Thank you for making a video about this. For an author who produces such detailed prose, the author made some stereotypical choices around the Chinese father Winston. Powers even went out of his way to create a whole conversation between Winston and his father to showcase him talking in broken English because it was to “practice for the upcoming trip to America” - for what literary purpose? When Winston went through customs and showed the customs officer his mooncakes and thousand year eggs the customs officer shouted in disgust at the smell, once again for what literary purpose? Thousand year eggs and moon cakes don’t really smell like anything at all unless he peeled all of them which makes no sense. Powers went out of his way to specify that Winston is from the hui minority in northwestern China. They have their own rich culture with ties to the central plains towards Kazakhstan and other central Asian regions and follow Islam. I assume Powers made this choice to paint Winston’s family as rich traders who profited off the silk trade, but aside from that doesn’t seem to write the character with any nuance that fully respects the unique background and intersectionality of a Hui Chinese. Then Powers uses this kind of character background to reference Confucian values and Buddhist philosophy? What is going on here? Why not profile a wealthy immigrant from a family of port-side traders based out of Hong Kong or Guangdong who follow Buddhist traditions more closely? Why not detail one of the many poor immigrants that arrived in droves to San Francisco or New York City where Chinatown served as a beacon for many immigrant stories in the early part of the century? I’m going to give Powers the benefit of the doubt and assume he cross-referenced his Chinese characters with strong Chinese writers but for a white man with so much to say and share, he should really stick to what he knows and leave the “walk a thousand steps in someone else’s shoes exercise” to a different project. Also, why pick Asian immigrant stories to caricaturize when there are so many indigenous, black, and brown stories that go untold especially in the realm of conservancy?
Thank you for this incredibly insightful comment! You added so much more context for my understanding of the problems in this book. It makes me so sad to think that an author with so much capability for research chose to do the bare minimum when writing about non-American, non-white cultures.
I'm so excited to have found your review! You're the only reviewer I've seen who's talking about this! Your insight is invaluable 💗. It's disturbing that he didn't research the cultural aspects more, as it's clear he is capable of intense research, considering he isn't a botanist or ecologist. I think he studied literature and physics at university. I wish he'd attended as carefully to the cultural aspects as he did to the science. He also could've utilized sensitivity readers, which I feel would've pointed out his racism to him. I don’t think I’m going to finish this and will read braiding sweetgrass instead 🙃.
Thank you so much for your lovely comment Madeline. I agree, he is capable of the research, but he just didn’t do any justice to a book that could have revolutionised the world. Its really sad. On another note, I just got my hands on Braiding Sweetgrass too! Can’t wait to read it! 💚
I recently finished this book, and was also left with very mixed feelings about it. That resulted in searching for some reviews on RUclips to see if anyone had provided a critical review, where I found your video. Before I give too much of my opinion, I'll say that I'm a white American, so I probably have many of the same blind-spots as the author. However, even with that admission, the storylines around Mimi and Neelay absolutely felt caricatured and artificial from my perspective as well. In particular the portion's with Mimi's father and the grammatical errors in his dialogue, and how those were adopted by Mimi and even Douglas to a degree in later portions of the book. I very much appreciate hearing your personal perspective on Neelay's storyline and how that relates (or poorly relates) to Indian culture. Also, regarding a couple things you mentioned: First, you said that there were two characters with immigrant stories, Mimi and Neelay. But in fact, the book begins with the immigrant story of Nicholas Hoel's family. However, it is very noticeable how the European immigrant story didn't result in such caricatured storylines as the Chinese and Indian immigrant stories. I think that is very emblematic of the underlying issues you have pointed out. Second, there was a brief scene with indigenous characters, involving an older man and his sons who helped Nicholas with the placement of logs towards the end of the book. But you are absolutely correct that the indigenous perspective was excluded. They only appeared as very minor characters in a story that predominantly took place on their ancestral land, and with a clear connection between the broader theme and their ancestral beliefs. What attracted me to The Overstory was that I previously read another Richard Powers book, Bewilderment. To be honest, Bewilderment is a far greater book in my opinion, but reflecting on my experience with The Overstory and hearing your perspective, I'm not sure it didn't have some of the same problems with respect to things like cultural accuracy and sensitivity. For the first half of Bewilderment I imagined the main characters, a father and son, as white Americans like myself. However, eventually a couple details are provided which indicate that they are African American. At that point I started to notice certain areas where their personal experience was intended to reflect the personal experience of POC in the US, but they also felt contrived and inauthentic.
Thank you for your comment. I haven’t read Bewilderment, but I can believe that it may contain similar issues as the overstory. You are right - I did forget to mention Hoel’s immigration experience in my review and you’re absolutely right when you say that the European experience did not stand out to me because it wasn’t a caricature, rather a genuine representation.
@@Talesandtexts you're welcome, and thank you for your thoughtful review. As I think more about Bewilderment, I believe I know what the core issue is. Just a hypothesis on my part, but I think there is something there. As more background, the son in Bewilderment is neurodivergent (ADHD, Autism spectrum), and the core of the narrative focuses on that aspect of his life and his father's desire to help his neurodivergent son navigate a complicated world. I happen to have ADHD and also have tested very close to but not official on the Autism spectrum, and some of the son's behaviors also felt contrived from my personal perspective. It's worth noting that ADHD like Autism is a spectrum disorder and the experience is very individualized, but the son's presentation of those disorders did feel very caricatured as I consider them in hindsight. Some of the therapy methods that helped the son were also very idealistically presented in terms of their effectiveness, and I think they could easily come across as suggestions that there is an easy solution to such disorders, which is a gross oversimplification of the struggle. So, my hypothesis is that Richard Powers is the type of author who has an earnest desire to write about the experiences of minority communities (whether from the perspective of racial/cultural diversity or neurodiversity) and issues with broader social ramifications (environmentalism, the merits/demerits of modern technology, authoritative governments siding with commercial interests over citizens' interests, mental health, etc.), but that he's missing something in his delivery and would perhaps be better served to research the personal experiences of those communities more deeply before he uses his voice to narrate their experience, and/or make a decision to not do so and instead focus on using his own authentic voice in his writing while still highlighting the broader themes that he is hoping to draw attention to.
I have read Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup. This does touch upon climate change, although its one of many themes explored in the book. Then there is Aranyak by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. I wouldn’t say its about climate change, but more about forests and our relationship with them as humans. Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches is also partly cli-fi and also about indigenous land rights. I would also frame Ruskin Bond’s works as something that we can look at from a cli-fi lens, purely because he writes of a time when India was rich in trees, plants and animals. If you compare the places he writes about then and now, you can see the impact of climate change. Then there is also Tashan Mehta’s The Mad Sisters of Esi. That comes between cli-fi, sci-fi and fantasy.
I came to chapter 2, Mimi Ma, and I had to put it down to Google the title+’racist’. I was so baffled, because everywhere I read on the Internet about the book was 5/5 stars. I DNFed it right then and there lol. You made a great point that the POCs were very much viewed from the POV of a white man. I am Vietnamese and I feel very strongly about East Asian portrayal (I feel connected to China, because we share so much culture), and so I couldn’t get over how this book got so much praise. Written in 2018, the Pulitzer Prize!
Exactly! I really can’t get over how more people aren’t talking about the very problematic themes in this book. It leaves such s horrid aftertaste, this one.
Thank you for this! Like you - and others in the comments - say, it is weird that so much praise for the book seems unshaken by its many questionable aspects. Once you start paying attention, it is oddly, glaringly white. On the topic of Indigenous people's presence - as far as I can tell, they do feature, but only as a laughable afterthought. I think in the last few passages of Nick, the artist, at the very end of the novel, when he is assembling his artwork in the woods, he is assisted by some people who turn up and seem to be coded as Native American (singing songs in a language 'way older than anything else he knows' seems one of the ways it's hinted). This, I think, makes the omission all the more egregious - as if Indigenous people turn up late to a cause they have been involved in for so much longer than any of the book's characters... Or I don't know, Power does have them sort of 'laugh' at Nick in the 'we knew this all along' way, but it just ends up being beyond puzzling, then, why this point - about Indigenous people's relationship to the themes of the book - arrives so late and in such a perfunctory way (literally a couple of paragraphs). Where is the discussion of that (in reviews etc)??! Anyway, thanks for this video!
Thank you for making this really important point! You are absolutely right. This book was just so infuriating. I really hope more people critically analyse this book, instead of just praising it because others do.
I really appreciate your objective thorough review that is unique but very true. I felt the same "exclusory" and even a sense of mockery about Chinese and Indian characters. I just wished that the writer himself could have replied to your review just to say that this was not personally meant or any other explanation that shows he genuinely cares. So thank you again and I shall definitely follow you.
I think your analysis is great. I haven't read the book. I read an interview and cringed, so your take is unsurprising and your descriptions of the issues is very complete. I'm unsurprised he "forgot" Indigenous folks, but since you explained what he did to other cultures...maybe that's for the best lol? His white saviour narrative would have been ruined by including my people. And why did the Brown folks need to be immigrants, many have been here as long as white folks. What you describe is almost like he's telling Brown folks "by the way your culture says you should protect the Earth." I always find it offensive when white folks blame environmental crisis on everyone when it's mostly the fault of white folks. Thanks so much for your review, I think you're right about why it was praised....all of them. ❤ Maybe we need to stop rewarding the creators of environmental crisis for talking about it. These rewards need to go to the many many ignored Black, Brown, Indigenous authors on these subjects.
Very aptly put. It was exactly that - a white saviour attitude. It’s infuriating when the people who cause the problems are the ones to wash their hands off it and then pretend like they’re offering some novel solution. I really hope more people discuss these problems in this book, rather than just blindly praise it.
Thank you for making a video about this. For an author who produces such detailed prose, the author made some stereotypical choices around the Chinese father Winston. Powers even went out of his way to create a whole conversation between Winston and his father to showcase him talking in broken English because it was to “practice for the upcoming trip to America” - for what literary purpose?
When Winston went through customs and showed the customs officer his mooncakes and thousand year eggs the customs officer shouted in disgust at the smell, once again for what literary purpose? Thousand year eggs and moon cakes don’t really smell like anything at all unless he peeled all of them which makes no sense.
Powers went out of his way to specify that Winston is from the hui minority in northwestern China. They have their own rich culture with ties to the central plains towards Kazakhstan and other central Asian regions and follow Islam. I assume Powers made this choice to paint Winston’s family as rich traders who profited off the silk trade, but aside from that doesn’t seem to write the character with any nuance that fully respects the unique background and intersectionality of a Hui Chinese. Then Powers uses this kind of character background to
reference Confucian values and Buddhist philosophy? What is going on here? Why not profile a wealthy immigrant from a family of port-side traders based out of Hong Kong or Guangdong who follow Buddhist traditions more closely? Why not detail one of the many poor immigrants that arrived in droves to San Francisco or New York City where Chinatown served as a beacon for many immigrant stories in the early part of the century?
I’m going to give Powers the benefit of the doubt and assume he cross-referenced his Chinese characters with strong Chinese writers but for a white man with so much to say and share, he should really stick to what he knows and leave the “walk a thousand steps in someone else’s shoes exercise” to a different project.
Also, why pick Asian immigrant stories to caricaturize when there are so many indigenous, black, and brown stories that go untold especially in the realm of conservancy?
Thank you for this incredibly insightful comment! You added so much more context for my understanding of the problems in this book. It makes me so sad to think that an author with so much capability for research chose to do the bare minimum when writing about non-American, non-white cultures.
I'm so excited to have found your review! You're the only reviewer I've seen who's talking about this! Your insight is invaluable 💗. It's disturbing that he didn't research the cultural aspects more, as it's clear he is capable of intense research, considering he isn't a botanist or ecologist. I think he studied literature and physics at university. I wish he'd attended as carefully to the cultural aspects as he did to the science. He also could've utilized sensitivity readers, which I feel would've pointed out his racism to him. I don’t think I’m going to finish this and will read braiding sweetgrass instead 🙃.
Thank you so much for your lovely comment Madeline. I agree, he is capable of the research, but he just didn’t do any justice to a book that could have revolutionised the world. Its really sad.
On another note, I just got my hands on Braiding Sweetgrass too! Can’t wait to read it! 💚
I recently finished this book, and was also left with very mixed feelings about it. That resulted in searching for some reviews on RUclips to see if anyone had provided a critical review, where I found your video.
Before I give too much of my opinion, I'll say that I'm a white American, so I probably have many of the same blind-spots as the author. However, even with that admission, the storylines around Mimi and Neelay absolutely felt caricatured and artificial from my perspective as well. In particular the portion's with Mimi's father and the grammatical errors in his dialogue, and how those were adopted by Mimi and even Douglas to a degree in later portions of the book. I very much appreciate hearing your personal perspective on Neelay's storyline and how that relates (or poorly relates) to Indian culture.
Also, regarding a couple things you mentioned:
First, you said that there were two characters with immigrant stories, Mimi and Neelay. But in fact, the book begins with the immigrant story of Nicholas Hoel's family. However, it is very noticeable how the European immigrant story didn't result in such caricatured storylines as the Chinese and Indian immigrant stories. I think that is very emblematic of the underlying issues you have pointed out.
Second, there was a brief scene with indigenous characters, involving an older man and his sons who helped Nicholas with the placement of logs towards the end of the book. But you are absolutely correct that the indigenous perspective was excluded. They only appeared as very minor characters in a story that predominantly took place on their ancestral land, and with a clear connection between the broader theme and their ancestral beliefs.
What attracted me to The Overstory was that I previously read another Richard Powers book, Bewilderment. To be honest, Bewilderment is a far greater book in my opinion, but reflecting on my experience with The Overstory and hearing your perspective, I'm not sure it didn't have some of the same problems with respect to things like cultural accuracy and sensitivity. For the first half of Bewilderment I imagined the main characters, a father and son, as white Americans like myself. However, eventually a couple details are provided which indicate that they are African American. At that point I started to notice certain areas where their personal experience was intended to reflect the personal experience of POC in the US, but they also felt contrived and inauthentic.
Thank you for your comment. I haven’t read Bewilderment, but I can believe that it may contain similar issues as the overstory. You are right - I did forget to mention Hoel’s immigration experience in my review and you’re absolutely right when you say that the European experience did not stand out to me because it wasn’t a caricature, rather a genuine representation.
@@Talesandtexts you're welcome, and thank you for your thoughtful review. As I think more about Bewilderment, I believe I know what the core issue is. Just a hypothesis on my part, but I think there is something there. As more background, the son in Bewilderment is neurodivergent (ADHD, Autism spectrum), and the core of the narrative focuses on that aspect of his life and his father's desire to help his neurodivergent son navigate a complicated world. I happen to have ADHD and also have tested very close to but not official on the Autism spectrum, and some of the son's behaviors also felt contrived from my personal perspective. It's worth noting that ADHD like Autism is a spectrum disorder and the experience is very individualized, but the son's presentation of those disorders did feel very caricatured as I consider them in hindsight. Some of the therapy methods that helped the son were also very idealistically presented in terms of their effectiveness, and I think they could easily come across as suggestions that there is an easy solution to such disorders, which is a gross oversimplification of the struggle.
So, my hypothesis is that Richard Powers is the type of author who has an earnest desire to write about the experiences of minority communities (whether from the perspective of racial/cultural diversity or neurodiversity) and issues with broader social ramifications (environmentalism, the merits/demerits of modern technology, authoritative governments siding with commercial interests over citizens' interests, mental health, etc.), but that he's missing something in his delivery and would perhaps be better served to research the personal experiences of those communities more deeply before he uses his voice to narrate their experience, and/or make a decision to not do so and instead focus on using his own authentic voice in his writing while still highlighting the broader themes that he is hoping to draw attention to.
@@chrishenderson1262 So sorry for the delay in reply, but you are `100% right.
Ok I gotta watch this later but I real quick have to say OMG, YOUR HAIR! It's sooo awesome, I love it!!
Thank you so much! I had always wanted to try this style out and I’m so happy with it. 🥰
Can you suggest some cli- fi by Indian authors? Except Amitav Ghosh
I have read Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup. This does touch upon climate change, although its one of many themes explored in the book. Then there is Aranyak by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. I wouldn’t say its about climate change, but more about forests and our relationship with them as humans. Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches is also partly cli-fi and also about indigenous land rights. I would also frame Ruskin Bond’s works as something that we can look at from a cli-fi lens, purely because he writes of a time when India was rich in trees, plants and animals. If you compare the places he writes about then and now, you can see the impact of climate change. Then there is also Tashan Mehta’s The Mad Sisters of Esi. That comes between cli-fi, sci-fi and fantasy.
Thankyou for your further reading suggestions...very helpful... grateful 😊
I came to chapter 2, Mimi Ma, and I had to put it down to Google the title+’racist’. I was so baffled, because everywhere I read on the Internet about the book was 5/5 stars. I DNFed it right then and there lol. You made a great point that the POCs were very much viewed from the POV of a white man. I am Vietnamese and I feel very strongly about East Asian portrayal (I feel connected to China, because we share so much culture), and so I couldn’t get over how this book got so much praise. Written in 2018, the Pulitzer Prize!
Exactly! I really can’t get over how more people aren’t talking about the very problematic themes in this book. It leaves such s horrid aftertaste, this one.
Thank you for this! Like you - and others in the comments - say, it is weird that so much praise for the book seems unshaken by its many questionable aspects. Once you start paying attention, it is oddly, glaringly white.
On the topic of Indigenous people's presence - as far as I can tell, they do feature, but only as a laughable afterthought. I think in the last few passages of Nick, the artist, at the very end of the novel, when he is assembling his artwork in the woods, he is assisted by some people who turn up and seem to be coded as Native American (singing songs in a language 'way older than anything else he knows' seems one of the ways it's hinted). This, I think, makes the omission all the more egregious - as if Indigenous people turn up late to a cause they have been involved in for so much longer than any of the book's characters... Or I don't know, Power does have them sort of 'laugh' at Nick in the 'we knew this all along' way, but it just ends up being beyond puzzling, then, why this point - about Indigenous people's relationship to the themes of the book - arrives so late and in such a perfunctory way (literally a couple of paragraphs). Where is the discussion of that (in reviews etc)??!
Anyway, thanks for this video!
Thank you for making this really important point! You are absolutely right. This book was just so infuriating. I really hope more people critically analyse this book, instead of just praising it because others do.
I really appreciate your objective thorough review that is unique but very true.
I felt the same "exclusory" and even a sense of mockery about Chinese and Indian characters. I just wished that the writer himself could have replied to your review just to say that this was not personally meant or any other explanation that shows he genuinely cares. So thank you again and I shall definitely follow you.
Thank you so much for your kind comment and your support. Really appreciate you being here. 💚
I think your analysis is great. I haven't read the book. I read an interview and cringed, so your take is unsurprising and your descriptions of the issues is very complete. I'm unsurprised he "forgot" Indigenous folks, but since you explained what he did to other cultures...maybe that's for the best lol? His white saviour narrative would have been ruined by including my people. And why did the Brown folks need to be immigrants, many have been here as long as white folks. What you describe is almost like he's telling Brown folks "by the way your culture says you should protect the Earth." I always find it offensive when white folks blame environmental crisis on everyone when it's mostly the fault of white folks. Thanks so much for your review, I think you're right about why it was praised....all of them. ❤ Maybe we need to stop rewarding the creators of environmental crisis for talking about it. These rewards need to go to the many many ignored Black, Brown, Indigenous authors on these subjects.
Very aptly put. It was exactly that - a white saviour attitude. It’s infuriating when the people who cause the problems are the ones to wash their hands off it and then pretend like they’re offering some novel solution. I really hope more people discuss these problems in this book, rather than just blindly praise it.