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Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A number of books about Hong Kong have popped up in the aftermath of the 2019 protests and the subsequent National Security Law imposed by Beijing on the city to put a stop to protests and dissent in general. Each have their own particular angle – this one by journalist Louisa Lim is a blend of history and personal memoir to explore the question of Hong Kong identity – what does it mean to be a Hongkonger? And more importantly, who gets to decide?
It's a pertinent question – partly because this was one of the driving forces behind the protests, but also because Hong Kong’s official history has always been written by the colonial masters in control of the city, be it the UK or China. Lim’s research shows that both competing narratives obscure the truth that HK has always had its own distinct culture that has become increasingly multi-layered over the years. Interestingly, Lim finds this complex identity embodied in Tsang Tsou-choi, a.k.a. “the King of Kowloon”, a local legend who spent decades covering public spaces with graffiti claiming the British stole his ancestral homeland.
Lim interweaves the history of HK and the story of the King with her own experience as a Eurasian who grew up in HK. All of this feeds into her experience covering the 2019 protests and her struggle to maintain journalistic neutrality as an out-of-control police force unleashed endless tear gas and vicious beatings on protesters, journalists and anyone else in their way. While Lim doesn’t excuse the violence from the protester side, she frames it within the proper context of both an asymmetrical power balance and the inevitable response of people who were understandably angry that their own govt was responding to their concerns about HK’s future with tear gas, beatings and jailing of opposition leaders. More than that, they were angry that they had been robbed of a future they had been promised by Beijing, who in their view had turned out to be just another colonial master who saw HK as an entitled land grab with an inconveniently different culture to be assimilated.
It’s a well-written, powerful book and a welcome correction of the official historical narratives of Hong Kong – especially now that HK’s history textbooks are being rewritten again under recent “patriotic” education reforms to suit the official Beijing narrative and foster a new “national” identity as dictated by the CCP. Lim’s previous book, The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, described how Beijing had successfully managed to transform June 4, 1989 into a day in which (at least in China) nothing memorable happened. Lim warns that it could do the same with the 2019 protests (which have already been officially labelled by the HK govt as a violent separatist uprising funded by foreign govts intending to overthrow the CCP) – but she is hopeful the city’s “Lion Rock” spirit as embodied by the King of Kowloon remains, and its people will not forget their history or relinquish their identity so easily.
Seeking God: The Way of St Benedict by Esther de Waal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was the book for this year’s Lent study, so I can’t say it’s something I would have picked up on my own. But it’s regarded as something of a classic, so there’s that. The book is essentially a reflection on the "Rules of St Benedict" by Esther de Waal, a layperson who was inspired by the ancient Benedictine church buildings in England where she grew up to read the Rules, and found them so meaningful that she wrote this book to explain how they can also apply to modern Christian living without having to actually join a Benedictine monastery.
This is key because Benedict (who was also a layperson) wrote them mainly as a rulebook for the order, which means many of them are specific to monastery life and operations. But the rules themselves can be broken down to cover various pillars of monastic life, from worship, work and study to devotion, authority and wealth. In other words, it’s not the specific rules that matter so much as the practical and spiritual intentions behind them. De Waal focuses on these, and then explains how they’re still relevant to us today.
I confess I didn’t get much out of it in terms of practical application, although I did learn a lot about Benedict and the Benedictine order. I won’t say reading the Rules of St Benedict is a prerequisite, but it might help, since de Waal writes as though you have at least skimmed over them. She also writes in a reflective and somewhat meandering manner, so it’s probably as well we spent five weeks on it in the study group, because it takes a while for everything to gel – at least for me. But that could well be my problem. In fact, it probably is.
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Second novel from Annalee Newitz (also the second of theirs that I’ve read) that could be summed up as a “alt-history queer feminist riot-grrrl time wars” novel, which is a heck of a subgenre. The basic premise is that time travel has been a thing for hundreds of thousands of years, as the time machines in this case are five geological formations that can be activated to open wormholes along the timeline. You can go back and forth from your present time, but never into the future.
The storyline follows two basic narratives. In 2022, Tess is part of a group of geologists called the Daughters of Harriet in 2022 trying to covertly “edit” the timeline as a group of incels inspired by Anthony Comstock plots to create a future where women are breeder slaves, then destroy the machines to prevent further edits. In 1992, Beth is a riot grrl whose helps her best friend Lizzy cover up her murder of a boy who tried to rape their friend, only to find that Lizzy won’t stop at just one. These become interconnected as it is revealed that Tess is trying to edit more than just the Comstocker plot.
Like any decent time travel story, it’s somewhat convoluted. But I like that Newitz challenges the old simplistic trope of using time travel to change history (e.g. killing baby Hitler prevents the Holocaust) and explores whether collective action would be a more effective tool, as well as the ethics and consequences of editing timelines. It’s also very angry and political, so obviously your experience will depend in part on how you feel about LGBTQ+ rights/representation, racism and sexism, or at least your ability to tolerate other viewpoints on these issues.
Overall, despite a few minor flaws, I found this a better and more believable novel than their debut novel Autonomous, a lot of which comes down to having more likeable characters. While I think Newitz still tends to reduce their villains to amplified stereotypes, there’s less of it here. And in fairness, their portrayals of the Comstockers were lifted directly from incel message boards (and quotes from Comstock himself). Also, their timing is uncanny, in that they imagine a 2022 in which abortion was never legalized in the US – which might have seemed a far-fetched plot point when this came out in 2019, but since Roe v Wade was overturned (in 2022!), it seems almost prophetic.
View all my reviews
Living in the past,
This is dF
Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa LimMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A number of books about Hong Kong have popped up in the aftermath of the 2019 protests and the subsequent National Security Law imposed by Beijing on the city to put a stop to protests and dissent in general. Each have their own particular angle – this one by journalist Louisa Lim is a blend of history and personal memoir to explore the question of Hong Kong identity – what does it mean to be a Hongkonger? And more importantly, who gets to decide?
It's a pertinent question – partly because this was one of the driving forces behind the protests, but also because Hong Kong’s official history has always been written by the colonial masters in control of the city, be it the UK or China. Lim’s research shows that both competing narratives obscure the truth that HK has always had its own distinct culture that has become increasingly multi-layered over the years. Interestingly, Lim finds this complex identity embodied in Tsang Tsou-choi, a.k.a. “the King of Kowloon”, a local legend who spent decades covering public spaces with graffiti claiming the British stole his ancestral homeland.
Lim interweaves the history of HK and the story of the King with her own experience as a Eurasian who grew up in HK. All of this feeds into her experience covering the 2019 protests and her struggle to maintain journalistic neutrality as an out-of-control police force unleashed endless tear gas and vicious beatings on protesters, journalists and anyone else in their way. While Lim doesn’t excuse the violence from the protester side, she frames it within the proper context of both an asymmetrical power balance and the inevitable response of people who were understandably angry that their own govt was responding to their concerns about HK’s future with tear gas, beatings and jailing of opposition leaders. More than that, they were angry that they had been robbed of a future they had been promised by Beijing, who in their view had turned out to be just another colonial master who saw HK as an entitled land grab with an inconveniently different culture to be assimilated.
It’s a well-written, powerful book and a welcome correction of the official historical narratives of Hong Kong – especially now that HK’s history textbooks are being rewritten again under recent “patriotic” education reforms to suit the official Beijing narrative and foster a new “national” identity as dictated by the CCP. Lim’s previous book, The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, described how Beijing had successfully managed to transform June 4, 1989 into a day in which (at least in China) nothing memorable happened. Lim warns that it could do the same with the 2019 protests (which have already been officially labelled by the HK govt as a violent separatist uprising funded by foreign govts intending to overthrow the CCP) – but she is hopeful the city’s “Lion Rock” spirit as embodied by the King of Kowloon remains, and its people will not forget their history or relinquish their identity so easily.
Seeking God: The Way of St Benedict by Esther de WaalMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was the book for this year’s Lent study, so I can’t say it’s something I would have picked up on my own. But it’s regarded as something of a classic, so there’s that. The book is essentially a reflection on the "Rules of St Benedict" by Esther de Waal, a layperson who was inspired by the ancient Benedictine church buildings in England where she grew up to read the Rules, and found them so meaningful that she wrote this book to explain how they can also apply to modern Christian living without having to actually join a Benedictine monastery.
This is key because Benedict (who was also a layperson) wrote them mainly as a rulebook for the order, which means many of them are specific to monastery life and operations. But the rules themselves can be broken down to cover various pillars of monastic life, from worship, work and study to devotion, authority and wealth. In other words, it’s not the specific rules that matter so much as the practical and spiritual intentions behind them. De Waal focuses on these, and then explains how they’re still relevant to us today.
I confess I didn’t get much out of it in terms of practical application, although I did learn a lot about Benedict and the Benedictine order. I won’t say reading the Rules of St Benedict is a prerequisite, but it might help, since de Waal writes as though you have at least skimmed over them. She also writes in a reflective and somewhat meandering manner, so it’s probably as well we spent five weeks on it in the study group, because it takes a while for everything to gel – at least for me. But that could well be my problem. In fact, it probably is.
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee NewitzMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Second novel from Annalee Newitz (also the second of theirs that I’ve read) that could be summed up as a “alt-history queer feminist riot-grrrl time wars” novel, which is a heck of a subgenre. The basic premise is that time travel has been a thing for hundreds of thousands of years, as the time machines in this case are five geological formations that can be activated to open wormholes along the timeline. You can go back and forth from your present time, but never into the future.
The storyline follows two basic narratives. In 2022, Tess is part of a group of geologists called the Daughters of Harriet in 2022 trying to covertly “edit” the timeline as a group of incels inspired by Anthony Comstock plots to create a future where women are breeder slaves, then destroy the machines to prevent further edits. In 1992, Beth is a riot grrl whose helps her best friend Lizzy cover up her murder of a boy who tried to rape their friend, only to find that Lizzy won’t stop at just one. These become interconnected as it is revealed that Tess is trying to edit more than just the Comstocker plot.
Like any decent time travel story, it’s somewhat convoluted. But I like that Newitz challenges the old simplistic trope of using time travel to change history (e.g. killing baby Hitler prevents the Holocaust) and explores whether collective action would be a more effective tool, as well as the ethics and consequences of editing timelines. It’s also very angry and political, so obviously your experience will depend in part on how you feel about LGBTQ+ rights/representation, racism and sexism, or at least your ability to tolerate other viewpoints on these issues.
Overall, despite a few minor flaws, I found this a better and more believable novel than their debut novel Autonomous, a lot of which comes down to having more likeable characters. While I think Newitz still tends to reduce their villains to amplified stereotypes, there’s less of it here. And in fairness, their portrayals of the Comstockers were lifted directly from incel message boards (and quotes from Comstock himself). Also, their timing is uncanny, in that they imagine a 2022 in which abortion was never legalized in the US – which might have seemed a far-fetched plot point when this came out in 2019, but since Roe v Wade was overturned (in 2022!), it seems almost prophetic.
View all my reviews
Living in the past,
This is dF
