Yellowface: The instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick from author R.F. Kuang Kindle Edition by Rebecca F Kuang (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
The Number One Global Sensation *Foyle’s Fiction Book of the Year* *Amazon Book of the Year* *Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year* *Fiction Book of the Year 2024 – British Book Awards*
‘Addictive’ Grazia
‘Hugely entertaining’ Observer
‘Provocative’ Mail on Sunday
THIS IS ONE HELL OF A STORY.
IT’S JUST NOT HERS TO TELL.
When failed writer June Hayward witnesses her rival Athena Liu die in a freak accident, she sees her opportunity… and takes it.
So what if it means stealing Athena’s final manuscript?
So what if it means ‘borrowing’ her identity?
And so what if the first lie is only the beginning…
Finally, June has the fame she always deserved. But someone is about to expose her…
What happens next is entirely everyone else's fault.
‘The book that everyone is talking about’ Glamour
‘Ingenious, astute, hugely entertaining’ David Nicholls
‘Breathtakingly clever on jealousy, talent, success, and who gets to tell which story’ Elizabeth Day
‘Hard to put down. Harder to forget’ Stephen King
R.F. Kuang’s book Yellowface was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller w/c 04-06-23
R.F. Kuang’s book Yellowface was a #5 New York Times bestseller w/c 04-06-23
Rebecca F Kuang's book 'Yellowface' was a No.2 Sunday Times bestseller w/c 2024-06-03. Read more
Print length
326 pages Language
English
Product description
Review
‘Propulsive’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Razor-sharp’ TIME
‘Blistering’ SCOTSMAN
‘I guarantee it will stay with you’ AFUA HIRSCH
‘Strikingly topical’ GUARDIAN
‘Scathing, spiky, and full of laugh-out-loud moments’ GLAMOUR
‘A rollicking good read’ WOMAN’S WEEKLY
‘Sharp and funny’ PRIMA
‘Wickedly funny’ EVENING STANDARD
‘A firecracker of a book’ i PAPER
‘A riot’ PANDORA SYKES
‘Darkly hilarious’ MARIE CLAIRE
‘Uncomfortable and addictive… a must-read’ INDEPENDENT
‘Tackles cancel culture and cultural appropriation with razor-sharp wit’ LOUISE O’NEILL
‘A clever, pacy tale’ SARA PASCOE
'Tense, modern… a brilliant exploration of the literary world' AISLING BEA
‘Darkly comic’ GQ
‘A wild ride’ STYLIST
‘A wicked little satire of publishing, racial politics and icky internet culture’ THE TIMES, Best Summer Reads
‘Utterly diverting’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Unforgettable’ WOMAN & HOME
'Bright and witty and sly… fabulous' RUSSELL T DAVIES
‘A spiky, snarky, shady, smart, sinister take on white privilege’ NIKKI MAY
‘Incisive and compelling… sweeps the reader up on a thrilling ride, but leaves us thinking about the questions raised for days’ JENNIFER SAINT
‘This acute, fast-paced thriller will have literary insiders nodding in recognition and outsiders gasping in shock’ THE BOOKSELLER
‘Not since Martin Amis’s The Information has the venality, self-regard and absurdity of the writing life been so gloriously skewered’ THE CRITIC
‘Once you start, you won’t be able to put it down’ HEAT
‘Well-observed and alarmingly convincing’ DAILY MAIL
'Remarkable and incendiary' WIZ WHARTON
'A dark, engrossing page-turner’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING From the Back Cover
What's the harm in a pseudonym? Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn't write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author R. F. Kuang in the vein of White Ivy and The Other Black Girl.
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena's a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn't even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.
So when June witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.
So what if June edits Athena's novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn't this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That's what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.
But June can't get away from Athena's shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June's (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang's novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable. Read more
Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times bestselling and Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of Babel, the Poppy War trilogy, and the forthcoming Yellowface. She is a Marshall Scholar, translator, and has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.
5.0 out of 5 stars Unlikeable main character who is utterly compellingReviewed in Australia on 4 December 2023 Verified Purchase This novel feels so real and honest that it feels like an expose of everything that is wrong with publishing and being an author. The main character is highly unlikable but yet compelling to read. I zoomed through this story in a day, it was that addictive.
4.0 out of 5 stars Yellow Face - an unforgettable readReviewed in Australia on 22 March 2024 Verified Purchase I loved the book. I couldn't put it down. The book is so well crafted; the characters multi-dimensional and the language crisp, witty and sharp. R. F. Kuang tackles complex issues of race and culture, problems with the publishing industry and the dark side of social media, with ease.
5.0 out of 5 stars WowReviewed in Australia on 16 February 2025 Verified Purchase I don’t know what I was expecting from this book, but it definitely wasn’t what I got it.
I don’t know if any book has ever made me think so much over so many different subjects, as well as teach me on just as many with a softly softly approach on some & then hit me over the head with a frypan on others, a cast iron one too!
It’s near impossible to place this book in a genre, as it’s pretty much squeezed itself into as many as it can, those comprised of race, publishing, writing, family & friendship, online trolling & human nature.
I’ve probably forgotten to put a pile of them up there, but you can add your own once you’ve read the book, & you WILL read it, it’s way too good to be passed up, or passed over, it’s everything you ever wanted in a book about the frailty of human nature & the society we live in…
3.0 out of 5 stars Neither here nor thereReviewed in Australia on 24 October 2023 Verified Purchase Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. Wouldn’t keep it in my collection though. The concept of the story was great and read well in the beginning. Then it dropped off from there. Wanted to love it because it was featured on Reese’s book club list but just didn’t.
2.0 out of 5 stars hmmmmReviewed in Australia on 4 February 2024 Verified Purchase IS the storyline the farce or is the the book a farce. Either way, I feel duped and disappointed. Great writing, quick pace, characters well developed, great themes. Ultimately unsatisfying (for me at least).
5.0 out of 5 stars If an editor suggests a sensitivity reader GET ONEReviewed in Australia on 15 January 2025 Verified Purchase The incredible regard and positive reviews for this story by R.F Kung are all well deserved. I realise with so much positive acclaim and widely acknowledged how great this story is, you could dismiss it was hype. You'd be wrong in my opinion because I enjoyed this book so much and read it in a day.
The only drawback for me trying to say how much I enjoyed this story is I sound like one of the type of characters in this book this story is talking about and whilst I have no experience of the publishing industry it came to life for me as vivid and brutal.
I was amazed by R.F.kung's Poppy War trilogy, I was so suprised by how great I found her next work Babel, Yellowface is as wonderful or even more wonderful. I am bit worried because I have read her proposal about her next book Katabasis and I am worried how can these stories keep being as amazing as they are.
4.0 out of 5 stars A clever story well toldReviewed in Australia on 10 October 2024 Verified Purchase Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most clever, and this one works a treat. It’s mostly believable, told with much wit and insight, but stretched a bit beyond the plausible towards the end.
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Yellowface: The wildly popular novel grappling with cultural appropriation
Jessie Tu
ByJessie Tu
July 12, 2023 — 4.30pm
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FICTION
Yellowface
Rebecca F. Kuang
HarperCollins, $32.99
On the day Athena Liu scores a Netflix deal for an adaptation of her wildly successful debut novel, she chokes on some home-made pandan pancakes and dies. The only witness is her friend, June Hayward, a plain-faced writer of mediocre talent who has been viciously jealous of her friend since their college days.
While June’s debut novel flunked into obscurity, Athena’s “rich, pretty and successful” life soared into a writer’s wet dream: six-figure book deal straight out of college, prestigious residencies, literary awards, screen adaptations.
Rebecca Kuang asks for the reader’s moral judgment about her protagonist’s behaviour.
Rebecca Kuang asks for the reader’s moral judgment about her protagonist’s behaviour.Credit:John Packman
Such injustice – “it’s unfair”, June repeatedly whines – leads her to turn Athena’s death into an opportunity for herself. She steals the first draft of Athena’s next book, a manuscript about the mistreatment of Chinese labourers in World War I, and passes it off as her own.
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Suddenly, all her creative stars align. “Breathless” at her own audacity, June reinvents herself online – that means IRL – publishing the book under a new name, Juniper Song, defending herself against the cultural appropriation invigilators by revealing that Song is her middle name. She takes her author headshot during sundown’s golden hour because it makes her look “sort of racially ambiguous”.
Credit:
After four successful genre fantasy books, Rebecca F. Kuang’s fifth novel, Yellowface, is a mystery thriller that shocks, delights, and not-so-subtly weaves a scalpel through today’s commercial publishing industry. It’s a book about a woman who, through sheer confidence in her own ability to deceive, convinces herself and the world that a crime she committed was not really a crime at all.
When the Twitterati launch their attacks on June, suspecting something nefarious has occurred, she doubles down on her self-deception: “I mostly believe the lie myself – that it was my efforts that made [the book] a success. I’ve contoured the truth into such ways that I can, in fact, make peace with it.”
She cultivates an artificial “digitally perceived” identity, retweeting hot takes about bubble tea, BTS, and “some martial arts drama series”. Meanwhile, she admits she has no idea what a soup dumpling is, “but it sounds gross,” and that “Chinese food makes my stomach roil”.
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Now, she is struggling to write a second book. “I need to write about things that white people don’t see on a daily basis.” This is perhaps the most enlightening line in Kuang’s book — exposing a character who wants all the cultural benefits of being a minority while retaining her privileges as a white person.
The most insidious moment sees June travels to Washington DC’s Chinatown for “inspiration” to “find some good narrative potential” at a Chinese restaurant, accosting an innocent waiter and demanding he tell her something interesting about himself. Utterly oblivious to her imperial, colonialist mindset, this scene made my brain writhe in disgust, perhaps because it speaks so close to reality.
Kuang delivers extraordinarily accurate insights into the world of publishing and what it means to be a young author today. She extrapolates with extreme precision the granular agonies and anxieties of being online, exacting the creeping sense of terror as a phantom account of Athena begins trolling June online.
Kuang unravels layers of our characters’ histories, complicating the narrative and forcing us to ask: “Who can claim literary authorship over our story?”
Yellowface asks us to morally adjudicate the reprehensible behaviour of June. It is a Young Person Novel – one that insists readers know exactly what it’s trying to do. There is no subtlety here and is mesmerisingly ruthless in this insistence. But the intensity of this effort is exactly what makes this book so engrossing, so utterly addictive.
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Review
Book Reviews
'Yellowface' takes white privilege to a sinister level
May 15, 20236:50 AM ET
By
Keishel Williams
Cover of Yellowface
William Morrow
Every once in a while there is a novel that enters the literary zeitgeist and requires discourse — but it feels like there is nothing that can be written or said that will ever do it justice. This is the feeling R.F. Kuang's new novel Yellowface evokes.
The highly immersive satirical novel takes us on a thrilling journey through the eyes of a writer who struggles to make her own way in the cut-throat world of publishing. In a climate where the publishing industry is being highly scrutinized for its gatekeeping, unfair treatment of marginalized writers and editors, its role in appropriation — we all remember the "Bad Art Friend" saga — and more, Kuang's novel is a strong commentary on the exploitation and rigors writers face under the pressure to be successful. What would you do for something you think you need badly? That promotion? That new shoes? That spot in an Ivy League college? That book deal? That next hit project? What happens when your entire identity becomes embroiled in your job — who is a writer if they're unable to write and publish? This is what Kuang's protagonist, June, faces in this novel.
i feel weird writing this review. for one, Yellowface isn’t out until next year. two, the book is very meta about twitter and book reviews—ratings on goodreads even make up several important plot points. i feel like me and the book are engaging in some inside joke.
i’ve decided not to include any quotes from the book and talk in general terms with minor details to avoid spoilers (not anything that’s not in the premise, anyway), but i’m still talking about how i felt about different parts of the book, including the middle and end, even though I won’t be talking about what happens in them. so if you want to go in blind, beware. i know this runs the risk of me describing something one way, but then you going and reading it and interpreting a different way, but until it actually comes out and i can drop the ‘extended’ (and hopefully more sophisticated) review, this will have to do.
yellowface is meant to be drama and dark satire. it’s a bit hilariously grim and grimly hilarious to anyone who’s ever needed to close booktwt and touch grass, but also interesting to anyone moderately familiar with books, writing or publishing. the prose isn’t babel, where i was stopping every page to savour the writing style, but it is fast-paced and fairly easy to get through. and i’m kind of torn about yellowface, but the worst part is that i can’t figure out whether it’s in a “this didn't work for me, personally” way, or a more objective “this is a Critique” way.
my problem with yellowface comes down to the fact that i cannot separate the narrative voice from rfk’s voice at all. a lot of the experiences of a certain character lines up very much with what i know is rfk’s own, and that is on purpose and not necessarily bad—she’s an author who’s always been very open about putting a lot of herself into her books and it’s one of the things that can add to their emotional depth. a lot of readers will likely proclaim the fact you can’t unsee the hand of the author in the writing is The Point. however, when the characters start to receive criticisms that are very similar to criticisms rfk has faced, but represented somewhat flatly, i cock my head a bit. see: problematic representation of Taiwanese indigenous people (a criticism in isolation that depnding on the book may be valid, but in yellowface is shown to be made by people who are just jealous of the author and don’t actually know what they’re talking about), privately-educated, rich western diaspora writing about traumatic histories of working classes from the homelands they’ve only visited a few times (a criticism in isolation that depending on the author may be valid, but in yellowface is made from the perspective of the racist white woman using it to justify her horrible actions), etc.
this may not bother other readers, but i can’t help but side-eye it. she gets around it by having these criticisms be made by mouthpieces—that’s another thing about yellowface, by the way. so many mouthpieces. i don’t think this is a book where readers will get very attached to the characters, not just because the mc is an unreliable narrator, but because yellowface is more of a book where characters are tools that represent different things and perspectives and are meant to be grimly watched, observed and laughed at from above. which is mostly fun, until you start to distinguish between rfk’s mouthpieces a bit: which ones she represents more flatly and more caricatured, and the one she gives more nuanced paragraphs to, from under which i think I can make out the haze of her opinions. and i’m not fond of them all the time.
as always, it’s certainly interesting, but the middle of the book is basically all twitter discourse. it had me wondering if i could just scroll through my timeline and get the same experience instead. it’s veryyy meta—sometimes fun, sometimes obnoxious. maybe it’s too ‘high concept’ for me, sorry, or maybe it's heavy-handed. and it makes my job writing this difficult, because how much can i attribute to the unreliable narrator, satirical style or rfk herself? where does one end and the other begin, if they do so at all?
(which was a big thing that irked me with tpw. people would make criticisms of rfk's narrative choices and plot points and the response would be ‘well, rin is an unreliable narrator!’ yes, but there is such thing as framing and context which are important things to consider when trying to figure out what an author actually is saying, intentionally or not. but anyways.)
speaking of slightly more well-written unreliable narrators, juniper song is… a character. more of an awful ball of jealous, racist, liberal misery who you get to follow the entertaining downward spiral of throughout the book than a person. at least, when she's not hindered by rfk's blunt writing style striking her on the head. the commentary and discussion yellowface wants to have about publishing and racism is genuinely interesting and important, but I enjoyed yellowface most when it doing less back-and-forth with its own themes and more about the fucked up relationship between athena liu and juniper song/june hayward/athena liu. ie, when it was more about actual people than rfk's comemntary. despite athena dying at the very start of the story, she haunts the narrative, sometimes through flashbacks, sometimes through other people’s experiences, sometimes literally. and the narrative is juniper. i love a good fucked up friendship/rivalry/impersonation?/whatever the fuck this is. there's a flashback where we find out about a fucked up thing athena did regarding a traumatic event juniper went through--something which in no way justifies the scale of what juniper does throughout the book, but muddies the waters and makes everyone involved seem like more flawed, three-dimensional people. keyword, people! and whenever that relationship had the spotlight, i couldn’t put yellowface down. it's insane the narrative spent more time on its self-indulgent satire than it does on its genuinely compelling emotional core.
which is why i was really loving the third act, in which a lot of my criticisms seemed to fall away and the mess of the premise was really coming to a head. i was reading it late at night and, even though it’s not a horror, i got actually creeped out by several parts. to be honest, if yellowface had stuck the landing, it could have been four stars.
and that’s my final problem with yellowface. it has a decent plot, interesting cast of characters, interesting themes and discussions, but my only feeling on the ending was, ‘…that’s it?’ i know i said i wouldn’t do quotes, but im making an exception for the bit where our narrator says, ‘I’ve written myself into a corner. The first two thirds of the book were a breeze to compose, but what do i do with the ending? Where do I leave my protagonist, now that there’s no clear resolution?’ Which is very meta, because based off the ending, i feel that’s the position rfk was in at that exact point. i can somewhat tell she struggled with where to take the ending and i have more thoughts on why i felt underwhelmed by it, but i guess that’ll be for 2023, for when it's no doubt on all the 'Very Important Books of the Year' lists. for now, i can see myself rereading babel and parts of tpw, but i don’t see myself rereading yellowface.
trigger warnings for this book: racism, c slur, suicidal ideation, sexual assault
edit 24/05/2023: unsurprisingly, some people on twitter cannot fucking read, so to clarify some things: 1) i am not white. i am asian, 2) I DO NOT CARE THAT JUNE WAS IRREDEEMABLE. I DID NOT WANT A REDEMPTION FOR A RACIST. my main problem was that i found the way yellowface handled its themes came at the cost of other aspects of the story when it should have been making them better. 3) "[insert criticism here] is literally the whole point of the story omgggg how could you miss the point so bad did you even pass english lit in school etc etc." personally, i do not enjoy 300 pages of on-the-nose commentary through uncompelling mouthpieces. i especially find it questionable when some of these mouthpieces flatly reflect criticisms the authors has actually received in regards to her previous work. if you do, more power to you! if what i disliked about the book is what you enjoyed about it, well, that's just how having an opinion works. i don't know what to tell you. i can definitely understand how someone who isn't as aware of some of the meta-commentary would have more enjoyment. but i find the response that i "missed the point" (to be honest, the writing constantly tries its best to be Desperately Sure You Are Not Missing The Point) that this book is about racism by some white readers when i'm intimately familiar with racism, both as it pertains to real life and in media, kind of... well. racist.
in a way, i guess this book is perfect for booktwitter. a lot of recognisable discourse where the Message and Themes are written out for you in big bold letters, constantly, all the time, throughout the story, just in case you missed it—that way, even your average reading-comprehension-starved twitter user can pick up on it—padded with enough relatable material about being chronically online and plenty of fictional ragebait to distract from a narrative that can’t get its teeth into its own premise and a third act that can’t deliver. target audience acquired.
and to be clear, this isn't a blanket response to everyone who disagrees with me (i've had interesting conversations with people who do)--just to some people who are determined to take the most uncharitable opinion possible of a frankly lukewarm review.
a book can be about an important subject matter and i can still feel it fell short of what it was trying to do. that is not me putting personal attack on the author, the author's identity, the subject matter itself, or any readers who enjoyed the book or their identities. i didn't even hate the book. i liked parts of it quite a bit. i just wanted more.
A book about fucking around and finding out. The question of who should or shouldn’t tell a story has been a hotly debated subject, a discourse that must also recognize the playing field is guided by rules of capitalism in a for-profit publishing industry and a social climate that prods “culture wars” to increase clicks. Still in recent memory are the debates over American Dirt, which sparked months of controversy over white authors using another’s cultural narrative as what many considered “trauma porn,” but also over the publisher’s decision to throw incredible amounts of marketing money at this book when immigration stories by authors living within the culture were being passed over for that novel. R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface sinks its teeth into the world of publishing and the discourses on authenticity through the eyes of June Hayward, a white woman who has taken the draft of a Chinese-American woman’s novel and published it as her own. She will forever be haunted by this choice, like a Lady Macbeth of letters haunted by bloodstains in her attempt to usurp the kingdom. It is a perfect follow-up to Babel and the conversations on how language can be a form of colonialism, though this one has no magical elements like the former. Instead, Yellowface reads like a scandal unfolding before your eyes and transfixes the reader with all the sick satisfactions that keep us scrolling through social media debates and keep hot takes. Kuang makes us sit with our discomfort, through an excellent choice of an unreliable narrator, and forces us to confront our own opinions on the matter. With a sharp critique on the commodification and consumption of art in publishing and reviewing (even Goodreaders are not spared here), a look at online debates, the self-aggrandizing aspects of social media, and the way artists are pitted against each other as if writing was a competitive sport, Kuang’s Yellowface asks big questions on authenticity and identity in a society that has reduced the concepts into marketing metrics.
I’ll be honest, I read this book in a single sitting. I could not look away, and Kuang’s writing sweeps you up in it’s conversational cadance. While I’ve enjoyed Kuang’s writing previously, Yellowface feels very polished and matured, the novel reading with the ease and eagerness of a tell-all memoir, which is the framing of the story. As a fictional memoir, it drops a lot of pop culture references to key into a specific time. Kuang’s choice of perspective through June—who rebrands at the request of her publisher as Juniper Song, Song being her middle-name but also nudges readers to think she may have Chinese heritage—is brilliant as it allows us to feel the floor-dropping-out discomfort of becoming the focus of internet rage as well as navigate a vigorous criticism of the publishing industry. Kuang is able to cover issues without moralizing, making the reader sift through alternating opinions that are likely to expose their own assumptions and discomforts, and we must always remember the telling is often guiding us away from judging her and towards everyone else. With a big confession at the center, June can manipulate the reader on smaller issues and in a way it becomes a rather metafictional approach to the way storytelling is just that: fictionalizing stories.
Kuang does well by creating a character that isn’t entirely unsympathetic—we need to want to keep reading her take on the events—and hate reading is a shallow effect that evaporates quickly. Not unlike the social media scandals that hit viciously and are forgotten days later. Not that June is innocent, and being disgusted with her is half the fun, but Kuang will force us to consider what exactly it is that disgusts us and what that means in a larger context about art and the commodification of it. We’ve seen these sorts of scandals, such as a personal favorite bizarre tale of Natalie Beach who wrote about being the ghostwriter for Caroline Calloway, or last year’s Who Is the Bad Art Friend? article concerning Sonya Larson and Dawn Dorland where everyone seemed to be too thrilled by the mess to not pick a side. Though the story that seems closest to Yellowface is the one surrounding Kristen Roupenian’s short story Cat Person (you can read it here) which was defended then later attacked when an article revealing the details was taken from a strangers real life, told to the author by the man who was fictionalized in the story as the sex pest and later committed suicide in real life. Twitter was full of well-known authors debating if personal details and stories of others are always fair game, even though the hometown and place of employment of the girl was not changed for the published version (my college roommate later rented the house Roupenian had previously lived in and describes in story). Literary twitter was confronted with a situation about what level of authenticity is appropriate and can someone tell someone else’s story.
The way social media fuels a fire is at the heart of this story, with twitter challenging authenticity and morals at all times. Which becomes a tragic interplay at the way authors are demanded to be vulnerable, to seek authenticity and expose their pain for book sales, yet social media loves to exploit personal details and use vulnerabilities as an opening for an attack.
‘dozen, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of strangers are out there, mining your personal information, worming their ways into your life, looking for ways to mock, humiliate, or worse, endanger you. You come to regret everything you’ve ever shared about yourself…because the trolls will find them.’
We’ve all most likely criticized a stranger on social media, sometimes the pile-ups are too fun and humorous to not get a joke in, but Kuang tries to remind us that the targets are real people with real feelings. Sure, June deserves to be exposed and feel bad for what she’s done, but Kuang puts us in her shoes and lets you feel what being a target is like. Because it can come for anyone, even Athena was once the target of harassment, death threats and hacking where she didn’t feel safe all for being called a ‘race traitor’ for dating a white man. ‘In destroying her,’ June narrates the voice of social media, ‘we create an audience we create moral authority for ourselves.’ Such is the nature of social media in the state of a scandal, and all for what? ‘ Allegations get flung left and right, everyone’s reputations are torn down, and when the dust clears, everything remains exactly as it was.’ Nothing changes, but, as we see in the novel, much of this is because someone profits from it. A scandal often turns into book sales (for all the complaints American Dirt was canceled it still remained a bestseller for months) and if you keep selling books you keep getting published.
‘The living are burdened with bodies. They make shadows, footprints.’
But lets move to the scandal at hand. Here we have June, who has a tepid friendship with rising literary star Athena Liu. She feels jealous as well as annoyance with Athena, fantasizing how she’d like to ‘ neatly peel her skin off her body like an orange and zip it up over myself,’ something she is soon metaphorically doing when she edits the now deceased Athena’s manuscript: a WW1 novel about Chinese laborers. It starts off innocently enough (or so June claims) being an exercise in editing that she gets so caught up in loving writing again that she passes it off as herself. It is titled The Last Front, is praised for a mosaic storytelling style reminiscent of the film Dunkirk and becomes an instant bestseller. She will spend the novel fiercely defending she has the right to tell this story—sometimes being rewarded such as when speaking at a Chinese American Social Club she is thanked by a man who’s Chinese father fought in the war for making sure their stories are told—yet at the end of the day, this never was her story. And while she can be a great writer, we see she is never able to come up with her own ideas and the ones she have is derivative of other stories. It is a subtle and clever nod to a gap between being a good writer and being a good author or creator (an offer to write for existing IP disgusts her, perhaps because she is confronted by what she doesn’t want to admit is her strength).
‘It all boils down to self-interest…If publishing is rigged, you might as well make sure it's rigged in your favor.’
While the marketing grab here is definitely the idea of colonizing another’s work and culture and passing it off as your own (there are many moments for readers to fist bump the novel and say “HAHA take that shit, “Junie””) Kuang makes this a symptom of a larger issue. In her acknowledgements, Kuang states that the novel is a ‘horror story about loneliness in a fiercely competitive industry.’ If your ears perked up at horror story, there are some horror elements late in the novel (though perhaps not enough and it could have been threaded in longer, if I have one complaint it is that the novels episodic feel never quite let individual elements breathe enough and makes the last portion feel a bit like going one step more than needed instead of flowing from the book which would have sidestepped that feeling? Maybe thats just me though). But loneliness does permeate this tale, and we see how authors can feel crushed under the way for-profit publishing makes it a competition who awards winners and losers. One author will get a huge deal and seemingly inexhaustible marketing, while another gets one small print run and no publisher support. Kuang looks at publishing as a rigged enterprise, with a small team of (mostly white) executives deciding what gets sold and more or less deciding what will be a bestseller and informing readers to follow suit. Its not a secret that publishers buy space in chain bookstores or that the Big 5 US publishers are 80% of all publishing revenue. It is a market based on profit, and will be manipulated to ensure profits keep coming.
‘This industry is built on silencing us, stomping us into the ground, and hurling money at white people to produce racist stereotypes of us.’
To June, however, she sees diversity as a problem, thinking she is passed over for authors like Athena because it looks good. Which, if we look at the publishing market, shows that about 75% of published authors in the US are white and a 2020 study showed 95% of all books published were by white authors the previous year. Now everyone probably remembers 2020 was the year many corporations made pledges to be better at diversity, the publishing industry under extra scrutiny as Black authors and anti-racism books were topping the best sellers and showing there was indeed a market for such books, but lets look at the industry itself. Since then, a recent survey shows only a 1% change in the industry, with it being 83% white and that most non-white hires since 2020 are for marketing positions. Which is using “diversity” as a sales technique again. So what June see’s as a fast-track to success is actually a steep uphill climb. ‘"Do you know how much shit Athena got from this industry?’ a character remarks late in the novel, ‘They marked her as their token, exotic Asian girl. Every time she tried to branch out to new projects, they kept insisting that Asian was her brand, was what her audience expected.’ To be a brand is what publishing reduces identity into is the argument seen in the novel. And, if one is reduced to being a brand of themselves, they are now in market competition. I think of author Brandon Taylor saying identity becomes a marketing pitch, and how Real Life was reviewed as about identity when he says it was about lonely that happened to have explorations of identity in the book. I'm reminded of the reasons authors pushed against #OwnVoices labels as Becky Albertalli felt forced to come out to "justify" her book and others felt boxed in by it.
‘Do you know what it's like to pitch a book and be told they already have an Asian writer? That they can't put out two minority stories in the same season? That Athena Liu already exists, so you're redundant?’
Kuang examines how the idea of being a brand exists in the outskirts of publishing as well. We have the twitter fights where people exist as a self-brand of being antagonists, we have goodreads reviewers where their brand is taking down popular authors (some lines that may sting are remarks from other authors to not read goodreads and harsh takes are more about feeding ego than worthwhile criticism), and journalists who make a brand at hot takes. However, we have to remember that June is directing us to look at how everyone else is the problem instead of her. So while through her telling many of the critiques are cast as villains, the fictional journalist Adele Sparks-Sato (a nod to Andrea Long Chu as Vartika pointed out) is not wrong when writing that June’s version of Athena’s novel ‘joins novels like The Help and The Good Earth in a long line of what I dub historical exploitation novels: inauthentic stories that use troubled pasts as an entertaining set piece for white entertainment.’
‘The appropriation of history, the historicization of the past, the narrativization of society, all of which give the novel its force, include the accumulation and differentiation of social space, space to be used for social purposes.’ -Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
There is a good deal of nuance in this book about how the commodification of art is an issue, but also a reminder that we can’t scapegoat our own actions on that entirely. There are some great little jabs in this—Junie Song ordering a Miss Saigon drink only to find it “too sweet” for her tastes—and it does emphasize the problems of representing a different culture from a western lens. As Edward Said wrote ‘the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging is very important to culture and imperialism,’ and argued that literature can be a form of colonialism by establishing a perception of a different culture or geography, and in the editing process of The Last Front we watch June make concessions on the text in order to appeal more to a white reader as requested by her publisher. Yes, she did actually do a great deal of research, and her opinion is the criticisms of cultural issues in the book are ‘exclusive cultural snobbishness and authenticity testing’ that ‘are only a form of gatekeeping,’ though later criticisms of her book are that her misunderstanding of how names or families work, or how her positions on certain issues imply a stance on current Chinese politics that are so beyond her understanding can be harmful. Some readers find it to read as a white-savioir narrative, something we know was manufactured by changing certain characters to be white characters to better fit the market needs. Which also returns us to the idea that art under capitalism will always be in service to profits.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang is a delightful novel with the fierceness of an unfolding scandal that makes us confront many key issues hotly debated in the literary world right now. I enjoyed the nuance here in how it exposes problems from many angles, but does not allow that to be an excuse for bad behavior. Understanding is not the same as condoning here, and it is a page-turning trip watching June dip and dodge as her usurped empire continuously threatens to crash down around her. Kuang writes with confidence and precision and Yellowface makes for an excellent look at the literary world and the commodification of art.
4.5/5
‘Isn’t that what ghosts do? Howl, moan, make themselves into spectacles? That’s the whole point of a ghost, is it not? Anything to remind you that they’re still there. Anything to keep you from forgetting.’
Update: I got to hear R.F. Kuang speak about the book yesterday! She was DELIGHTFUL, discussed why she dislikes how publishing turns identity into marketing metrics, the books Beautiful World, Where Are You, Ferrante's Neapolitan novels and told everyone to read Murderbot. So well spoken, intelligent, and a real wonderful author.
the frustration, as always, is that rf kuang is an intelligent and steady-handed writer. she is ahead of many of her peers in craft as much as sales: she writes a page-turner, she crafts a strong perspective, she is horror-writer good at making the reader feel gut-churning revulsion (whether or not she earns the strong emotion she likes to pull out is another question), and in this book she's capable of being funny. like here's a perfect paragraph, in which our pernicious white heroine works with her editor to chop and change the manuscript she stole:
The hardest part is keeping track of all the characters. We change almost a dozen names to reduce confusion. Two different characters have the last name Zhang, and four have the last name Li. Athena differentiates them by giving them different first names, which she only occasionally uses, and other names that I assume are nicknames (A Geng, A Zhu; unless A is a last name and I’m missing something), or Da Liu and Xiao Liu, which throws me for a loop because I thought Liu was a last name, so what are Da and Xiao doing there? Why are so many of the female characters named Xiao as well? And if they’re family names, does that mean everyone is related? Is this a novel about incest? But the easy fix is to give them all distinct monikers, and I spend hours scrolling through pages on Chinese history and baby name sites to find names that will be culturally appropriate.
like it's absolutely executing all of its tricks as it should: the blinkers of a close first person perspective, the legible different reality underneath. it's not subtle but when done in satire it's not AS hamhanded as kuang's dramatic instincts, per other books. readers who know chinese will scream, readers who don't will still feel their brain itch. the authorial hand is capable.
the author is capable... of more than she writes. the problem with kuang is that, despite a reputation for in-depth research, she refuses to interrogate beyond her scope. in previous books that meant that the sense of history was strong and the rest of the work of writing fiction—character work, plot, tone, anything reliant on the imagination—was comparatively weak. here there's no research to hold it up, just kuang's own posting habits and career success. the step down from jstor to twitter is a violent stumble.
kuang is an accomplished academic but a deeply incurious writer. that is on sharp display here, in a book that is meant to depict success and failure in the literary-commercial circuit—something that kuang knows little about. kuang is a genre writer who achieved crossover commercial success after blowing up on tiktok. her debut was promising and lauded but not uniquely vaunted; she received genre award noms (not wins) but her books blew up on tiktok after the fact and she launched an incredibly successful book this year in the genre space, off the back of her tiktok fame. everything she knows about succeeding she knows about inside her particular bubble, and also, because she has been succeeding since she was an undergrad baby, has been told—and genuinely believes—that she has hit the summit of success. this leaves her totally inequipped to write about what literary success looks like when engineered by the house. r.f. kuang has no belief that there is a form of publishing greatness beyond that which has been bestowed upon r.f. kuang, and a wilful desire not to google further.
the 'publishing details' on display are... well, they all exist IN publishing, curate a FORM of commercial success, and are familiar to kuang, but they don't match the book as described here (a lit-commercial wwii doorstopper, written by a chinese-american author and butchered into commercial sentimentality by a white author and editor, think the bulletproof success of american dirt even in the thick of its cancellation). mainstream literary successes don't come up through pitchwars. mainstream commercial novels don't come up in most book box deals because there is a form of literary success that is not reliant on superfans buying multiple copies apiece. there's a part where our heroine lists the major american literary awards her major literary-commercial war novel is up for and starts with: the goodreads choice awards. posting FROM this bad website: please be serious. it's fitting that the cover looks more like a designed arc than like a book.
there's a note in the babel prologue that i think about all the time with kuang's work, where she says that she was so dazzled by the sight of an oyster tower at a particular oxford party that she put it in the book even though oysters in victorian england were trash food for peasants—she didn't want to capture the dazzle or the waste so much as she wanted to write down her experience beat for beat, and could not conceive of an emotional reality that she did not personally live. this is an oyster tower book. this is embarrassing and technically inaccurate mimesis all the way down, solely interested in kuang's own interests. wow your heroines live in dc? and you lived in dc? they met at yale? you go to yale? omigod rebecca that's so crazy. there was a shorthand term back in the sporking days (i know, i hate my withered hag fingers for typing this too) on LIVEJOURNAL (HAG FINGERS) called 'pepper jack cheese' that was like "hermione ate a sandwich with pepper jack cheese (a/n: that's my favorite cheese!)", the phenomenon where the author would gigglingly and obviously insert a few of their real-life favorite things into the story. kuang's pepper jack cheese is whistlepig whiskey, name-dropped bafflingly twice as a signifier for the nicest possible whiskey, and also every single detail.
it is like. skin-crawlingly secondhand embarrassing to watch an author write their own life beat for beat and also be like 'everyone hated her because she was TOO pretty and TOO smart'. every critique that has ever been leveled against kuang goes into the mouth of her proxy's haters, including the pernicious and grasping white heroine. the belief that her haters are racist comes in a distant second to the belief that her haters are jealous—of her success, of her telegenic prettiness, of her comfortable life. maybe baby but look at the material: there's room for improvement. it is disappointing to watch someone technically skilled grind their intellectual curiosity down to a nub via posting and self-obsession, and it's humiliating to watch an oxbridge-ivy phd student say 'talk to the hand! and DON'T tell me to log off' for three hundo pages. is this the best she can do? does SHE think this is the best she can do? i'm worried that she does.
Whew child. Some of these reviews are doing exactly what Kuang was pointing out through Yellowface. It’s interesting to watch it happen in real time. While I don’t have extensive knowledge of her work, I think what Kuang is doing in this book is actually quite brilliant.
At the most basic of levels, Yellowface is a mash of various genres that follows the passive aggressive “friendship” of Athena and June, two authors in the publishing industry with very different levels of success. Athena has received her big break while June has remained a struggling author. In an absurd (truly absurd if I’m being quite honest haha) turn of events, Athena chokes while engaging in a pancake eating contest with June. After her death, June makes the decision to steal one of her manuscripts and pass it off as her own. What follows next is chaotic descent into the world of publishing and the book community.
What Worked: SO MUCH OF THIS BOOOK WORKED! I’ve seen the countless criticisms of Kuang inserting herself too much into this book as well as the criticisms that indicate that there isn’t much to be gained from reading this book. I wholeheartedly disagree. Oh, my friends, there is much to be gained. Neither of the characters is likeable and that is INTENTIONAL. This isn’t a way to illustrate that everyone in publishing is selfish, but a means to question how much the reader falls into the trap of engaging with the model minority myth. The expectation that Athena is supposed to be likeable is deeply woven in the sociological phenomena that stereotypes many Asian communities as successful, smart, likeable, diligent, docile, etc and the idea that Athena doesn’t fit into that role has made some readers feel uncomfortable whether it is consciously or subconsciously.
Kuang’s evaluation of the publishing industry is layered and forces both publishing and the bookish community to do some reevaluation. What she singlehandedly captures in this book has been the biggest criticism that many of us have been vocal about since 2020. Publishing used the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement to claim to want more diversity and has in some ways published more diverse books; however, have we really paid attention to what those stories have centered? Trauma versus joy. So many of these stories have been centered on generational trauma, books that are used to educate and make the White masses feel better about not knowing much about diverse experiences prior to 2020. Marginalized voices in publishing are “permitted” to be a part of the community as long we play the roles that we are supposed to play. Once we begin to infiltrate the industry too much, those same people with “BLM” in their twitter bios, the same people who claim to be liberal do the same damn mental gymnastics June did to excuse her behavior. The system was designed for June to do what she did and the moment that marginalized communities “steal” the shine, it’s okay to push back because as June believes she’s the true minority and oppressed person in all of this. Don’t believe me, you should check out the TikTok made by an author who claims that white writers now get turned down because all agents want are BIPOC writers. Or better yet, just listen to foolishness that was uttered from James Patterson who had the audacity to state the White men are the truly oppressed writers in the industry.
And let’s take this a step further and look at how Kuang illustrated the danger that publishing has ultimately created with it’s use of terms like #ownvoices. Athena wasn’t ever allowed to write outside of trauma. She’s pigeonholed into only writing one thing. And honestly, I’m sure that happens more than we would like to believe. Authors who want to explore something outside of their “assigned” roles either get turned down or the marketing is trash. It delves deeper into the question of who is allowed to tell what story? Was Athena any better of a fit to tell the story of Chinese laborers of WWI than June? Is research enough to tell something outside of one’s lived experience? These are things to think about and something that we are confronted with every day in this community. Think about books like American Dirt and Memoirs of a Geisha.
This book is both absurd and unhinged because so is publishing and the book community. And I’ve been involved in all of it for so many years. Kuang told ya’ll to kiss her ass with this book. She is behaving in the complete opposite manner that is “expected” of her as young, thin, conventionally beautiful Asian woman. And the fact that she owns that shit makes so many people feel uncomfortable. And quite frankly I applaud her for that. BIPOC writers and creators are tired of the expectation that we are supposed to behave, create, write, and provide educational pieces in way that makes others feel comfortable. We’re supposed to applaud White people for the amazing work they’ve done in “allowing” us to enter the spaces and “give” us the opportunity to tell “our stories.” It’s laughable at this point and while ya’ll give Kuang these 1 and 2 star reviews, she’s going to be laughing her pretty, thin, and educated ass all the way to the damn bank.
If publishing is rigged, you might as well make sure it’s rigged in your favor.
4.5 stars. Holy shit, I had an absolute blast reading this! I inhaled it in a day. Forgive me if I make no sense because I stayed up late to finish it!
To be honest, I wasn't going to read Yellowface. I found Kuang's Babel to be so painfully boring and didactic, like reading a textbook, that I thought we were parting ways for good. But then it seemed like everyone I know read this and liked it, so curiosity got the better of me.
And, wow, is this really the same author? What a ride. The suspense! The vitriol! The fucking audacity!
I want to take a moment to acknowledge something I found quite ironic-- Kuang's other books are fantasy books about magic and colonialism and boarding schools while this one has the very lukewarm premise of being about authors and the publishing process... but, my god, when it comes to pageturners even The Poppy War had nothing on this.
A satire, is it? Well, maybe, but I've never read such a gripping and suspenseful satire. Kuang rips the publishing industry to shreds with this book, and she does it from the perspective of a white author who steals the first draft manuscript of a dead Chinese author.
I sat open-mouthed pretty much the entire time wondering if she was going to get away with it or get caught. Kuang uses a lot of social media to tell this story and it is highly effective at keeping the pacing up. We all know social media is a shitstorm of people vying for attention, performing for validation and, occasionally, making genuinely important points, and we see it all play out here to the extreme.
I thought Babel lacked nuance, but Yellowface is the complete opposite. Both June and Athena are complex characters. Athena is not allowed to simply be the perfect victim and, in fact, what emerges over the course of the novel is someone who is quite unlikable herself. June has done something objectively bad, but the author resists the temptation to paint her as one-dimensional. Her desperation and self-delusion, her anxiety and her jealousy, feel real.
At first glance, June appears to be the villain, but I think it becomes clear as the story progresses that this is much bigger than June. Kuang calls out the publishing industry and the messed up way books are primarily marketed through a social media performance. The young authors choking on their jealousy as they are pitted against one another. The agents and editors urging authors to publish “anything” while they have “social capital” regardless of whether it’s good or not.
And, of course, the way many in the publishing industry view "diversity" as a marketing buzzword to sell more books, rather than having the genuinely noble goal of diversifying literature. As Brett, June's agent, admits at one point: "But at the end of the day all that really matters is cash flow."
This is a chaotic, highly-frustrating, impossible-to-put-down book. I rollercoasted from emotion to emotion reading it and I'm sure I will still be talking about it long after I'm done writing this review.
This is a compelling, cynical, and thought-provoking satire that delves into themes of plagiarism, racism, and internet trolling. It offers a realistic portrayal of the publishing industry within the framework of a heart-pounding thriller. The story revolves around an anti-heroine driven by power and insecurity, who assumes the identity of her deceased friend to publish a masterpiece. Loneliness and the desperate desire for recognition serve as driving forces, pushing the protagonist to extreme measures.
Remarkably, I found myself attached to a book despite disliking the main character. At times, I wished I could physically enter the story and confront June Hayward/ Juniper Song, who committed the ultimate crime: stealing her late friend Athena Liu's unpublished book. The reasons behind this act of creative theft are complex and include jealousy, thirst for power, honoring her friend's work in the best way possible, and seeking personal gain. It is a tale that explores unfairness, harbored resentment, and a thirst for karmic justice.
One of the standout aspects of the book is the author's astute commentary on the perils faced by writers, such as internet trolls who use their freedom of speech rights to berate and belittle their creations. The story skillfully examines the commodification of writers, where their looks, personality, color of their skin and online presence become as important as their writing itself.
This book truly blew my mind. I was unable to put it down, yet also needed to take breaks due to the chaotic and anxiety-inducing experience of living within Juniper's mind. The character evokes strong emotions, including frustration towards her misogyny, blind ambition, and obnoxious justifications for her actions.
It is worth noting that Juniper is not the sole antagonist in the narrative. The judgmental and self-righteous individuals surrounding her also exhibit misogynistic tendencies and relish in criticizing and witnessing the downfall of others, all while raising their champagne glasses in celebration. Even Athena, portrayed as socially awkward and naive, adds depth to the story as a potential soul-sucking character for a gripping plotline.
In this book, nobody is a saint, as being good-hearted does not guarantee financial security, career success, fame, or power. The author skillfully portrays flawed and complex characters who challenge the reader's perceptions.
Overall, this realistic and thrilling read left me feeling anxious and evoked a multitude of emotions including fear, hate, and sadness. It successfully accomplished its mission of shaking the reader to their core and provoking deep thoughts that linger for days. The essence of a masterpiece lies in its ability to challenge readers and evoke a range of feelings, and this book achieves just that.
I wholeheartedly consider this one of the best books of the year, and I urge you not to overlook it or let it languish in your "to be read" list. Grab a copy and immerse yourself in its urgent and captivating narrative.
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I'm always drawn towards stories about plagiarism. You write 'em, I read 'em. And the ones I like best tend to be a little bit tongue-in-cheek and satirical, inviting you to see the world through the plagiarist's eyes. After all, they're not really bad people, are they? They see a story that needs telling, and they're the ones to tell it. So what if the story isn't theirs to tell in the first place?
And so Yellowface enters that arena with its own take on this eyebrow-raising topic. And right off the bat, I'm intrigued. June is an interesting plagiarist-protagonist. She starts off as a writer struggling for relevance, and that struggle is something we can all relate to. It's not as if she decides to become a plagiarist overnight. No, it's a slippery slope of small decisions, each one understandable on its own, that ultimately lands her in such an ignoble profession.
Once I started, I couldn't put it down. June's voice is as compelling as it is grotesque, and it's hard to look away from such self-inflicted catastrophe. You know this isn't going to turn out well, and yet she just keeps going. The best satires always elicit a lot of wincing, and that definitely happened here.
I don't mind telling you guys that this story made me uncomfortable. And I'm sure that is R.F. Kuang's intention. June isn't some crazy thief, at least not initially. Rather, she's drawn as this morally ambiguous, somewhat sympathetic character. In fact, from certain angles, she looks almost downright reasonable, making the best of what she's got. And this sly characterization leaves the reader both fascinated and uneasy, for we feel drawn towards June even though she is the villain of this tale. And that cognitive dissonance stays with us throughout.
The first half of the book was particularly strong for me because of that perfect balance between hero and antihero. There's a lot of subtlety that allows June to be both appealing and repulsive. However, once we get to June's book release and her subsequent guilt and justification, it does start to take on more and more of a crazed tinge, and as a result, lost a lot of the subtlety that made the first half so compelling for me.
There is a lot packed into this little story: racial commentary, inside look at being a writer and the publishing industry, internet trolling, cultural appropriation. And it's all done seamlessly. I have to applaud the author for both not being afraid to wade into these interesting topics, as well as saying something of substance about each of them.
What a fascinating story this turned out to be. Subversive and uncomfortable, it really drew me in and kept me glued to the pages. If you're looking for something that's both eminently readable and also leave you a lot to think about, this is it.
i'm being generous already when i say that it is OK, because i personally do not like these kinds of books. while i appreciate the social commentary and the look inside the publishing industry, i found the tone and execution quite heavy-handed.
it's certainly well-written, but personally i didn't like the writing style or the narrative voice. i know rfk intended the characters to be unlikeable, but i did not root for them at any point of the book. i was irritated most of the time, so i can't really say that i enjoyed reading this. i've read my fair share of books peopled with unlikeable characters, but this one here is just unbearable and repetitive. it got so boring the last third of the book that i had to take a nap before continuing.
i think my main problem is that the author's personal voice bleeds through the text and does not give the reader much room to think. rfk frames the story in a way that clearly shows the readers what she thinks and, in a way, she's telling us what to think. in tpw i excused it as a debut author's mistake, while in babel i found her passion about the themes charming— but here in yellowface i realize that rfk is unfortunately incapable of separating her own voice from the text, which is very grating to my brain. i won't get into the specifics, but it's just SO irritating to read. it's satirical and supposed to be "darkly funny" but i guess i just did not understand the jokes (wherever they may be). i also think that i would have appreciated the book more had it cut back on the pop culture references (which i do not think will age well btw). i would have liked this more had it been written with more finesse and subtlety.
anyway, i don't think rfk is cut out to write in this genre.
“She’s using the pen name Juniper Song to pretend to be Chinese American. She’s taken new author photos to look more tan and ethnic, but she’s as white as they come. June Hayward, you are a thief and a liar. You’ve stolen my legacy, and now you spit on my grave.”
This book was a fascinating look into the mind of the worst kind of person in the online bookish community.
Every chapter was like watching a trainwreck. I knew it would just get worse but I could not for the life of me look away.
June was unhinged. The kind of unhinged that believes her own lies and thinks she is morally in the right. Girl took delulu to another level.
What astounded me most was how legitimately real her voice was. Hats off to Rebecca Kuang. She killed this.
Honestly i had fun reading this book. It incited so many feelings in me (mainly rage and distress). There were parts where i was in utter disbelief of June, i had to take a step back from the book.
I do wonder though, what with all the niche references to the recurring bookish online drama and controversy that gets dragged up month in and month out, how a casual book reader would experience this book 🤔.
this was like reading the diary entry of someone who has just had an extremely bad day at work. it was like that trope that seems for some reason very exclusive to the mid-2000s in which people have the worst day of their lives are doomed to relive it, or die and go to purgatory or something like that enjoyed a specific renaissance in spirit in this book.
and it was so frustrating.
but it was also F U N.
it was very heavy-handed, and pretty self-indulgent, but i love three things in this life and those are mean girls, and b*tching with my friends, and books, and this was all three of them in one.
it was a mess. but i liked it anyway.
and everyone who is getting a little prickly over it is only doing so because they see themselves in it. because this all feels so very true!!!
bottom line: people are the worst and so is this book and i'm a fan of all of it.
----------------- tbr review
this book is already polarizing and its release date is 6 months away. so yeah i want to read it
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