Hana > Recent Status Updates

The people in powerful rooms, to whom others defer, may be elites relative to the larger group they represent, but disadvantaged relative to the other people in the rooms with them. Our sense of ourselves and the patterns of deference we tend to fit to our standpoint epistemological commitments often foregrounds the ways we are marginalised, rather than the ways we are not.

Writing a story which casts the army of the East India Company as the heroes trying to save the helpless ‘Hindoos’ from the evil Indian prince is definitely… a choice.

Both Bilal and Hafsah have unspoken religious boundaries in terms of physical touch. They never touch. Instead, the intimacy between them should be shown in the myriad of other ways it exists. How intimate can a look be? What about a silence? A touch held back?

Recognizing ‘enoughness’ is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more.

Perhaps most chillingly I have learned that the biggest perpetrator of racism in the UK was not the National Front member on the street, but actually the state.
From elected politicians, to laws (especially immigration laws), to the police force, healthcare and even the education system, the state was the biggest perpetrator and supporter of racism. Not to be outdone, it was followed closely by the media.

One of the reasons I wrote this book was to understand the UK I was born into as a Brown woman, and now I do understand it better. I understand all the things that have happened since the 1980s, which once led me to shake my head and ask, 'How could this happen?' Now I greet them with, 'Yep, makes sense?

‘One of the reasons you’ve probably heard little to nothing about groups such as the Fasimbas and BLF is the media at the time only covered Black Power groups when there were clashes with the police or supposedly violent acts … What gets ignored is one of their main activities of education and community development.’

Reading a library book and I feel like I want to buy my own copy so I can annotate all over it.

Nothing about the state of racism in the UK now is new, and this book is so full of gems about how we got here that I’ve never heard anyone mention before.

Always she had been told that the meaning of a woman’s life was to be found in caring for her family, and this duty was not one Juliet wished to forsake. But she had the capacity for more besides, and she longed to demonstrate such capacity again.

Quran talks about food being ‘halal' as well as ‘tayyab'. Whilst the traditional focus has been on halal, Generation M believe this is not enough... In a modern mechanised world… what was once taken for granted in terms of animal welfare has been sacrificed in pursuit of mass production.

I’ve been banging on about this alone for years, so nice to know it’s apparently A Thing among lots of Muslims!

I am irrationally annoyed by the fact that this book is (partially) set in Cambridge when Heather Fawcett very evidently knows absolutely nothing about the city or the university.

I just saw a review where someone described Robin Hobb’s writing style as ‘succinct’… either we’re not reading the same book, or we have very different understandings of what that word means!

OH for crying out loud 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️

Honestly I would have so much more patience for Esmeralda if she wasn’t so obsessed with Phoebus, who has done NOTHING to deserve her

5+ hours into the audiobook, and at least 2 have been Hugo ranting about the history of Parisian architecture. The only character we’ve spent a significant amount of time with is Pierre Gringoire, a struggling poet.

If the sewer chapters of Les Mis are anything like the architecture chapters here, I have a sudden new sympathy for the abridged version!

As if this series didn’t have enough problems, now there’s petty jealousy between the only two major female characters as well.

These books are giving me nothing, why am I still reading them?!

Realising why the time period/setting of this series feels so off to me: it’s because there are no schools. How do people learn anything if they’ve barely left their houses in 50 years?

It just doesn’t feel like Jonathan Stroud has really thought through all the consequences of his worldbuilding

WHAT

I have to say, one thing I love about Uzma Jalaluddin’s books is how much she leans into Muslim names that aren’t the super common ones!

Simultaneously unsurprised that this has had such mixed reception, and shocked that it’s been as well-received as it has?!

But never have I experienced a book written so deeply for *me*

Bless Rachel Hartman for putting a full plot summary of Tess of the Road in the prologue of this!

Yeah nope. I’ve given it a bit more and it’s still just not doing it - if I read it at a different time I probably would have at least finished it, but in this moment I just don’t care.

I am on the verge of DNFing this, but I have just remembered that the first book only picked up after I’d dragged myself through the first ~40% too. So I’ll give this a bit longer - but if it doesn’t get much better within the next 50-75 or so pages, I’m giving up.

For some reason I’d picked up the impression that Bertha was a POC in this, which is incorrect. I also didn’t expect half of it to be from Mr Rochester’s perspective?

I can’t help but wonder what’s happened to all the real animals in this world…

The Battles of the Fords of Isen:
This was fine, I guess. An extended fight scene was never going to be my favourite thing.

The Hunt for the Ring:
My main takeaway from this story is that Saruman is a Child.

The Quest for Erebor:
Tolkien was the master of retconning. Also, Gandalf’s speech to Thorin about not underestimating Hobbits was fantastic.

The Disaster of the Gladden Fields:
First Galadriel, now Isildur - I’m so interested by the way Tolkien’s hero characters got more and more heroic and noble with every time he revised their story.

The History of Galadriel and Celeborn:
Wildly confusing, but brilliant. Such an interesting example of how Tolkien’s writing evolved over decades, and also made me admire Galadriel much more than I did after just what we get of her in The Silmarillion.
(Also, I am absolutely choosing to consider as true the version where these two come to Middle-Earth ahead of Feanor, even if it isn’t strictly canon…)