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Jun. 26th, 2007 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionKiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City - Kirsten Miller. Oh, I wanted to like this. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wrdnrd really likes this book, & it sounded fun: renegade Girl Scouts exploring an underground world in New York City! There were things I liked about it, but overall my reaction is pretty negative.
First of all: I hate the People of Color: Gotta Catch 'Em All! method of character creation. Kiki Strike, leader of the Irregulars, is a cute little white girl (of course!). Ananka Fishbein, who becomes the 2nd leader, is also a white girl (surprise!). It reminds me of how everyone kept telling me how great Veronica Mars was in terms of diversity & stuff, & I was like, but wait, it's still a white girl who's the boss, right??? Betty Bent, a master of disguise, is racially unidentified. The others? Rainbow Coalition. We have DeeDee Morlock, a black girl only identifiable as such by her dreadlocks. She is a perfect example of the phenomenon discussed at WisCon, of the character of color who just as easily could've been white, because there's nothing about her other than her appearance that indicates she has any sort of cultural or ethnic difference. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the only thing Miller says about DeeDee's appearance is that she has dreads (she could be one of those white folks who have dreads, I guess, but the illustration on the back of the book pretty much confirms that she's supposed to be black, & I don't credit Miller w/enough imagination to think outside the most obvious box on this one). Then we have Luz Lopez, the Latina living in Morningside Heights. Her ethnic markers, aside from her name, appear to be having a neighbor w/a Latino name, being poor, & having a strict mother. Later on it comes out that she is a Cuban refugee. Then we have Oona Wong. We discover her when the narrative moves to Chinatown, w/an accompanying description of the weird things one can buy there, & also, oh yeah, the counterfeit goods. Oona appears from inside a temple, wearing a silk Chinese dress, w/her hair in a bun (according to the cover illustration, w/chopsticks in it--sigh). She has a "doll-like" appearance. And... guess what? She is also one of those crazy Chinese counterfeiters--she is a forger; she counterfeits documents. Turns out her life in New York also stems from Chinese human smuggling (perhaps her parents paid to be smuggled here? It's not clear). Miller's conception of people of color seems to alternate between stereotypes & the "I'm colorblind! I don't see race!" method. Oh, joy.
Now that the Irregulars have been assembled, Kiki then proceeds to boss them around, being a real cranky bully (which is explained later on as a result of her being hungry all the time b/c she's allergic to nearly everything. Sorry, not good enough). They explore the Shadow City below New York, but it's pretty obvious to the reader that Kiki has an ulterior motive in doing so that she's hiding from everyone else. Yet no one else seems to pick up on it? Even though these girls are all supposed to be brilliant (chemistry whiz, gadgeteer, etc.)? It's revealed later that Kiki kept all these secrets b/c she's really a princess of an Eastern European country, & the people who killed her family & stole the throne are after her. Can we say yawn? I am so tired of these sorts of storylines, & of ultra special white girls. Also, Kiki disappears for a while & makes a Chinese martial arts flick in Chinatown. Because she's just sooooo good @ everything. Ugh.
Anyway--supposedly Kiki really cared about the Irregulars & felt guilty about having to mislead them, & putting one of them in the hospital. But to me she didn't seem contrite @ all, just calculating. Maybe it's a function of Miller's writing style, which I found irritatingly slick. Her author bio says that she's an advertising executive. Well, she writes like it.
Oh--I did say I liked stuff about the book, right? Well, let's see: I liked how each chapter ended w/tidbits on how to be a good asskicking girl spy: how to lie, how to foil a kidnapping attempt, how to disguise yourself, etc. And I liked that the Irregulars are clearly tired of the casual sexism & low expectations they receive as young girls. And about the only thing I liked about Oona was that she opens a nail salon, where she & the other workers (all Chinese girls) pretend not to speak English v. well so that the bigwig customers will speak secrets freely in front of them. Other than that... ugh & ugh & ugh. The book seems to be set up for sequels, but I'm pretty sure I won't be reading them.
wrdnrd really likes this book, & it sounded fun: renegade Girl Scouts exploring an underground world in New York City! There were things I liked about it, but overall my reaction is pretty negative. First of all: I hate the People of Color: Gotta Catch 'Em All! method of character creation. Kiki Strike, leader of the Irregulars, is a cute little white girl (of course!). Ananka Fishbein, who becomes the 2nd leader, is also a white girl (surprise!). It reminds me of how everyone kept telling me how great Veronica Mars was in terms of diversity & stuff, & I was like, but wait, it's still a white girl who's the boss, right??? Betty Bent, a master of disguise, is racially unidentified. The others? Rainbow Coalition. We have DeeDee Morlock, a black girl only identifiable as such by her dreadlocks. She is a perfect example of the phenomenon discussed at WisCon, of the character of color who just as easily could've been white, because there's nothing about her other than her appearance that indicates she has any sort of cultural or ethnic difference. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the only thing Miller says about DeeDee's appearance is that she has dreads (she could be one of those white folks who have dreads, I guess, but the illustration on the back of the book pretty much confirms that she's supposed to be black, & I don't credit Miller w/enough imagination to think outside the most obvious box on this one). Then we have Luz Lopez, the Latina living in Morningside Heights. Her ethnic markers, aside from her name, appear to be having a neighbor w/a Latino name, being poor, & having a strict mother. Later on it comes out that she is a Cuban refugee. Then we have Oona Wong. We discover her when the narrative moves to Chinatown, w/an accompanying description of the weird things one can buy there, & also, oh yeah, the counterfeit goods. Oona appears from inside a temple, wearing a silk Chinese dress, w/her hair in a bun (according to the cover illustration, w/chopsticks in it--sigh). She has a "doll-like" appearance. And... guess what? She is also one of those crazy Chinese counterfeiters--she is a forger; she counterfeits documents. Turns out her life in New York also stems from Chinese human smuggling (perhaps her parents paid to be smuggled here? It's not clear). Miller's conception of people of color seems to alternate between stereotypes & the "I'm colorblind! I don't see race!" method. Oh, joy.
Now that the Irregulars have been assembled, Kiki then proceeds to boss them around, being a real cranky bully (which is explained later on as a result of her being hungry all the time b/c she's allergic to nearly everything. Sorry, not good enough). They explore the Shadow City below New York, but it's pretty obvious to the reader that Kiki has an ulterior motive in doing so that she's hiding from everyone else. Yet no one else seems to pick up on it? Even though these girls are all supposed to be brilliant (chemistry whiz, gadgeteer, etc.)? It's revealed later that Kiki kept all these secrets b/c she's really a princess of an Eastern European country, & the people who killed her family & stole the throne are after her. Can we say yawn? I am so tired of these sorts of storylines, & of ultra special white girls. Also, Kiki disappears for a while & makes a Chinese martial arts flick in Chinatown. Because she's just sooooo good @ everything. Ugh.
Anyway--supposedly Kiki really cared about the Irregulars & felt guilty about having to mislead them, & putting one of them in the hospital. But to me she didn't seem contrite @ all, just calculating. Maybe it's a function of Miller's writing style, which I found irritatingly slick. Her author bio says that she's an advertising executive. Well, she writes like it.
Oh--I did say I liked stuff about the book, right? Well, let's see: I liked how each chapter ended w/tidbits on how to be a good asskicking girl spy: how to lie, how to foil a kidnapping attempt, how to disguise yourself, etc. And I liked that the Irregulars are clearly tired of the casual sexism & low expectations they receive as young girls. And about the only thing I liked about Oona was that she opens a nail salon, where she & the other workers (all Chinese girls) pretend not to speak English v. well so that the bigwig customers will speak secrets freely in front of them. Other than that... ugh & ugh & ugh. The book seems to be set up for sequels, but I'm pretty sure I won't be reading them.