anna is now Lady Anastasia Westcott.
WELL.
The family throws a fit, of course, in a proper English fashion, but then a few members of the family rally and decide that it’s up to them to transform Anna into a lady who can fit in with the ton. In this mix is Avery Archer, Duke of Netherby. He is associated with the family (he’s the oldest son’s guardian) just closely enough to justify hanging around all the time. He takes an interest in Anna, perhaps because they have similar defense mechanisms. Anna’s is to appear dignified. Avery’s is to appear bored.
In some ways this is a deconstruction of the Cinderella story. It would be one thing for Anna to inherit a nice legacy, and she would love to be embraced by the family. But to suddenly inherit everything and thus unintentionally disinherit all her relatives, who understandably resent her for it, is a nightmare, especially when Anna is pressured relentlessly to fit into her new state — whether she wants her new state or not. Avery gives her lessons on how to fit in, as when they first go walking together:
“When a gentleman walks with a lady, Anna, he offers his arm for her support and expects her to take it. If she does not, he is first humiliated beyond bearing – he might even consider going home and shooting himself – and then shocked by the realization that perhaps she is not a lady at all. Either way, actually, he may end up shooting himself.”
“Are you always so absurd?” She asked him.
He regarded her for a few silent moments, while he curled one hand around the handle of his quizzing glass. If he raised it, she would probably laugh with incredulous scorn.
Most of their relationship consists of Anna calling Avery absurd and Avery looking at her through his quizzing glass, or resisting the impulse to do so. The rest of it consists of them making out and then trying to pretend that they didn’t until they do it again. Meanwhile, Avery also helps Anna find her center:
Your relatives, Anna, will urge you to become Lady Anastasia Westcott to the exclusion of all else. The ton will certainly expect it of you…the choice of whether you change and how much you change will be yours to make.
Here’s a hint about this book: I read an advance copy months before writing this review, and then right before I was going to write the review I decided that I better just quickly skim through it to refresh my memory. And that, my friends, was a mistake because the rest of the night was spent happily re-reading the book, skimming be damned. This book is so subtle that I truly didn’t realize how much I liked it until I finished the last page of the second read.
It’s not a perfect book, alas. As I mentioned, when there are problems, they are big ones.
Avery reveals that as a boy he learned martial arts from “a Chinese gentleman.” While I’m always happy to see an acknowledgement in Regency romance that England was not populated entirely by white people, this character is stereotypical. He has no personality other than being an elderly Chinese master of “Oriental” arts who makes cryptic yet deep and wise comments. He doesn’t even have a name. He has no role other than to further Avery’s emotional journey. It’s embarrassing. It’s mercifully brief, but intensely cringe worthy.
The other thing I disliked was the ultimate and inevitable sharing of feelings. Normally I eat that up with a spoon, but in this case Avery and Anna said so much with so little that once Avery started to emote — in his secret dojo, no less — it felt…weird. And despite the attempts to show how uncertain Avery and Anna were about their relationship, it felt unnecessary. While I personally love to have everything spelled out, I felt that Avery and Anna would have had a more realistic resolution as people who don’t need things spelled out. Between the sudden emotional verbosity and the secret dojo, it’s as though the reader is suddenly dropped into a different book.
There’s a duel in the book featuring the “Oriental” arts, and several tantrums thrown by a seventeen-year-old girl whom I would have sworn was twelve, but otherwise there’s no action. All the drama is firm but polite. About eighty percent of the spoken sentences in the book might just as well end with “Bless her (or his) heart.”
But you can’t beat this book for having a good heart (much focus is put on mending fences) and an incredible depth of barely restrained emotion. I also want to stress how very funny this book is, often in subtle ways. There are many heartbreaking moments and many heartwarming moments, and kickass moments as well. I have not written much about Anna, but I adored her restraint, her insistence on both allowing herself to grow while remaining fundamentally herself, and her insistence on taking charge of her life without throwing over all advice. It’s impossible not to emphasize with her longing for both family and autonomy, and she and Avery are simply delightful together.
This book is odd because most of it is so delightful, but the martial arts element, which could have worked (since Avery is a small guy who has to defend himself against bigger guys), is used so awkwardly. It’s offensive, not because of the word “Oriental,” which is appropriate for the period, but because the teacher is a horribly dated stereotype who has no story or purpose of his own. He doesn’t even have a name, despite Avery spending time enough with him to develop considerable skill. Even if I remove the racist element, there’s the problem of the ending and the secret dojo thing that feels patched in from another story in the most ill-fitting and artificial way.
In reflecting on my experience with this book, I realize that I compartmentalized a horribly problematic element of the book to such an extent that I almost managed to erase it from my own head. I read a lot of older books (and by older I mean Regency and Victorian novels published during those time periods) and in doing so I’ve developed the ability to automatically split my experience of a book into separate parts. I recognize problematic elements — and believe me these older books are full of problems, I analyze them in terms of social impact and history, and I take them seriously, but I’m very abstract about it. This allows me to accomplish some useful academic things, but it’s also an expression of my own privilege. I think many readers will like this book for the reasons I did, and many will hate it for the reasons outline above. I can’t pinpoint who will or who won’t, but I can say that there are so many other exquisite Balogh books that we could be reading instead of this one.
If I somehow managed to remove the embarrassing stuff from the book (both the racism and the simply clunky plot points), what would be left would earn at least a B+ grade. I truly adored almost every aspect of this book other than the racism. But even though the racism takes up only a tiny amount of word space in the book, it’s incredibly cringe worthy. I am so torn about this book, but I have to give it a D+ because a modern author simply need not resort to these kinds of racial stereotypes – not even for just a few pages.
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Thanks!
I love Balogh, & I super appreciate reviews like this, that are frank about problematic aspects of books. Thank you.
Aw, I’m bummed that this has unnecessary racial stereotypes in it because this sounded like my type of book. And it’s a Balogh! Maybe I’ll give it a try after the US elections so I have the mental capacity to deal with it.
(She didn’t really call it a dojo though, right?)
I’m happy that Balogh is still writing, but I do feel that someone of her skill and experience should be able to do better than to use an ethnic caricature.
I’ve just finished another book of hers, Heartless, with a heroine called Anna, and family secrets. This review confused me at first. 🙂
Thank you, Carrie.
Thank you for pointing out the stereotypes in this book. I am trying to walk the walk of respect for all people. I would normally by this book because I love Balogh. I won’t now and I’m happy to have a this forum in which to say why.
What Mary Balogh? No! Why? I mean I’m like Hazel I love that Mary Balogh is still writing but you’d think after all this time she’d know that being all racist-y in a book is just not on.
Thank you
Thanks so much for this review. I was going to buy this but the casual racism makes it a definite no go for me. 🙁
So here comes a long comment. Carrie and I have been talking about this book a LOT this week. She’d read it twice before I started reading, and I was SERIOUSLY looking forward to it. My Fair Lady/Cinderella and family squabbles and characters who conceal their emotions? CATNIP.
Then I got to the Chinese man in the field, whose presence in the book is maybe half a page in the middle of the backstory of the duke’s difficult childhood, and I almost dropped my phone. But I kept reading, hoping maybe he’d re-appear as a character – until Carrie confirmed that he didn’t, and that was his only role in Avery’s life.
What made me DNF was a scene a little later in the book. Avery, as Carrie mentioned, conceals his feelings by appearing aloof and bored. After Anna’s half-siblings are disinherited and made illegitimate, her half-sister Camille’s imminent wedding to a viscount is called off, though he does her the “courtesy” of allowing her to be the one to send the notice to the paper so it looks like she broke it off. Then Avery has a conversation with said viscount, whom Avery doesn’t like )though he doesn’t like much of anyone) while he’s out looking for the ex-earl, his former ward, inside White’s. The viscount is relieved that he avoided marrying Camille:
That struck me (no pun intended) as unnecessarily mean. Sure, Uxbury is loathsome and, as Avery ponders a moment later, Camille is clearly better off without him, but Avery’s reaction seemed out of proportion to me. The plot rests on the idea that “societal rules are really stupid but everyone seems to agree they are important” and I can maybe see Avery’s attack on Uxbury as his way of fighting against the slight done to Camille, but he stopped the dude’s breathing. That seemed way too cruel and harsh.
Part of the conflict of the disinheritance plot is that everyone is exactly the same people they were before the revelations, except people who were formerly accepted in society are now shunned and obliged to leave immediately because of something that had little to do with them, and, for Anna, vice versa. The entire situation is inherently unjust. Avery is powerful and influential as a duke, but not powerful enough to adjust those rules – so I can see him being frustrated with the reversal of fortune that harmed Camille, except that outside of hitting Uxbury, he otherwise didn’t seem to care much, nor have any feelings one way or another for her or her family. His martial arts training showed up sporadically in the parts I read (I got about 33% in), and when it does, it seems to be a detriment to his character, not an asset. It’s used as a way to manipulate situations he doesn’t want to be in – and dude’s a duke. He can walk away.
So I DNFd because I knew I’d spent the rest of the book with any enjoyment soured by the casual racist stereotype and Avery’s cruelty.
I often wonder about how to recommend books like this… “The Grand Sophy” is one of my favorite books, but the random unconnected-to-anything-else extremely anti-semitic scene in the middle makes it hard for a lot of people to read. I can just ignore it (I’m so used to scenes like that in books I ignore them automatically) but many of my friends had problems with it. Does anyone have suggestions for dealing with this other than “get a copy of the book and edit”?
I’m not sure if it was Sophy, but one of Heyer’s books stopped me in my tracks, because of the casual and really-quite-unpleasant anti-Semitism. I spent some time considering whether it was representative of the time period, and therefore of the characters. Nah.
I concluded that it was, instead, Heyer, speaking in her own voice. And to be fair, there was quite a bit of English writing in the first half of the 20th century that showed the same sort of casual racism. A friend told me last week that he and his comrades serving in the 1950s considered the Egyptian soldiers ‘lazy wogs’ because they would lie around, given the chance. In hindsight they realised that debilitating infectious diseases like bilharzia were rampant among those troops.
So, Inna, I may recommend something like this with the caveat that it sheds a light on the writer and on all of our lazy thinking. Better to acknowledge it, I think, than to ignore it.
Inna, I’ve had that same problem, and gave the book a D as a result. There was fair amount of discussion about that grade, too. My reasoning is aligned with Hazel’s, too: Heyer was a master of character, and to see her deploy a shabby, poorly-constructed caricature was unacceptable to me as a reader for a number of reasons, including the character being really offensive. If I recommend The Grand Sophy, and I don’t often because there are others that are more exquisite examples of Heyer’s writing, I often tell people to skip that chapter entirely.
In this case, as Carrie said, there are, like with Heyer, so many far better examples of Balogh’s mastery of emotional subtlety and careful character development. And because this book is brand new, I personally feel much less forgiving of the casual racism, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
I DNF’d the Outlander series after encountering the absolutely racist “Little Chinese” character in Voyager. It nauseated me and I just couldn’t get past it. Spoiled the whole thing– and I was really loving the series, too.
What a fabulous discussion followed your review of The Grand Soppy, Sarah! Thank you. And yes, that was the Heyer book that disturbed me so much.
Every once in awhile, Mary comes out with one I’m not fond of. They are few and far between. This may be one of them. But you can’t please all of us all of the time. 🙂
The “orientalism” upon which you so rail in this review sounds like an editorial mandate problem to me, as the premise is so un-Balogh as to be bizarre. (Also, just to play devil’s advocate, did you not only get but remember the name of everyone you met when you were a kid? Did a stranger never ever tell you something important sometime during your life in a moment’s interaction? Regardless of ethnicity, sex, etc.?)
Balogh’s use of foppish heroes, however, puts Avery squarely in her wheelhouse. I do appreciate that she uses a variety of physical types for her heroes that are hardly ever seen in romance anymore. I, for one, roll my eyes every time a 6 ft. hero appears in Georgian/Regency/Victorian England.
Then again, SBTB has shifted its focus so much in the last couple of years that I was frankly surprised to see this review at all. But not the grade, because I figured it would go down either exactly like it has, OR there would be gnashing of teeth because there were only white people in a Regency (?) English HR. Best of luck to you, but frankly it’s tiring trying to remain a SBTB patron; this is my cue to support some different romance blogs in the future.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Carrie. I enjoyed hearing what worked for you as well as what didn’t. Mary Balogh is a favorite of mine, so I’ll be reading this in any event. I’ll be curious to see how/if I enjoy it.
I’ll still be reading it.
Balogh is one of my favorites.
I think I am confused. The “Chinese gentleman” character is only on one half page? Is it that in the half page he is such a cliche as to be offensive? Or is it that he only on half a page and he should more developed? Does the hero’s knowledge of asian martial arts not make sense without his teacher having a bigger role?
@Madge: Someone once said to me, “white people are all about supporting your fight against racism until it inconveniences them personally in the tiniest way.” What does it say about you when a reviewer writing in the mildest of ways that she was bothered by the racism of a book has gotten you so twisted up that you’re making allusions to PC culture run amok (I can read between the lines, parsing dog whistle is my third language).
Mary Balogh is a grown woman who has been successful enough that she can write a racist caricature at her own choosing. Let her make her own excuses (or apologies, which is what I hope she will do). It’s 2016, Chris Hemsworth just issued an incredibly eloquent apology for wearing a Native costume last year. I hope someone who makes her living writing can do better.
And an all white regency era actually isn’t historically accurate. The tea sets and silks had to come from somewhere you know. There wasn’t a force field around England that would zap anyone who can’t trace their bloodlines to William the Conqueror. Also, the Romani people are ethnically Indian.
Well speaking as someone who is Jewish, I don’t have a problem reading the Grand Sophy. It has a problematic character, but so do many other books writen in the 30s-40s. What concerns me about anti semitism today is unrelated to that character and his portrayal, and frankly I don’t need to signal my virtue by throwing my hands up in the air and being horrified. It’s a historical artefact in so many ways.
I don’t see that a half page mention of a character that isn’t fully fleshed out amounts to something deeply problematic but I haven’t read the book as yet so I can’t say if the reviewer’s response is justified.
White regency is historically accurate when you look at the upper classes. It still pretty much is accurate as regards the upper classes. There aren’t any black dukes or earls, and any black or ethnic minority character would be working class or middle class at best, confined to urban areas, and not be part of the dukes and bookworms world of the regency romance.
I read romance for fluff. This means I don’t want to read about the struggles of the working classes, or BAME characters. I want pretty frocks, and tea drinking and some witty conversations. If I wanted gritty social commentary I would be reading another genre.
@Jennifer:
The problem with the character is that he appears in one scene, isn’t named, and serves only as a token character based on racial stereotypes whose job is solely to develop the hero. KJ on Goodreads explains the problem in her review:
As KJ says, there are several minor characters who are fully developed in their scenes, with names and dialogue and individual characters. They’re white. The Chinese man stands out in contrast because it’s a lazy, offensive portrayal that’s built on cliched and offensive elements. To put it very simply: when all the white people in the story are developed, and the person who is not white is nameless, built of racist cliche, and serves as a minor plot device, that’s not ok. It’s cruel.
@Freda:
I’m still surprised, and I shouldn’t be, at your comfort in signaling your racism by saying you don’t want to read about Black, Asian, or
Middle EasternMinority Ethnic characters. Wow. I guess it’s a good thing for you that there are too many books to satisfy your tastes.@ Madge: You may want to verify the accuracy of your “only white people in a English HR” premise? Accuracy would mean defining the word “British Empire” in the colonial era as not just England, Scotland, Ireland, & Wales (the colonies spread all the way to Asia and Africa). Yes, HRs provide a fantasy world where perhaps the effects of colonialism don’t exist and can’t be seen, but that doesn’t mean the writers can’t do better. I don’t expect HRs to be completely accurate, but I also draw the line when the POC characters are written so close to stereotypes POCs face in every day life that it’s no longer escapism.
I can tell you I have been disappointed in several much-loved writers for their portrayal of Indian/POC characters. I do remember every single instance where a POC character was used a device to move the story of the MCs’ life/love forward without much depth for their own characters (e.g., As You Desire, Mr. Impossible, My Sweet Folly and don’t even get me started on Never a Gentleman). So many instances in these stories implicitly say that the POCs are not worth more than what the White characters make them.
Do I want more? Yes, because there are so many fascinating real-life stories about Caucasians & POCs during colonial times, as friends, as lovers, as ayahs, as scholars/colleagues etc, not just as some comic or exotic device.
It’s easy to say “Did a stranger never ever tell you something important sometime during your life in a moment’s interaction? Regardless of ethnicity, sex, etc.?”, but frankly, that’s a fantasy world for most of us who have our ethnicity and skin colour plain for everyone to see (and often judged) in everyday interactions (Just look at the ethnic-based stats for selection of women on Tinder). Everything can be made simplistic and whimsical with the right words, regardless of whether there is truth to it or not.
@Freda: While I agree with Freda that the past is the past and I myself don’t judge most older books by that standard, we can ask for more from our current writers. You’re assuming that POCs/working class people have only faced adversity, are not witty, don’t wear pretty frocks (oh wait, is it only pretty when the Viscountess wants to wear a sari, learns to belly dance or wears those bold colours and anklets with bells for her Viscount?). Not everything that is related to ethnicity has to be a social commentary and what most of us are asking for is diverse characters, not an examination of social issues. The fact that you make it seem like the inclusion of non-white, upper class characters as a chore is indicative of exactly why more diverse stories are needed (and stating your own ethnicity doesn’t excuse your biases about other minorities)
Also, if you want to be all about “historically accurate”, there is genetic-based evidence on how there have been interracial marriages in British upper and working classes since East India Company and other chartered companies began their trading in Asia and Africa. They passed their wives off as white because skin colour is variable in non-Europeans as well.
I want fluffy stories where I don’t have keep to reading a thousand times how wonderful her creamy white skin is. This has nothing to do with social commentary. I want to read about creamy white, dusky, olive, ebony, golden skin being wonderful. I want to imagine different things and different people doing fluffy and superficial things and hot things. Asking for this on behalf of people who want it and also because they believe in it is not virtue signalling.
I must say I am gob-smacked by this review. The Chinese gentleman in question is someone who played a large and infinitely positive role in the hero’s development as a boy, though he appears only in the brief explanation of that boyhood the duke makes in the course of the book. The duke revered him and still does. The Chinese gentleman was in a physical and spiritual place far beyond anything the hero knew. He was seen as a man far SUPERIOR to the duke, a man of deep wisdom. Is that stereotypical? I know Indian, Native Indian, American, Canadian (etc. etc.) people whom I revere for the same reason. And racist? Is it racist to imagine that a Chinese gentleman living in Regency England might know things about body, mind, and spirit that the typical Englishman might not have known? In what way do I treat this gentleman in a racist way? To be honest, I did not know that the word “Oriental” is offensive. Is it? None of my editors pointed it out, so it seems certain none of them knew. The man was from the Orient. Isn’t that fact? If the word is offensive, then I owe an apology.
@Madge-
I haven’t read this book yet, not sure if I will, but from what I gather the Chinese gentleman taught the hero a significant amount of martial arts that he uses frequently. You don’t learn martial arts in one or two brief meetings, the two men must have spent a fair amount of time together. I don’t remember the name of every person I met in my childhood, but I do remember the name of everyone who had a big impact on my life.
And it doesn’t matter if something is an editorial mandate or not, though I’m not sure why you would draw that conclusion. I kind of think it’s worse if an author is told, “Hey, you need to include a non-white person in your book” and the author proceeds to do it in the laziest way possible. It would have taken a 3 second google search and an extra 3 words to give the character a name, and 5 minutes to come up with some sort of back story to flesh the character out more.
Balogh can be a wonderful writer, so this laziness at best still reeks of casual racism which is incredibly disappointing. I expected better from her.
@Ms. Balogh:
The difference, I believe, may lie in your understanding of the character, which of course is far greater than ours, and the portrayal of the character in the book. The way this character appears does not reveal the large and positive role in the hero’s development.
In the portrayal in the text, he is essentially a “Magical Asian,” a relative to the equally damaging trope of the “Magical Negro:”
The use of the word “oriental,” as Carrie said in the review, isn’t the problem – that’s totally normal for the time. The limited representation of this character bound by stereotype is the part that’s racist. This is not an easy conversation to have, and I hope my explanation is clear.
I’m responding because of the person who said that this review and reviews like it are why they’re done with SBTB. I want to say, very strongly, that reviews and reviews like it are why I have begun reading (a year or so ago) and will return to SBTB – I would love more reviews that frankly acknowledge problematic elements without handwaving them away. Thank you so much, and I look forward to more and more reviews from marginalized writers.
@a:
Thank you and welcome! I’m very glad you’re here and are part of our community, and really, really appreciate your comment. Thank you for that.
I’ve already commented but am going to echo a’s comment. I am here in large part *because of* reviews like this one. As a librarian, as a woman with a learning disability, and as a person who has always lived in diverse communities, representation, and frank discussion of racism and other issues, are really important to me. I know I can come to SBTB for nuanced discussions of one of my favorite genres. And I really, really appreciate that. Thank you so much for what you are doing.
Just a few points to clear up confusion:
1. As I state in the review, the word “Oriental” is not a problem because it’s the word that Avery would have used, although it’s outdated today.
2. There’s nothing unrealistic about Avery meeting a Chinese person in Regency England. My initial reaction was to be pleased to see some acknowledgement of the fact that England has always had a large population of non-whites, especially in urban areas and port towns.
3. The problem with the Chinese character in Someone to Love is that he is not a person. Other supporting characters that are arguably less important to Avery personally are more fleshed out than the Chinese gentleman. The Chinese gentleman has one job – Provide The Rich White guy With Cryptic Wisdom. It’s no wonder that he doesn’t have a name – he’s not a person. He’s a device. And as is so often the case, what makes this device a racist one in the pattern of using ethnic minorities as devices to further the white character’s journey.
4. The grade was also affected by the problem with sloppy writing beyond the use of stereotypes. Avery’s use of martial arts makes perfect sense in terms of his body type, but as SB Sarah points out, the philosophy behind martial arts does not seem to have affected him in any way. The sudden appearance of the practice room and the practice clothes at the end are startling- they could work in theory (I mean, he practices somewhere, right?) But they simply aren’t organically woven into the story. It’s as though we jump into another book a few pages from the end.
5. And finally – in anything that I read, I try to read critically, looking at how the social environment in which the book was written affects the book. Jane Eyre has problematic statements about mixed race people and the mentally ill, and Jane Eyre remains my favorite book, but I don’t ignore those passages. I look at what they can tell me about the time when the book was written and the thought process of the author. Jane Eyre was written in 1847. The Grand Sophy was written in 1950.
Someone to Love was published in 2016. I would have hoped that we would be writing differently about people than we did in 1847 or 1950. I hold Someone to Love to a high standard because the author has earned a high standard – her other books write with exquisite sensitivity about people with disabilities. And as a society we have been in an intense dialog in the last few years about representation in literature. I would hope to see this reflected in the work of current-day authors.
@Freda The idea that people of color could not possibly have happy romances with each other in periods other than our own is bizarre. Any romance that deals with people of color, people who are not upper class, or LGBT people will have to address the problems they will face in life, but a romance does not suggest that couple will never face problems, it suggests that they will face them together. As examples of historical romances that are frank about challenges but still provide satisfying HEAs for people of color I give you Beverly Jenkins’ historicals, the movie Belle, and Courtney Milan’s Her Every Wish and Talk Sweetly to Me. Beverly Jenkins in particular has plenty of fun and pretty frocks and tea and witty conversation.
Well. This was like being punched in the face. I’m glad to have it confirmed that people of color, in many people’s minds, are only meant to suffer and not meant to be happy or have full, fleshed out lives.
Also, I’m staggered by the lack of knowledge that “Oriental” is offensive. How is it that authors can be SO meticulous about research into everything else, but research about other cultures, sensitivity and terminology falls by the wayside?
Sarah and Carrie, thanks for the review and what you’ve said in the comments.
I recently picked up a recommendation off another site and was shocked to discover racism 3 books in to a 4 book series. As a result I realized that I have a lot more trust when reading SBTB, which goes beyond whether I agree or disagree with a review.
So thank you ladies!
Additionally, I just want to say how much I appreciate how many women have so eloquently defined here what racism looks like and why it has no place.
Mary, as someone who loves your books, and has a lot of respect for you as an author and as a person, I wanted to respond to your comment. I believe that you meant well. You portrayed a person in what you believed to be a positive light, and you intended no harm. My goal is not to tell you that you’re a bad person–I believe, very strongly, that you are not.
But you have asked how the portrayal is a problem, and because this is a complicated thing that may not be obvious to those who have not experienced it, I wanted to explain.
My mother is Chinese-American, and Asian Americans have a complex mix of positive and negative stereotypes. Your portrayal is encompassed by literally the first entry on this Wikipedia page of Asian stereotypes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_East_Asians_in_the_United_States — that would be the one about mysticism and exoticism.
All of those stereotypes hurt–even the ones that seem positive.
In this case, the idea that Asians are mystical and exotic is often strongly tied into the idea that the women are quiet and submissive, taking whatever comes to them as their lot in life, and the men are unmanly, unwilling to fight back against injustice. This, in turn, leads to great harm–increased rates of rape and sexual assault against Asian American women, greater violence, loss of opportunity and promotion, as well as some serious social detriments, for Asian American men.
From a personal perspective, I tend to be shy, and my natural state is to not say much when I first meet people. (This state does not persist long after first meeting.) But shyness didn’t work out well for young Courtney. I had repeated experiences where men discovered that “shy” did not mean “compliant.”
Imagine what it’s like to have someone assault you and then ask, in betrayed tones when you don’t just accept being manhandled, “Aren’t you supposed to be submissive?” (Or, in one case, when someone discovered I was half-white, with an air of discovery–“Oh, that’s why you’re not submissive!”)
That stereotype of “deep wisdom” and “inner quiet” and “non-striving” blah blah blah means that I, as a woman, have been assaulted and harassed by people who think that my imagined deep wisdom and inner quiet and non-striving mean that I won’t fight back, won’t lodge complaints, and will just accept whatever they want to do to me.
I’ve learned to be loud and to the point as a survival mechanism. I learned early on that I need to make it 100% clear to anyone and everyone looking at me that I’m not an easy target.
So yes, so-called positive stereotypes can hurt. They can hurt a lot.
This one–the stereotype that Asians have access to “deeper wisdom” than Caucasians–is specifically the stereotype in fiction that gets called “the magical negro” (although it happens to Asians and American Indians, too).
You can read more about why this is a harmful stereotype here: http://www.strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/stephen-kings-super-duper-magical-negroes/
I think the first knee-jerk reaction of white people portraying people of color in fiction is this: “I don’t want to be racist, so I’m going to make sure that this person is as wonderful as possible.” The end result is that they create a character who has no goals, motivations, or conflicts, and since the portrayal is supposed to be positive, that means the author can’t show them operating in opposition to your protagonist, so they exist in the story solely to help the (white) protagonist.
Suspending the rules of fiction for a character–any character–is always a problem. It signals that person is above the rules of story. They exercise no agency, nor do they want to do so. They are not part of the struggle. They will never have a book written about them. That makes the character rather more of a natural resource–one to be found, tapped, exhausted, and moved on from–than a human being.
But all characters have wants. All characters have needs. All characters have desires. When people of color are repeatedly and almost exclusively written as “above” those things, white people only imagine them in that role in real life–with devastating consequences, as needs, wants, and desires get ignored, and the people protesting that dismissal being told that they should “rise above it.”
I still think you’re an amazing writer. I still think that you have fantastic books, and a fantastic career, and that you’ll continue to produce fantastic books, which I will continue to want to read.
But this is a harmful portrayal. This portrayal reinforces a stereotype that hurts real people. It has hurt me in the past. So I believe there is more to examine here than your initial reaction, and hope that you take this opportunity to do so.
I want to follow-up to Courtney’s excellent and heart-wrenching post with one more thing…the idea of “reverence” being a good thing.
He was seen as a man far SUPERIOR to the duke, a man of deep wisdom. Is that stereotypical? I know Indian, Native Indian, American, Canadian (etc. etc.) people whom I revere for the same reason.
If we’re superior in our wisdom, why not give us a name? A motivation? More than half a page? People of color don’t need to be revered for what we can give to you educationally or for how we can enhance or enrich your life experience. We just need to be people in your lives. Empathy is far preferable to reverence.
I really hope that some of these comments make an impact, not just with Mary Balogh, who is a beloved genre icon to many, but to those reading along.
Allie wrote
May I just say that this struck me as so much fun that I looked at the Wikipedia timeline of Chinese history for the 18th century, to figure out what a Chinese man skilled in martial arts might have been doing in England around 1790, and ended up spending rather more than five minutes, but having a wonderful time doing it.
I’m assuming since this is a Regency it’s set somewhere between 1810-1820. The first pages inform us that Avery is 31, so if he met this character at the age of 10 it would have been somewhere between 1790-1800. According to Wikipedia, the first English diplomatic mission to China – the McCartney Delegation – was in 1793. It was largely a failure, and there’s no mention of Chinese delegates returning with McCartney’s party, and if they did it’s hard to see how an already “elderly” (or at least middle aged) man would return to England with them and immediately start hanging around a child teaching him martial arts. So that seems unlikely. The East India Company established a trading post in Guangzhou in 1711, which means they would have been well established by say 1760, when an adventurous young man might have set off as a sailor on an English ship to see the world, and somehow ended up in England.
On the other hand, between 1704 and 1740 Chinese Catholics (and the Vatican) were shaken by the “Chinese Rites Controversy” (which I’d never heard of until today). Basically, it was an argument about whether traditional Confucian rites to honor ancestors were religious or cultural, and therefore whether they were or were not forbidden to Chinese Catholics. The Jesuit missionaries argued they were not religious and could be compatible with Catholicism. The Dominicans argued the reverse. The pope sided with the Dominicans and banned Confucian rites in 1715. In 1721 the Kangxi emperor retaliated by banning Christian missionaries in all of China.
So….I don’t know how this would have played out for your average family of Catholic converts, but let’s imagine that Avery’s mentor was a boy from a Chinese family, born around 1720, and baptized Joao by a Portuguese missionary priest. He’s a bit of a rebel and studies martial arts (and Confucianism) as a boy, but basically shares his parents’ Catholic faith. Conditions for Christians get slowly more and more difficult after the Kangxi decrees forbidding foreign priests. Eventually Joao’s parents die (let’s say in the mid-1730s, when he’s in his teens). Unable to practice the faith he’s grown up in, and ostracized as a religious minority, he decides to travel west to see the world, and learn more about the foreigners who brought Christianity to China. Because he’s also familiar with Chinese culture, he re-imagines this as a sort of version of Monkey’s Journey to the West, with himself as the hero, and sets off for Portugal. From there he goes on to England because he’s curious about a country that has always supported Portugal against Spain. In England he falls in love with an English girl, who (let’s say) is a servant on Avery’s parents’ estate. They marry, and have a child who is about Avery’s age, but sadly mother and child both die young. Joao is left halfway across the world from his home, isolated and too crushed to pursue a new relationship. But he meets the young Avery by chance, who’s about the same age as his own son would be if he’d lived. He teaches the boy because he had looked forward to teaching his own son something of his Chinese heritage, and Avery’s parents permit it because Avery seems contented, and out of a sort of paternalistic feeling to their deceased servant (not too realistic, but what the heck).
The child Avery knows everyone calls his mentor “Johnny” and assumes that “Joao” is his Chinese name, and only realizes as an adult that he never knew “the Chinese gentleman’s” Chinese name, but only a Portuguese baptismal one, which sounded “foreign” to him as a kid.
There – a back story. Admittedly a bit tragic, but at least allowing poor Joao to have grand adventures in his youth, and to fall in love and enjoy fatherhood for a little while. I had tremendous fun doing this, but I’d love to hear other people’s, especially those who know more about the time and place than I do.
Since Ms. Balogh has been brave and courteous enough to appear on these boards, perhaps she’d like to share her vision of the name and back story of this character, which might put a lot of this discussion to rest, since as SB Sarah pointed out, she obviously knows the character better than any of us, and can presumably flesh him out.
I would like to join the small cheering section here of folks who are grateful to SBTB for calling out these issues in reviews! I too like to read romance for fun and fluff. And while I’m white and don’t find these racist tropes personally hurtful, I do find them jarring and decidedly not-fun (especially in books published in this century). Thanks for taking them into your accounting of whether a book is enjoyable and well crafted, because they are absolutely a factor.
Mary, thank you for your honesty and for actually asking questions. I hope you’ll come back to this post in a few days, after your feelings have settled down a bit. It’s hard to hear that a character didn’t come across as intended, whatever the cause.
Perhaps you could invite your editor to read the post, too? You’re absolutely right: your editor should have pointed out the problem.
I’m going to add my voice to those who appreciate the whole picture reviews that SBTB publishes and it’s the main reason I’m still here. I am in a mixed race relationship- half of my family is Asian, and my partner and I are raising a mixed race child. I see, on a daily basis, the negative impact that stereotypes, both “good” and “bad” have on actual living breathing people who are beloved and dear. I may still read and even enjoy parts of a book that contain some of those harmful stereotypes, or I may not, but I like to be warned ahead of time and have a choice.
Reading some of the more callous remarks in this thread were sort of catch-your-breath-painful but I want to say thank you to the participants in this discussion, because overall, you restored my faith in humanity. I also think it’s great that Mary came here and was willing to engage. I love the idea of suggesting her editor read the post AND comments too.
This has been very educational, and I thank you for all the comments and explanations. I am being sincere here! (Well, and licking some wounds too!) We are never too old to learn. I have been surprised by some things I have read. I think of myself as a reasonably knowledgeable person and one who is sensitive to all peoples and so need to be told when I have failed. I will do better in future at least on this specific issue.
Just a minor comment: AFAIK, “Oriental” is only considered offensive in the US; in most Commonwealth countries it is a generic term fit someone if East Asian origin (as opposed to someone if South Asian origin, who would be “Asian”).