Josephine Mann

“Victoire shouldered the task. ‘I wonder,’ she said, very slowly, ‘if you’ve ever read any of the abolition literature published before Parliament finally outlawed slavery.’ Letty frowned. ‘I don’t see how . . .’ ‘The Quakers presented the first antislavery petition to Parliament in 1783,’ said Victoire. ‘Equiano published his memoir in 1789. Add that to the countless slave stories the abolitionists were telling the British public – stories of the cruellest, most awful tortures you can inflict on a fellow human. Because the mere fact that Black people were denied their freedom was not enough. They needed to see how grotesque it was. And even then, it took them decades to finally outlaw the trade. And that’s slavery. Compared to that, a war in Canton over trade rights is going to look like nothing. It’s not romantic. There are no novelists penning sagas about the effects of opium addiction on Chinese families. If Parliament votes to force Canton’s ports open, it’s going to look like free trade working as it should. So don’t tell me that the British public, if they knew, would do anything at all.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No; a thousand worlds within one.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“They're not your motherlands,' said Letty. 'They don't have to be.'
'They do have to be,' said Victoire. 'Because we'll never be British. How can you still not understand? That identity is foreclosed to us. We are foreign because this nation has marked us so, and as long as we're punished daily for our ties to our homelands, we might as well defend them.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“We have to die to get their pity said Victoire we have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion. A wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. But I don’t want to die, Robin. I don’t want to die...I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lack of figure. I want to live…and thrive and survive them.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel