Open Letter From a Very Annoyed Asian Reader

So, I am more or less free from the rest of the december (DONE MY LAST RESEARCH PAPER OF THE SEMESTER W00T!!), and since it's a friday I should get those link round ups ready but DAMN, I just read three books in a row that did this thing I really, really hate and piled up with all my pent-up school stress I'm going to have an Open Letter From a Very Annoyed Asian Reader. But before I rant I will have gratuitous pic of Kang Ji-Hwan. Just to balance out the letter that follows.

Dear White Writers That Choose to Depict Asians In Their Works,

Now, I'm a reader, and I love reading English-language books with Asians in them. Since they're so hard to come by, whenever I find a book with Asians in it, they almost always get top priority in my reading list. Writers like you who choose to make the attempt to have diversity in their work by having an Asian character in the cast give me hope that someday I might, you know, see more Asian representation in the world of Novels and less white-washed casts as defaults in the story.

However, there's these three words that I am finding extremely common in books written by White authors when describing their Asian character of choice:

Almond-shaped eyes.

Almond

Shaped

Eyes.

*breathes*

Okay, first up, my eyes are not fucking almonds. They're not little pieces of edible nuts you can chew on for a fucking snack. They aren't food. And what is with this blanket term "Almond-shaped eyes" to allude to your Asian character's Asian-ness? For one thing, not all eye shapes of Asian look the same! I know, this may be a shocking revelation to you, but they aren't and whenever I see this term being used to describe the Asian character, it kind of makes me think that you have never talked or interacted with an Asian person in any real way in your entire life. Either that, or you're just being lazy and copying this commonly used terminology as a blanket term to describe all Asian facial features. Both these reasons don't exactly make me appreciate or respect you as a writer.

FYI, This is not to discourage white writers from choosing to depict Asian characters! Please, do carry on in your attempts. But maybe next time you might want to consider doing a bit of research. Take a good hard look at the Asian population. And maybe then you might get into your head that Asian eyes are not almonds. Even if you think Asian eyes somehow do equate to almonds, just, pretend you aren't an ignorant sod and don't use the term anyway. I cannot and will not speak for all Asians, but I personally find it offensive and it's slowly becoming one of those buttons where once I see it, I'm put off from finishing the whole thing.

Signed,

Ah Yuan aka wingstodust