Reviews with content warning for Sexism - The Tenth Muse

Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung

5 reviews

whynereads's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

its so good that id pick it up again and reread everything for the sake of engraining and nitpicking details i might have missed out (i love how flawed and vulnerable katherine is. she kept that fire within her that would've been lost in other books for the sake of a happy ending.)

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eicart_reads's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.0

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atamano's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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storybookvisitor's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

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just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

So I found this novel at a used bookstore a few months ago and grabbed it because the title sounded familiar. Honestly, I thought it was about an early glass-ceiling breaking female mathematician, and I was into reading it just for that. But as I got farther and farther into the book, I realized how much more it involved than that. Like, so much more. Also, I am not sure where to add this, so I feel like this intro serves as well as anywhere else, but from the very beginning, I felt like this was the perfect adult companion novel to Malinda Lo's Last Night at the Telegraph Club. I can't say exactly why. I mean both feature Asian-American female MCs who are into STEM, but that's really it, as far as what they have in common. Many of the other themes in each are quite different. I think perhaps it was just an overall vibe, but I feel like if you liked that (or this), then you should give the other a try!

Even as a young child, Katherine loved (and was good at) math. As she grows up, she fights myriad types of sexism and racism in (60s and 70s) educational environments to continue studying and working with the numbers that she loves. While in graduate school, she turns her attention to the Riemann Hypothesis, one of the most well-known unsolved mathematical problems of her time. In her quest to solve it, she decides to use a theorem with roots in WWII era Germany. But there's more to the theorem than just its own mysterious origins, and in the journey to make her name as a mathematician, Katherina also uncovers a completely hidden (purposefully obscured/kept secret) personal ancestry/history.

Alright y'all. This was such a fascinating and dramatic and convoluted (but in a way that is so deeply believable/followable) story. Like I said in the intro, I was wanting to read this even when I thought it was (just) a sort feminist mathematician tale...and I honestly don't even like math. And I got that. But I also got a page-turner of a historical fiction family legacy mystery plot, with writing that was compelling and smooth and walked me through the math aspects with enough to make it feel real but not so much that I got bogged down/bored (the perfect mix, for me). I was completely invested in Katherine's quest for making her own name (with her own work and in her own right) in the world of academic and popular mathematics. And as we started to hear more about her family history, first with her father's revelations about her mother and further, as the even more deeply buried truths of her parentage and ancestry came to light, I was having trouble putting the book down. Katherine's drive for success, her shock and hurt as she learned about the lies she grew up believing, the betrayals from those closest to her in academic/work settings, her sacrifices for friends and what she lost by being unwilling to bend...all of it created such a robust and fully dimensional narrator. (A small side note, although many of the side characters' depth paled in comparison to Katherine's own development, they held their own enough to support/move her story forward, so I was more or less able to move past that.)

Thematically, this novel covered quite a bit, but the absolute highlight, for me, was the way it addressed legacy and heritage. This look at the aftermath of how youth/children "survive" in times of war, and the way conflict causes such depth of loss of records/memories/people, is something I haven't seen explored too much in literature. Many WWII stories (especially with the boom in the genre recently) cover the drama of war itself, the fight to "win" it and survive, but end when the official war does. This novel looks at the years-after effects, the lost generation of youth who lived but have no idea where they came from, whether because those records were lost or because they were never told for their own safety. It was absolutely fascinating. And of course, in so many ways, deeply tragic. There was also a very important (and again, under-addressed) exploration of the legacy of the war and the way the bystanders pretend to have…not forgotten, exactly, but sort of pretend to have nothing to remember, because it’s easier than facing their own guilt. This included an attempt to reckon with the complacency post-conflict, the way that many people benefitted from what was left behind by those who were taken and murdered and have never come clean. Intense questions were raised in a literary context that gave them an individual face around which to consider them, making them, if not easier to contend with, at least more accessible.

This novel was just utterly captivating storytelling. There was so much unexpected drama, twisty and mysterious, as well as deep historical reflection and an introspective look on legacy and what makes one's identity. I feel like it flew under the radar when it was published and that's such a shame because its a truly unique combination of recent history, feminism and family, as well as page-turning plot.

“Still, I wonder now why it had to be necessary, and why my teacher disliked me so much – whether it was because I was a girl, or y family wasn’t from New Umbria, or because I was half Chinese. But it occurs to me now that even if those were not the reasons she treated me badly, they were the conditions that made it possible to do so.”

“How are they [intelligent men] so sure of themselves, and why are so many people so eager to listen? I’ve always wished I had the confidence to speak with half the conviction on subjects I’m actually competent to discuss.”

“There is the story you think you are living in, and then there is the invisible, secret, unguessed-at core of the story, around which everything else revolves.”

“I was so used to my perpetual status of outsider that I’d stopped questioning in each situation whether this time it was my femaleness or my Asianness or the combination of both that branded me different. Even now, I feel impatient when asked about what being these things means to me – the expectation that because my race and my gender are often the first things people notice about me, they must also be the most significant to me.”

“And here’s the kicker: it all makes sense when you consider how folktales were mostly told and passed along orally by women, but that the written versions have universally been set down and altered by men, that in the women’s version the girl gets away by her wits, and in the men’s version she’s saved by a hero. Two very different lessons, wouldn’t you say?”

“Everyone who remains benefited from the exiles and murders of Jews, don’t you see? We all did, we citizens of this country, whether we wrung our hands and regretted what was happening or openly celebrated when they were cast out of their jobs. We took whatever came out way and pretended it was ours to have by right.”

“The tyranny of history […] is that it’s always too late for justice, the price always too high.” (re: reparations)

“Every story I knew about a woman, it occurred to me, involved a story of theft.”

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