A biracial African American hero meets our Chinese heroine while laying telegraph lines around 19th century China… And I think my enjoyment of this book was negatively impacted by reading this book at the same time as a critique of colonialism, Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

And maybe reading this book at the same time as a critique of colonialism was a bad idea?

What I liked:
👍 the character arcs
👍 immersive Chinese colonial and maritime setting
👍 critiques of Christian missionaries and foreign adoption

What I would’ve disliked anyways:
▪️ the romance plot wasn’t a focal point
▪️ their telegrams were so un-personal that I felt cheated of an epistolary romance

What I blame Walter Rodney for disliking 😅
👎 I couldn’t unsee the imperialism apologia in here

We presented our hero as a “good imperialist.” He felt conflicted about a lot of things—but his role as a colonizer wasn’t one of them. And we critiqued a lot of elements of imperialism—except our hero’s work.

It was really hard to enjoy this story while also reading Rodney quotes like this:
▪️ “Apologists for colonialism are quick to say that the money for [telegraph lines] was provided…”
You know? Plus there was something 🤨 about making our imperialist hero POC (Rodney also emphasized that it wasn’t about the colonist’s “racial origin, but rather in the organized viciousness of the capitalist/colonialist system”).

I love that this book highlighted problems with imperialism. But I wish our hero’s work had been included in those problems. It felt like we were making him likable for a modern audience, at the expense of a major theme of the book.