Pia’s Reviews > How to Read Now > Status Update
Pia
is on page 200 of 340
'Main Character Syndrome'. Castillo turns our eye to Didion, and Didion does not survive. Castillo interrogates the violence that underlies Didion's prose, who is a colonial settler in the most literal sense, who wrote prose other white settlers enjoyed. As in: eager to erase the history of the other people they've genocided and plundered from in order to amass the wealth they use to fund luxurious writing careers
— Nov 19, 2025 09:21PM
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Pia’s Previous Updates
Pia
is on page 283 of 340
'Autobiography in Asian Film.' Castillo squares off with the pop activism thing of "representation in film". She talks about the Filipino racism in The Life Aquatic, & contrasts them with several asian films produced in asian countries like Happy Together, Monsoon Wedding, and The Assassin. She celebrates these asian movies for their depth, which highlights the narrowmindedness of the 'representation matters' calls
— Nov 21, 2025 07:41AM
Pia
is on page 233 of 340
'"Reality is All We Have'". Castillo grapples with her relationship to a personally important quote from John Berger quote, "Reality is All We Have". She parses through how the literary establishment's ambivalence and hostility to vulnerable people is deeply embedded, which is antithetical to how literature was for her growing up, and her encounters with such treatment over the years have worn her down.
— Nov 20, 2025 01:15AM
Pia
is on page 144 of 340
'The Limits of White Fantasy'. Castillo points out that the politics of 'progressive' books with anti-establishment themes and dystopian settings are from their white authors borrowing from the current and historical plights of the rest of the word, bc they LIKE the aesthetics of struggle WITHOUT rly caring about the real people that live them. I know this will sound crazy but 23 pages was not enough to explore this
— Nov 17, 2025 08:47PM
Pia
is on page 119 of 340
Honor the Treaty. Castillo goes broader by examining the shared struggle of colonized people (Māori , Filipinos, Native Americans) and how their colonizers (white people in UK, USA, New Zealand and Australia) continue to oppress them (well, us) through violence expressed in white supremacist culture and rhetoric, revisionist history, witholding human rights, and more
— Nov 17, 2025 01:36AM
Pia
is on page 75 of 340
Reading Teaches Us Empathy and Other Fictions. Wow! Complete in logos and and pathos, and really digs deep on the logos aspect. I appreciate how relentless Castillo is with her analysis of tenured, white authors. While the whole book applies more to America, the cultural trends among readers that Castillo is dissecting is also present in a mutated form sa Pilipinas.
— Nov 16, 2025 11:45PM
Pia
is on page 26 of 340
How To Read Now. Talks about Race in America, specifically how it was taught by the author’s father and upbringing (not an Other) and how it was imposed upon her in wider America (an Other). I liked it by feel, but aside from shattering the false universality of “Only One” (only asian in white town) POC experience in the US, i dont think its going to impart anything to people that dont already agree
— Nov 16, 2025 04:01PM
Pia
is on page 10 of 340
the Author's Note makes me launch out of my seat from how good it is
— Nov 16, 2025 12:30AM
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Castillo's relentless reading of Didion is so refreshing to me, because she doesn't ever stop and try to comfort readers who may have found enjoyment or appreciation from Didion. She takes seriously the contents of Didion's writing, always directly engaging with her text, and because of that she is able to correctly and exhaustively excavate the inherent to Didion's writing.
Either these people haven't read Didion, or are just painful misreading Didion's explicitly racist text in order to, what? Keep up with the hype? Not fall out of step?
Anyway, Castillo shows that that racism is not a one off, a lapse in judgement. In reality, Didion's racism is central to her voice, her style, her way of seeing the world. Castillo substantiates this by presenting Didion's white washed version of writing history, to the actual reality, specifically the Hawaiians, the Filipinos and the Native Americans that Didion's world of white colonizers exploits and then ignores in their version of the story.