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Yellowface
Goodreads Choice Award
Winner for Best Fiction (2023)White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… 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 R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel.
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who 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 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 grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who 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 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 grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published May 16, 2023
About the author
R.F. Kuang
19 books57k followersRebecca F. Kuang is a Marshall Scholar, translator, and award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy and Babel: An Arcane History, among others. She 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.
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January 12, 2024
2.5/5
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.
in line with the theme of the book, i’m going to completely steal another reviewer’s words that i can’t stop thinking about. 'the problem with kuang is that, despite a reputation for in-depth research, she refuses to interrogate beyond her scope.' go read it. and i’d like to add to that: a lot of her most avid readers don’t have the appetite for anything beyond that, either. and take it incredibly personally when at the end of the meal, you’re still hungry.
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.
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.
in line with the theme of the book, i’m going to completely steal another reviewer’s words that i can’t stop thinking about. 'the problem with kuang is that, despite a reputation for in-depth research, she refuses to interrogate beyond her scope.' go read it. and i’d like to add to that: a lot of her most avid readers don’t have the appetite for anything beyond that, either. and take it incredibly personally when at the end of the meal, you’re still hungry.
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.
March 24, 2024
‘Don’t ghosts just want to be remembered?’
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.
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.
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.
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.
January 23, 2023
lmao.
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:
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.
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.
July 11, 2023
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.
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.
January 25, 2024
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.
July 21, 2024
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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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.
Follow me on medium.com to read my articles about books, movies, streaming series, astrology:
medium blog
July 25, 2024
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
✧ Connect with me ✧ Instagram ✧
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
✧ Connect with me ✧ Instagram ✧
July 1, 2022
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.
ARC received in exchange for an honest review
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.
ARC received in exchange for an honest review
January 24, 2024
At this point I'd read Rebecca's grocery lists
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 🤔.
“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 🤔.
April 5, 2024
this book is so goddamn annoying.
i love satire.
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
update: let's do this.
i love satire.
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
update: let's do this.
July 28, 2023
i wanted to like this so much more, but unfortunately it felt really flat to me :(
what i expected to be an insightful critique of racism in the publishing industry turned out to be more of a jab at twitter discourse? more than anything, it felt like the author was using the main character to respond to real life criticism she’s received, which isn’t inherently bad, but it made the story feel a bit shallow.
i think rfk is an extremely talented writer, which is why my expectations were so high. i just feel like this book had the potential to say so much more, but i finished it thinking, “that’s it?”
what i expected to be an insightful critique of racism in the publishing industry turned out to be more of a jab at twitter discourse? more than anything, it felt like the author was using the main character to respond to real life criticism she’s received, which isn’t inherently bad, but it made the story feel a bit shallow.
i think rfk is an extremely talented writer, which is why my expectations were so high. i just feel like this book had the potential to say so much more, but i finished it thinking, “that’s it?”
January 15, 2024
Fell flat for me, as it felt more like a funhouse mirror depiction of book twitter drama and the author's personal grievances rather than insightful commentary of the publishing industry beyond the internet. There are areas of potential to really dive into discussions of privilege and classism that we did not uncover further. For an author with a high reputation for research, I wish she had interrogated her blind spots further. That being said, I'm honored to have made a cameo as Kimberly Deng lol
October 8, 2023
4.35
O Cię panie
O Cię panie
August 20, 2023
July 2023 ⭐️4.5
I reread this for my book club and am so glad we did a buddy read and live show. This is a book worthy of discussion. It has both blatant and nuanced themes of racism and xenophobia that might go over some reader's heads or might seem too in-your-face for others. A group discussion can help reader's recognize the realism of R.F. Kuang's literary approach and see that even if you don't relate to the content, you still have to understand that it's other people's reality.
Will you enjoy a single character? Categorically NO. But you will walk away with a greater understanding of the many failings of the publishing industry and how you might be unconsciously taking part in some of those failings.
It's eye opening. It's ballsy. It's crass. It's wild and brilliant.
I will say that the half star reduction is solely because of Candice. While her insistence upon sensitivity reader's was a good call in my opinion, her manner of calling things out and getting things done were over-dramatized to the nth degree. While I think R.F. Kuang is brilliant for having the opposing side of June also be contrarian, Candice didn't fill the spot I wanted her to in opposition to June. I know it wasn't a character to necessarily root for instead of June. But I saw June's motives and her horrible mental manipulation that she attempted to gaslight ourselves into believing were just. But Candice just felt cartoonishly villainous. Maybe that's just my view of her. Other's could read it differently.
But, overall, this is absolutely worth your time. Please read this. It is a shining gem in the 2023 literary world.
March 2023 ⭐️4.5
RF Kuang DID THAT.
This woman fears nothing and no one. What a hero.
She said "Talk about the publishing industry? How about the racism, misogyny, xenophobia, plagiarism, pretty-privilege and everything else revolting that comes along with it? You don't want to acknowledge that? Welp, too bad. Cause I'm gonna write it so well, you'll be begging to publish it."
I thought that RF Kuang was going to write about her experience with publishing through the eyes of the main character. But that's the direct opposite approach she takes. Her self-insert is actually with Athena, the main character's college friend turned renowned author.
The main character is a depiction of mild mannered racist individuals who shroud themselves in acceptance as long as it doesn't affect them and balk at the idea of racism until directly faced with equality and the loss of superiority it gives them.
This is an excellent look at how real and deep rooted racism is. It's everywhere and in everyone. It just isn't always shouting it's ideals. It's sitting still while someone else does something harmful. It's deluding yourself when you get the job over someone of color when you know you're under qualified. It's in so many small and micro ways. And it's absolutely vile to watch/read. But very eye opening in a way that I think is necessary for the publishing industry as it stands.
I so appreciate RF Kuang for writing this and continuing to be an absolute genius. Like, how does a human being's brain contain this much complexity and eloquence? I'm baffled.
I reread this for my book club and am so glad we did a buddy read and live show. This is a book worthy of discussion. It has both blatant and nuanced themes of racism and xenophobia that might go over some reader's heads or might seem too in-your-face for others. A group discussion can help reader's recognize the realism of R.F. Kuang's literary approach and see that even if you don't relate to the content, you still have to understand that it's other people's reality.
Will you enjoy a single character? Categorically NO. But you will walk away with a greater understanding of the many failings of the publishing industry and how you might be unconsciously taking part in some of those failings.
It's eye opening. It's ballsy. It's crass. It's wild and brilliant.
I will say that the half star reduction is solely because of Candice. While her insistence upon sensitivity reader's was a good call in my opinion, her manner of calling things out and getting things done were over-dramatized to the nth degree. While I think R.F. Kuang is brilliant for having the opposing side of June also be contrarian, Candice didn't fill the spot I wanted her to in opposition to June. I know it wasn't a character to necessarily root for instead of June. But I saw June's motives and her horrible mental manipulation that she attempted to gaslight ourselves into believing were just. But Candice just felt cartoonishly villainous. Maybe that's just my view of her. Other's could read it differently.
But, overall, this is absolutely worth your time. Please read this. It is a shining gem in the 2023 literary world.
March 2023 ⭐️4.5
RF Kuang DID THAT.
This woman fears nothing and no one. What a hero.
She said "Talk about the publishing industry? How about the racism, misogyny, xenophobia, plagiarism, pretty-privilege and everything else revolting that comes along with it? You don't want to acknowledge that? Welp, too bad. Cause I'm gonna write it so well, you'll be begging to publish it."
I thought that RF Kuang was going to write about her experience with publishing through the eyes of the main character. But that's the direct opposite approach she takes. Her self-insert is actually with Athena, the main character's college friend turned renowned author.
The main character is a depiction of mild mannered racist individuals who shroud themselves in acceptance as long as it doesn't affect them and balk at the idea of racism until directly faced with equality and the loss of superiority it gives them.
This is an excellent look at how real and deep rooted racism is. It's everywhere and in everyone. It just isn't always shouting it's ideals. It's sitting still while someone else does something harmful. It's deluding yourself when you get the job over someone of color when you know you're under qualified. It's in so many small and micro ways. And it's absolutely vile to watch/read. But very eye opening in a way that I think is necessary for the publishing industry as it stands.
I so appreciate RF Kuang for writing this and continuing to be an absolute genius. Like, how does a human being's brain contain this much complexity and eloquence? I'm baffled.
June 5, 2023
with some personal favourites like ‘the plot,’ ‘a ladder to the sky,’ and ‘kill all your darlings,’ im no stranger to a plot about plagiarism. but what makes this book stand out from the others is its hard hitting commentary about the publishing world.
RFK is a fantastic writer and skillfully navigates the loneliness and pressure authors feel, making the drastic decisions juniper makes feel somewhat morally grey rather than outright wrong (as we know plagiarism is). and even though its done in a satirical way (which isnt my favourite), i enjoyed the exploration of topics like authors in reader spaces, own voices stories, and the different standards and treatment of white vs minority authors.
the only reason this isnt getting 5 stars is because of a personal problem. i have a really weird pet peeve of real world things mentioned in fiction. i like realistic/contemporary stories, but pop culture references bug the crap out of me. so all of the talk of US politics and presidents, very real famous authors, even the commentary about goodreads and tiktok, took me out of the story.
so, a little too “real world” for my personal reading preferences, but there is no doubt this is a provocative novel that sheds light on various aspects of the book world.
↠ 4 stars
RFK is a fantastic writer and skillfully navigates the loneliness and pressure authors feel, making the drastic decisions juniper makes feel somewhat morally grey rather than outright wrong (as we know plagiarism is). and even though its done in a satirical way (which isnt my favourite), i enjoyed the exploration of topics like authors in reader spaces, own voices stories, and the different standards and treatment of white vs minority authors.
the only reason this isnt getting 5 stars is because of a personal problem. i have a really weird pet peeve of real world things mentioned in fiction. i like realistic/contemporary stories, but pop culture references bug the crap out of me. so all of the talk of US politics and presidents, very real famous authors, even the commentary about goodreads and tiktok, took me out of the story.
so, a little too “real world” for my personal reading preferences, but there is no doubt this is a provocative novel that sheds light on various aspects of the book world.
↠ 4 stars
January 23, 2023
haha i can't wait for this to come out and for y'all to lose your minds. if you had doubts about preordering, don't. you're going to want to read this one—satire at its f**king finest
January 14, 2024
4.5
R.F. Kuang is very much so becoming a new favorite author. This was fantastic! It's not the most easy read as the main character is frustrating AF, but it falls into this place where you can't seem to put the book down. My only real complaint is that I didn't love the way things wrapped up in the end. It felt a little rushed and also I get that the point is "some people will never learn and grow" but.. god it was frustrating!! to. see. zero. growth!! haha
R.F. Kuang is very much so becoming a new favorite author. This was fantastic! It's not the most easy read as the main character is frustrating AF, but it falls into this place where you can't seem to put the book down. My only real complaint is that I didn't love the way things wrapped up in the end. It felt a little rushed and also I get that the point is "some people will never learn and grow" but.. god it was frustrating!! to. see. zero. growth!! haha
May 16, 2023
HOLY SHIT.
I bet any other author could have tried with a premise like this and would have inevitably failed. No one writes morally grey like R.F. Kuang and I'm saying this because my anxiety skyrocketed the more I read + I'm still haunted by these characters days later. It basically was like a trainwreck from beginning to end, where you know things are only getting worse but you're still so weirdly fascinated with it you can't stop looking.
I'm positive I've never read something so meta in my entire life. This one is for the publishing industry nerds, and honestly I foresee this being very difficult to market outside of such a niche community. It was so in-depth into the industry it made my heart sing and despare at the same time (as a publishing post-graduate first and then as a compulsive reader part of the online community). It managed to highlight a slew of things that make publishing not such a great place to be at in very few pages and I'm amazed. To me this book kind of felt like a very long article but with twists and turns. Now I know why they released arcs so early (looking at you, HarperCollins 👀). Book twitter will have a field day with this one...
What a choice to have the main narrative voice be the plagiarizer (and in first person at that). Both Athena and June are awful people, and I love that neither of them is a saint, but reading the entire thing from June's pov? Insane. She's a frustrating character, not gonna lie, but she's also deliciously realistic as a two-faced, self-absorbed and dishonest manipulator that always has an excuse ready. She goes out of her way to say to the reader that she wants to do something for poc every chance she gets, but the reality is that she's a bitch trying to profit from it all in an industry that lets her do it. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's not too difficult to miss her slipping into a plain wrong mentality and lol, basic whiteness. You think you're safe as the external reader? Not a chance. I'm not proud to say I fell straight into R.F. Kuang's trap, because was I seriously rooting for such a cheater the entire time? This book brainwashed me into supporting someone who stole a whole manuscript immediately after witnessing the author's death and reaching stardom by publishing it as her own. I got to the point where I was scared she was going to get caught and hoped she would get out of it unscathed. My brain ignored all the red flags and procedeed to scam me until the very end. I mean, of course I ended up wishing she would kill someone to shut them up. Of course I got second-hand anxiety from her messing up with her publishing team and at her events. Of course I cared about her mental health. Am I okay or what? Is it time for me to get theraphy too?
On the other hand, Athena is harder to grasp. You really need to have the whole picture with her, which you only get by reading the book till the end. I loved the way RFK slowly built her character. You only read about her from June's perpective when she's already dead and still she comes through as the main character, not less because June is literally obsessed with her. Well-written toxic friendships are my bread and butter and the one in here was one of my favorites. The way it was dealt with: nothing less of spectacular. I found June's morality to be the most interesting aspect of this book, but the relationship between her and Athena comes in second for sure.
Much care went into the secondary characters too. Even when they only fully appeared once or twice, they always had a well-rounded story behind them. I can apply that specifically to the publishing team and Geoff. From that last one it's again apparent and so on-the-nose how me and RFK's morally grey characters just work together. What can I say? I'm fascinated with them. Geoff reminded me of so many white male authors on twitter but he just had a pull. I loved that he was so pathetic, that I never knew what he was going to do and then, when I least expected it and as naturally as possible, he showed a completely different side to himself.
There are a couple of things I didn't completely enjoy, mainly the pop culture references (way too many, half of them were necessary, the others not so much), and the ending. Overall the ending itself wasn't bad, I loved how it wrapped up, but that final showdown bordered on cartoonish and because of that it was hard to take it seriously. I also feel like the final chapter is missing, although I understand what this novel is actually supposed to be (have I said meta already?).
In conclusion, an amazing foray into general fiction by R.F. Kuang. I swear this woman can do no wrong. Give her whatever topic to write about and I bet she can create something incredible out of the most boring premise. I think it's impressive how she took these modern controversies and wrote them into a twisty unputdownable story. It seems to me like it's a new experiment from her but at the same time a really smart jab at publishing too.
I wouldn't say it's a perfect book and I'm unsure if I would reread it like The Poppy War trilogy; however I can't exclude it won't live in my mind rent free as I still catch myself heavily thinking about it.
I bet any other author could have tried with a premise like this and would have inevitably failed. No one writes morally grey like R.F. Kuang and I'm saying this because my anxiety skyrocketed the more I read + I'm still haunted by these characters days later. It basically was like a trainwreck from beginning to end, where you know things are only getting worse but you're still so weirdly fascinated with it you can't stop looking.
I'm positive I've never read something so meta in my entire life. This one is for the publishing industry nerds, and honestly I foresee this being very difficult to market outside of such a niche community. It was so in-depth into the industry it made my heart sing and despare at the same time (as a publishing post-graduate first and then as a compulsive reader part of the online community). It managed to highlight a slew of things that make publishing not such a great place to be at in very few pages and I'm amazed. To me this book kind of felt like a very long article but with twists and turns. Now I know why they released arcs so early (looking at you, HarperCollins 👀). Book twitter will have a field day with this one...
What a choice to have the main narrative voice be the plagiarizer (and in first person at that). Both Athena and June are awful people, and I love that neither of them is a saint, but reading the entire thing from June's pov? Insane. She's a frustrating character, not gonna lie, but she's also deliciously realistic as a two-faced, self-absorbed and dishonest manipulator that always has an excuse ready. She goes out of her way to say to the reader that she wants to do something for poc every chance she gets, but the reality is that she's a bitch trying to profit from it all in an industry that lets her do it. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's not too difficult to miss her slipping into a plain wrong mentality and lol, basic whiteness. You think you're safe as the external reader? Not a chance. I'm not proud to say I fell straight into R.F. Kuang's trap, because was I seriously rooting for such a cheater the entire time? This book brainwashed me into supporting someone who stole a whole manuscript immediately after witnessing the author's death and reaching stardom by publishing it as her own. I got to the point where I was scared she was going to get caught and hoped she would get out of it unscathed. My brain ignored all the red flags and procedeed to scam me until the very end. I mean, of course I ended up wishing she would kill someone to shut them up. Of course I got second-hand anxiety from her messing up with her publishing team and at her events. Of course I cared about her mental health. Am I okay or what? Is it time for me to get theraphy too?
On the other hand, Athena is harder to grasp. You really need to have the whole picture with her, which you only get by reading the book till the end. I loved the way RFK slowly built her character. You only read about her from June's perpective when she's already dead and still she comes through as the main character, not less because June is literally obsessed with her. Well-written toxic friendships are my bread and butter and the one in here was one of my favorites. The way it was dealt with: nothing less of spectacular. I found June's morality to be the most interesting aspect of this book, but the relationship between her and Athena comes in second for sure.
Much care went into the secondary characters too. Even when they only fully appeared once or twice, they always had a well-rounded story behind them. I can apply that specifically to the publishing team and Geoff. From that last one it's again apparent and so on-the-nose how me and RFK's morally grey characters just work together. What can I say? I'm fascinated with them. Geoff reminded me of so many white male authors on twitter but he just had a pull. I loved that he was so pathetic, that I never knew what he was going to do and then, when I least expected it and as naturally as possible, he showed a completely different side to himself.
There are a couple of things I didn't completely enjoy, mainly the pop culture references (way too many, half of them were necessary, the others not so much), and the ending. Overall the ending itself wasn't bad, I loved how it wrapped up, but that final showdown bordered on cartoonish and because of that it was hard to take it seriously. I also feel like the final chapter is missing, although I understand what this novel is actually supposed to be (have I said meta already?).
In conclusion, an amazing foray into general fiction by R.F. Kuang. I swear this woman can do no wrong. Give her whatever topic to write about and I bet she can create something incredible out of the most boring premise. I think it's impressive how she took these modern controversies and wrote them into a twisty unputdownable story. It seems to me like it's a new experiment from her but at the same time a really smart jab at publishing too.
I wouldn't say it's a perfect book and I'm unsure if I would reread it like The Poppy War trilogy; however I can't exclude it won't live in my mind rent free as I still catch myself heavily thinking about it.
November 3, 2023
Oh, Booktwitter, Bookstagram! You lied.
This wasn't v. good.
Yellowface is about June Heyward who steals a manuscript from her best-selling author frenemy. After her friend dies in a bizarre accident, June polishes up the prose and sells the book as her own without crediting her friend.
Most of the book is just internal angst about Twitter.
Maybe I am not the key demographic for this book (I'm in the over 35 crowd), but how I approach social media is like Marie Kondo - if it doesn't spark joy, I get rid of it. If people spew hate, I just block them.
So I don't really feel like we were making progress in this novel because I would not have given any credence to these naysayers.
There is some commentary on the book community. Some of it was interesting.
I will clarify a few things.
If you write a negative review, you are not supposed to tag the author.
While the internet may seem like The Wild West, GoodReads does have Community Guidelines. They state, "Criticizing the opinions of others is permitted, but attacking individuals for their opinions is not."
Personally, I have never had a problem with an author, publisher, or GoodReads so you can write negative reviews (just make sure not to violate the Community Guidelines).
This book does bring up some interesting points around who gets to tell certain stories and plagiarism.
I found this issue of plagiarism particularly ironic because Yellowface didn't strike me as very original, essentially a mashup of The Plot by Jean Hanoff Korelitz and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum. Furthermore, RF Kuang had a scene in The Poppy War (published 2018) where the main character was training by carrying a pig up a mountain.
Well, there is a story in Holes (published 1998) by Louis Sachar where someone carries a pig up a mountain.
However, people create retellings all the time. There are lots of familiar and time-tested tropes and plots. At what point is it plagiarism? This would have been a great book for a book club.
Overall, this was an average book, definitely not the riveting book, have to read in one sitting book that the world has lost its mind over.
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This wasn't v. good.
Yellowface is about June Heyward who steals a manuscript from her best-selling author frenemy. After her friend dies in a bizarre accident, June polishes up the prose and sells the book as her own without crediting her friend.
Most of the book is just internal angst about Twitter.
Maybe I am not the key demographic for this book (I'm in the over 35 crowd), but how I approach social media is like Marie Kondo - if it doesn't spark joy, I get rid of it. If people spew hate, I just block them.
So I don't really feel like we were making progress in this novel because I would not have given any credence to these naysayers.
There is some commentary on the book community. Some of it was interesting.
I will clarify a few things.
If you write a negative review, you are not supposed to tag the author.
While the internet may seem like The Wild West, GoodReads does have Community Guidelines. They state, "Criticizing the opinions of others is permitted, but attacking individuals for their opinions is not."
Personally, I have never had a problem with an author, publisher, or GoodReads so you can write negative reviews (just make sure not to violate the Community Guidelines).
This book does bring up some interesting points around who gets to tell certain stories and plagiarism.
I found this issue of plagiarism particularly ironic because Yellowface didn't strike me as very original, essentially a mashup of The Plot by Jean Hanoff Korelitz and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum. Furthermore, RF Kuang had a scene in The Poppy War (published 2018) where the main character was training by carrying a pig up a mountain.
Well, there is a story in Holes (published 1998) by Louis Sachar where someone carries a pig up a mountain.
However, people create retellings all the time. There are lots of familiar and time-tested tropes and plots. At what point is it plagiarism? This would have been a great book for a book club.
Overall, this was an average book, definitely not the riveting book, have to read in one sitting book that the world has lost its mind over.
Connect With Me!
Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta
October 8, 2023
probably the only one of my most anticipated books of 2023 to live up to the hype.
this was brilliant, insightful, uncomfortable, and sure maybe a little self-inserty. but authors, especially good authors, have every right to infuse themselves into their stories. i'd much rather read a book that feels cathartic for an author to write, with true depth of emotion, than something devoid of the author's passion.
there were parts of this i didn't love. namely the pacing and the ending of the book. but the cutting satire and painfully accurate characterization shone through. i think members of the book community should read this. it helped me recognize some uncomfy truths and hey, only the best books do.
this was brilliant, insightful, uncomfortable, and sure maybe a little self-inserty. but authors, especially good authors, have every right to infuse themselves into their stories. i'd much rather read a book that feels cathartic for an author to write, with true depth of emotion, than something devoid of the author's passion.
there were parts of this i didn't love. namely the pacing and the ending of the book. but the cutting satire and painfully accurate characterization shone through. i think members of the book community should read this. it helped me recognize some uncomfy truths and hey, only the best books do.
November 5, 2023
Madelein L'Engle said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." If Rebbeca Kuang saw this quote, she must have mixed it up because she wrote this book as though it's meant for children who want to graduate to adult fiction.
Yellowface is an unsubtle, hammer-to-the-forehead quasi-treatise about the dangers of White Women. Those villainised hacks who never see how what they're doing is wrong. They're Karens, but they voted for Biden. No really, June Hayward says she is a Democrat, and liberal, and voted for Biden multiple times within the book. Hayward a mediocre author who is friends (and we're not really convinced why) with a Chinese American literary star Athena Liu who dies suddenly after a pancake goes down the wrong hole, and Hayward is too inept to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre.
After this, Hayward steals Liu's manuscript about Chinese laborers forcefully conscripted by the French during World War 1. The caucasity is unsurprising, trite, and racist covering all the beats we experienced every time we covered Discourse about films like The Blindside, Hidden Figures Greenbook, and books like The Help, or American Dirt.
This book is not funny, it's not particularly well-written, with a literal typo in the first few pages The editor who did got fired,. The narrative is repetitive and disjointed, like puzzle pieces forced together from different boxes. There were scenes where June's narration is simply exhausting. I have to remind Athena this every single time. She has a goldfish’s memory when it comes to my problems—it takes two or three repetitions for anything to stick. First of all, Rebecca, goldfish don't have short memories. Some can keep them for years. Secondly, you already said this multiple times. We aren't "goldfish", we aren't sieves. We don't need incessant spoonfeeding about something you already said. In the opening stints, June mentions how her debut was left to languish by her editor at the pathetic imprint that was the only one that gave her a chance. It didn't need to be repeated. It also speaks to a certain lack of, perhaps, awareness by Rebecca about how publishing classifies books. When they acquire a manuscript, the books are then delineated, and different budgets are assigned to the books based on what they think will be most profitable. In the current environment, poorly written horny romantasy, AI and climate change scare stories, American POC history and struggle porn, badly written romance, and whatever book Booktok bestows its benevolent virality are the ones most likely to get publishing buzz.
Majority of the authors are very white, very North American, or very British. June's lack of awareness of how publishing works spoke more to Rebecca's ignorance or laziness. And ultimately, her scapegoating of publishing "wanting diverse stories" rings hollow. Maybe this story would have been better if June had whitewashed a literary navel-gazing story about vulnerability and identity.
Beyond the amateurish prose that suffered from sudden bursts of Thesaurus-itis, for example, on Pg. 6 Rebecca writes, It’s so fucking arbitrary. Or perhaps not arbitrary, but it hinges on factors that have nothing to do with the strength of one’s prose. then on Pg. 102 Can't we all get behind decrying antimiscegenation? June also says Athena's prose is repetitive while her monologues feel like a scratched CD. One could argue that Rebecca is trying to show how June is unaware of her lack of talent but you can't help but wonder if she is just a serviceable writer. The book takes pains to be accessible for mass audiences. Rebecca also wants to explain every little detail such as ARCs and sensitivity readers-jargon everyone who is involved in The Community would know. June even goes on a diatribe when discussing a potential movie deal and says, Accessibility matters. and when undressing the stolen manuscript that's "difficult" to read, she says, It’s distracting from the central narrative. Reading should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore. Is this satire or Rebecca explaining why the prose is so bland and repetitive.
My suspension of disbelief was unwilling and abused by how ridiculous some of the events in publishing happen. When June mentions the Goodreads Choice Awards more times than more prestigious ones, I couldn't help but wonder if Rebecca doesn't understand literary Oscars season or if she was trying to pander to Goodreads Choice Awards voters (this book will definitely be listed under Best Fiction). The GCAs are a popularity contest. Rarely do people read all the books listed, they only vote for what they loved. Additionally, no discerning reader who wants a book about Chinese labourers in WW1 would give a fuck about GCAs.
Or is this a 4D chess Trojan horse where readers are actually being unwittingly tested as a focus group? Some people will prefer a female friendship story where race dynamics are explored (The Hate U Give), or perhaps they will want a thriller involving authors and books (Too Close To Home by Linwood Barclay), a meta narrative about who gets to tell a story (Bad Art Friend), a serial plagiariser (look up Jumi Bello), or Asian American nonfiction (Minor Feelings) and Rebecca can pick her next project. Maybe Rebecca is staging herself as the host of the round table to discuss whether authors should interact with reviews. But as we saw with Lauren Hough, the answer is still no.
There was also a glaring pattern where June kept pointing out Athena's flaws. How she was once the actual bad art friend, how Twitter Hot Take enthusiasts called her a race traitor. But we never get to delve into that because June believes no one is that deep into Chinese history or politics. Great job, Rebecca. You have shut down your critics for the lack of nuance in Asian history and characters in Babel. Athena is so offensively superficially written that I almost wished we had gotten her point of view, as a villain who wants to step on all faces to the top of the literary throne. The few snippets we get of her prose show she's a much better writer than June and her narration would have been more palatable than June's weapons of mass boredom.
There's a certain Discourse we're supposed to have from this book about Bad White Women, and how publishing serves to silence writers of colour. We also have to discuss who gets to tell certain stories. The problem is, we have spoken about this ad nauseum. So who is this book for? Outsiders who would like to know how it works? Adults who wanted a meta vivisection of this insular world but with Dark Themes?
Rebecca doesn't know. She says it's a thriller examining the idiosyncracies of publishing. It's not thrilling. And it has a myopic view of how publishing works. About good intentions that went poorly when June always set out to usurp Athena's work from the jump? It's not satire. It's a reverse Künstlerroman. Why is it necessary? The book doesn't tell you because it ends like a flaccid plateau. Not only is it boring, but it's just a meme of a clueless White Woman.
Yellowface is an unsubtle, hammer-to-the-forehead quasi-treatise about the dangers of White Women. Those villainised hacks who never see how what they're doing is wrong. They're Karens, but they voted for Biden. No really, June Hayward says she is a Democrat, and liberal, and voted for Biden multiple times within the book. Hayward a mediocre author who is friends (and we're not really convinced why) with a Chinese American literary star Athena Liu who dies suddenly after a pancake goes down the wrong hole, and Hayward is too inept to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre.
After this, Hayward steals Liu's manuscript about Chinese laborers forcefully conscripted by the French during World War 1. The caucasity is unsurprising, trite, and racist covering all the beats we experienced every time we covered Discourse about films like The Blindside, Hidden Figures Greenbook, and books like The Help, or American Dirt.
This book is not funny, it's not particularly well-written, with a literal typo in the first few pages The editor who did got fired,. The narrative is repetitive and disjointed, like puzzle pieces forced together from different boxes. There were scenes where June's narration is simply exhausting. I have to remind Athena this every single time. She has a goldfish’s memory when it comes to my problems—it takes two or three repetitions for anything to stick. First of all, Rebecca, goldfish don't have short memories. Some can keep them for years. Secondly, you already said this multiple times. We aren't "goldfish", we aren't sieves. We don't need incessant spoonfeeding about something you already said. In the opening stints, June mentions how her debut was left to languish by her editor at the pathetic imprint that was the only one that gave her a chance. It didn't need to be repeated. It also speaks to a certain lack of, perhaps, awareness by Rebecca about how publishing classifies books. When they acquire a manuscript, the books are then delineated, and different budgets are assigned to the books based on what they think will be most profitable. In the current environment, poorly written horny romantasy, AI and climate change scare stories, American POC history and struggle porn, badly written romance, and whatever book Booktok bestows its benevolent virality are the ones most likely to get publishing buzz.
Majority of the authors are very white, very North American, or very British. June's lack of awareness of how publishing works spoke more to Rebecca's ignorance or laziness. And ultimately, her scapegoating of publishing "wanting diverse stories" rings hollow. Maybe this story would have been better if June had whitewashed a literary navel-gazing story about vulnerability and identity.
Beyond the amateurish prose that suffered from sudden bursts of Thesaurus-itis, for example, on Pg. 6 Rebecca writes, It’s so fucking arbitrary. Or perhaps not arbitrary, but it hinges on factors that have nothing to do with the strength of one’s prose. then on Pg. 102 Can't we all get behind decrying antimiscegenation? June also says Athena's prose is repetitive while her monologues feel like a scratched CD. One could argue that Rebecca is trying to show how June is unaware of her lack of talent but you can't help but wonder if she is just a serviceable writer. The book takes pains to be accessible for mass audiences. Rebecca also wants to explain every little detail such as ARCs and sensitivity readers-jargon everyone who is involved in The Community would know. June even goes on a diatribe when discussing a potential movie deal and says, Accessibility matters. and when undressing the stolen manuscript that's "difficult" to read, she says, It’s distracting from the central narrative. Reading should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore. Is this satire or Rebecca explaining why the prose is so bland and repetitive.
My suspension of disbelief was unwilling and abused by how ridiculous some of the events in publishing happen. When June mentions the Goodreads Choice Awards more times than more prestigious ones, I couldn't help but wonder if Rebecca doesn't understand literary Oscars season or if she was trying to pander to Goodreads Choice Awards voters (this book will definitely be listed under Best Fiction). The GCAs are a popularity contest. Rarely do people read all the books listed, they only vote for what they loved. Additionally, no discerning reader who wants a book about Chinese labourers in WW1 would give a fuck about GCAs.
Or is this a 4D chess Trojan horse where readers are actually being unwittingly tested as a focus group? Some people will prefer a female friendship story where race dynamics are explored (The Hate U Give), or perhaps they will want a thriller involving authors and books (Too Close To Home by Linwood Barclay), a meta narrative about who gets to tell a story (Bad Art Friend), a serial plagiariser (look up Jumi Bello), or Asian American nonfiction (Minor Feelings) and Rebecca can pick her next project. Maybe Rebecca is staging herself as the host of the round table to discuss whether authors should interact with reviews. But as we saw with Lauren Hough, the answer is still no.
There was also a glaring pattern where June kept pointing out Athena's flaws. How she was once the actual bad art friend, how Twitter Hot Take enthusiasts called her a race traitor. But we never get to delve into that because June believes no one is that deep into Chinese history or politics. Great job, Rebecca. You have shut down your critics for the lack of nuance in Asian history and characters in Babel. Athena is so offensively superficially written that I almost wished we had gotten her point of view, as a villain who wants to step on all faces to the top of the literary throne. The few snippets we get of her prose show she's a much better writer than June and her narration would have been more palatable than June's weapons of mass boredom.
There's a certain Discourse we're supposed to have from this book about Bad White Women, and how publishing serves to silence writers of colour. We also have to discuss who gets to tell certain stories. The problem is, we have spoken about this ad nauseum. So who is this book for? Outsiders who would like to know how it works? Adults who wanted a meta vivisection of this insular world but with Dark Themes?
Rebecca doesn't know. She says it's a thriller examining the idiosyncracies of publishing. It's not thrilling. And it has a myopic view of how publishing works. About good intentions that went poorly when June always set out to usurp Athena's work from the jump? It's not satire. It's a reverse Künstlerroman. Why is it necessary? The book doesn't tell you because it ends like a flaccid plateau. Not only is it boring, but it's just a meme of a clueless White Woman.
July 23, 2024
$4.99 audiobook sale @ Libro.fm
Goodreads Choice Awards Winner - Best Fiction
Goodreads Choice Awards Final Round - Best Fiction
Goodreads Choice Awards Opening Round - Best Fiction
API Month
What does colonialism do to a person? As a non-white person growing up in the States, and disliking it, what made me so interested in the UK as a child? Even now? And even more importantly, as a Vietnamese American, what made me so interested in France? And more so in recent years, China and Japan? It's a hard introspective look, to be sure.
This book takes Babel and continues to flip the script. June Hayward, a white American woman struggling to become an author, is frenemies with Athena Liu, publishing darling. June continues to state time and time again that Athena is only famous because she is a minority. How many times have we heard this?
June is with Athena when she chokes to death. It is implied she had something to do with her death. June is a very unreliable narrator. Do with that what you will. Anyway, Athena has a manuscript that she has begun. June steals, edits, and publishes it. June's new publishers think her name is too white (because she is white), and rebrand her Juniper Song. Ambiguous. As ambiguous as Scarlett Johansson's Japanese-ness. And Emma Stone's Vietnamese-ness.
June is asked to speak on panels, go to book clubs, and mentor student writers. When the aforementioned people learn she is not Chinese, heads begin to roll. June does not take this in stride. She thinks she is entitled to write Chinese stories, because she "did research." Do we remember the American Dirt debacle? I do. I won't touch that book with a ten foot pole. It's not a matter of who can tell what stories. (Well, it is, but no matter.) It's that a white woman received a seven figure advance telling the trauma stories of a marginalized group that will never see a cent of that. Where are the stories from actual undocumented immigrants? No one in any famous book club will ever read those.
🎧 Libby
Goodreads Choice Awards Winner - Best Fiction
Goodreads Choice Awards Final Round - Best Fiction
Goodreads Choice Awards Opening Round - Best Fiction
API Month
What does colonialism do to a person? As a non-white person growing up in the States, and disliking it, what made me so interested in the UK as a child? Even now? And even more importantly, as a Vietnamese American, what made me so interested in France? And more so in recent years, China and Japan? It's a hard introspective look, to be sure.
This book takes Babel and continues to flip the script. June Hayward, a white American woman struggling to become an author, is frenemies with Athena Liu, publishing darling. June continues to state time and time again that Athena is only famous because she is a minority. How many times have we heard this?
June is with Athena when she chokes to death. It is implied she had something to do with her death. June is a very unreliable narrator. Do with that what you will. Anyway, Athena has a manuscript that she has begun. June steals, edits, and publishes it. June's new publishers think her name is too white (because she is white), and rebrand her Juniper Song. Ambiguous. As ambiguous as Scarlett Johansson's Japanese-ness. And Emma Stone's Vietnamese-ness.
June is asked to speak on panels, go to book clubs, and mentor student writers. When the aforementioned people learn she is not Chinese, heads begin to roll. June does not take this in stride. She thinks she is entitled to write Chinese stories, because she "did research." Do we remember the American Dirt debacle? I do. I won't touch that book with a ten foot pole. It's not a matter of who can tell what stories. (Well, it is, but no matter.) It's that a white woman received a seven figure advance telling the trauma stories of a marginalized group that will never see a cent of that. Where are the stories from actual undocumented immigrants? No one in any famous book club will ever read those.
🎧 Libby
July 26, 2023
EDIT: This video sums up my thoughts. I thought it was very inappropriate how the author used an objectively bitchy and untrustworthy narrator as a mouthpiece for all of the REAL LIFE criticisms that the actual author has received in real life. By doing this, all of the critiques seem like they come from people who are just jealous and have no valid arguments against her self-insert martyr author character Athena (who mirrors the real life author in many, MANY ways). I read this book one year before it was actually published, so there might have been changes, but from this video and other reviews I've seen, not much is different from when I first read it.
I will be honest up front: this review is entirely plagiarized.
Was I not meant to admit that? Should I have, instead, gone on long, rambling, and yet tersely flat paragraphs about how ironic it is that I am negatively critiquing a book about plagiarism by using the same points as everyone else? Should I call this satire—granted that there is nothing humorous and that I am not particularly strongly exaggerating anything—as I amateurly write prose so unabashedly written in my own voice that it would be impossible to separate any idea from my own? Because that appears to be the direction this book has gone in.
I am not the first to say that this reads like RFK's notes app consciousness, nor will I be the last. While I will not get into specifics, as this is an incredibly early copy of the book, I will say that anyone who even remotely knows anything about the author will see the similarities between them and...certain things. Now, I have no issue with an author writing from experience. 'Write what you know' is both an incredibly popular and successful piece of advice given to wannabee-writers. But fuck, at some point one has to wonder about the motivation behind it.
Simply put, because there is no other way to put it, this book felt like a circle-jerk. I should have expected such a thing from a satire on the publishing industry written by a prominent figure within it. It is typical—of course they will ridicule things like social media and how the masses view them. Of course they will glower at criticisms and mock fellow authors. Is that not the purpose of satire? But this feels like so much more than that. Instead, I feel as if RFK is speaking to me in a jest. Like she is pointing toward the book community, head cocked to the side, cheekily winking in our shared knowledge of their ridiculousness. Her eyes say, look at them—look at their silliness and their worries and their jealousy. See how they behave like animals, that group of people outside of our circle. Like she'll laugh right after, content in her knowledge that she lives in an absurd space, and that only we understand its absurdity.
My first tip-off—no, not my first, though perhaps the most obscene—is how she uses our untrustworthy protagonist. RFK is, without a doubt, excellent at writing bad people. I have never argued against this, and I rather think I never will. But in this way, I feel almost uncomfortable when her unlikable characters serve the role of real people. She mocks criticism she has received in the past for her very real, non-fictitious books, through these characters. It feels, once again, like a terrible inside joke I have been privy to. As if the reader is meant to read these and think, these ridiculous characters! To say such things as this! And yet when one is aware of the author's actual past, it becomes...awkward. That is, she is not an author of subtlety. The satire could not work because it was not sufficiently...anything! I did not find it funny, nor was it so exaggerated as to be comical.
The writing in general did not work for me. Babel, for all of its long-winded sentences and unending paragraphs of description, felt like a declaration of loyalty to words. This book, instead, felt like it was made by someone who could not care less for such things. This is, I understand, literary fiction. RFK has gone out of her normal bubble of fantasy to try something new, and I truly commend her for it. But I must question if this is the right genre for her. She is blunt and uncouth, neither of which are particularly bad—nor do I even dislike it—but which are painfully obvious throughout this. I felt like I was reading one of those High School creative writing class exercises (something which I actually do on a daily basis) where the young, inexperienced creator feels the need to say things like "but you'll never guess what happens next" and "this is something that'll come up later" in their first point of view narrative as if the reader is not skillful enough to gradually realize such things later on. Its modernist setting equally paid a part in this. There are only so many times you can name-drop an author or celebrity or, God-be-damned, fucking Harry Potter before realizing you have written something that reads like a Buzzfeed quiz. No, the narration did not work for me, nor did I think that any of it ultimately paid off in its strange and wholly random ending I can only describe as, "really?"
I struggle to find the words to end this. I'm afraid I have run out of other people's thoughts to steal as I reword them into my own. I want to clarify that I do like the author's other works. Out of the five books of hers I've read (all of her works except for that one anthology she worked on), I've really liked and sometimes loved three of them. But that doesn't mean I'm not capable of thinking that this was not her best genre, nor her best work by any means. This book felt like the worst possible self-awareness. The type shared over grins and knowing smiles, wherein both parties are partaking in the mockery of a group of people they think themselves entirely separated from. This is a book that both ridicules authors while falling to its knees, proclaiming its undying devotion to them. Funny enough, I praised Babel for a much similar sentiment. But where in that book I enjoyed the constant switch between criticizing the power and history of words to being mesmerized over them, Yellowface felt more like a sledgehammer. Love me, it says like I love you—all of us—the sophisticated and knowledgeable professionals. Those of us who do not care for the social media mob, for we are above it. Those of us willfully scornful of such things, for if we pretend to each other long enough that we are all on the same page against the absurdist, laughable masses, we might start to believe it.
arc received for an honest review
I will be honest up front: this review is entirely plagiarized.
Was I not meant to admit that? Should I have, instead, gone on long, rambling, and yet tersely flat paragraphs about how ironic it is that I am negatively critiquing a book about plagiarism by using the same points as everyone else? Should I call this satire—granted that there is nothing humorous and that I am not particularly strongly exaggerating anything—as I amateurly write prose so unabashedly written in my own voice that it would be impossible to separate any idea from my own? Because that appears to be the direction this book has gone in.
I am not the first to say that this reads like RFK's notes app consciousness, nor will I be the last. While I will not get into specifics, as this is an incredibly early copy of the book, I will say that anyone who even remotely knows anything about the author will see the similarities between them and...certain things. Now, I have no issue with an author writing from experience. 'Write what you know' is both an incredibly popular and successful piece of advice given to wannabee-writers. But fuck, at some point one has to wonder about the motivation behind it.
Simply put, because there is no other way to put it, this book felt like a circle-jerk. I should have expected such a thing from a satire on the publishing industry written by a prominent figure within it. It is typical—of course they will ridicule things like social media and how the masses view them. Of course they will glower at criticisms and mock fellow authors. Is that not the purpose of satire? But this feels like so much more than that. Instead, I feel as if RFK is speaking to me in a jest. Like she is pointing toward the book community, head cocked to the side, cheekily winking in our shared knowledge of their ridiculousness. Her eyes say, look at them—look at their silliness and their worries and their jealousy. See how they behave like animals, that group of people outside of our circle. Like she'll laugh right after, content in her knowledge that she lives in an absurd space, and that only we understand its absurdity.
My first tip-off—no, not my first, though perhaps the most obscene—is how she uses our untrustworthy protagonist. RFK is, without a doubt, excellent at writing bad people. I have never argued against this, and I rather think I never will. But in this way, I feel almost uncomfortable when her unlikable characters serve the role of real people. She mocks criticism she has received in the past for her very real, non-fictitious books, through these characters. It feels, once again, like a terrible inside joke I have been privy to. As if the reader is meant to read these and think, these ridiculous characters! To say such things as this! And yet when one is aware of the author's actual past, it becomes...awkward. That is, she is not an author of subtlety. The satire could not work because it was not sufficiently...anything! I did not find it funny, nor was it so exaggerated as to be comical.
The writing in general did not work for me. Babel, for all of its long-winded sentences and unending paragraphs of description, felt like a declaration of loyalty to words. This book, instead, felt like it was made by someone who could not care less for such things. This is, I understand, literary fiction. RFK has gone out of her normal bubble of fantasy to try something new, and I truly commend her for it. But I must question if this is the right genre for her. She is blunt and uncouth, neither of which are particularly bad—nor do I even dislike it—but which are painfully obvious throughout this. I felt like I was reading one of those High School creative writing class exercises (something which I actually do on a daily basis) where the young, inexperienced creator feels the need to say things like "but you'll never guess what happens next" and "this is something that'll come up later" in their first point of view narrative as if the reader is not skillful enough to gradually realize such things later on. Its modernist setting equally paid a part in this. There are only so many times you can name-drop an author or celebrity or, God-be-damned, fucking Harry Potter before realizing you have written something that reads like a Buzzfeed quiz. No, the narration did not work for me, nor did I think that any of it ultimately paid off in its strange and wholly random ending I can only describe as, "really?"
I struggle to find the words to end this. I'm afraid I have run out of other people's thoughts to steal as I reword them into my own. I want to clarify that I do like the author's other works. Out of the five books of hers I've read (all of her works except for that one anthology she worked on), I've really liked and sometimes loved three of them. But that doesn't mean I'm not capable of thinking that this was not her best genre, nor her best work by any means. This book felt like the worst possible self-awareness. The type shared over grins and knowing smiles, wherein both parties are partaking in the mockery of a group of people they think themselves entirely separated from. This is a book that both ridicules authors while falling to its knees, proclaiming its undying devotion to them. Funny enough, I praised Babel for a much similar sentiment. But where in that book I enjoyed the constant switch between criticizing the power and history of words to being mesmerized over them, Yellowface felt more like a sledgehammer. Love me, it says like I love you—all of us—the sophisticated and knowledgeable professionals. Those of us who do not care for the social media mob, for we are above it. Those of us willfully scornful of such things, for if we pretend to each other long enough that we are all on the same page against the absurdist, laughable masses, we might start to believe it.
arc received for an honest review
June 1, 2023
I give this book four stars because, one, it’s highly entertaining. For maybe the first fifty pages or so the writing felt a bit dry, though when the plot picks up, I found myself so curious to know: will this white woman who stole an Asian American woman’s work get caught?? Will she confront her own insecurities that led to this? Is Athena actually dead?? R.F. Kuang creates a selfish, self-absorbed main character in June Hayward, with a consistent voice that kept me engaged in Yellowface’s story.
I also think this book does open up important conversations. Yes, at times it makes its point bluntly/crudely and in an obvious way, though through this satire Kuang raises deeper questions too, such as whether anyone can remain truly ethical or generous in a brutally capitalist publishing industry. I liked how Kuang didn’t make Athena a perfect character because by doing so, she highlights how people of color can engage in problematic and oppressive practices too.
So even though I didn’t agree with all of Kuang’s satirical commentary in Yellowface (e.g., I think Asian Americans should be asked hard, critical questions about glorifying whiteness both in dating partners and in other areas of life), I respect that she seized a popular topic in the publishing industry and made a novel out of it. The exaggerated nature of satire doesn’t always lend itself to a deeper emotional connection with the characters or the story, though I don’t think a deep emotional connection is necessarily the point of this novel. Overall, while I don’t see this novel breaking into my top ten list at the end of this year, I found it an interesting read and one that may be fun to discuss.
*also, just to add, this type of thing is still happening all the time, including in other industries. Recently I saw a white woman publish a research paper on Black and Latinx mothers and when I emailed her and asked about her research practices with these communities, she literally just ignored me. And, as I've written about in at least one other review, one time I gently called in a white woman for doing her dissertation on Asian American women (with no Asian American women as coauthors) and she called me aggressive and "untrusting." sigh!
I also think this book does open up important conversations. Yes, at times it makes its point bluntly/crudely and in an obvious way, though through this satire Kuang raises deeper questions too, such as whether anyone can remain truly ethical or generous in a brutally capitalist publishing industry. I liked how Kuang didn’t make Athena a perfect character because by doing so, she highlights how people of color can engage in problematic and oppressive practices too.
So even though I didn’t agree with all of Kuang’s satirical commentary in Yellowface (e.g., I think Asian Americans should be asked hard, critical questions about glorifying whiteness both in dating partners and in other areas of life), I respect that she seized a popular topic in the publishing industry and made a novel out of it. The exaggerated nature of satire doesn’t always lend itself to a deeper emotional connection with the characters or the story, though I don’t think a deep emotional connection is necessarily the point of this novel. Overall, while I don’t see this novel breaking into my top ten list at the end of this year, I found it an interesting read and one that may be fun to discuss.
*also, just to add, this type of thing is still happening all the time, including in other industries. Recently I saw a white woman publish a research paper on Black and Latinx mothers and when I emailed her and asked about her research practices with these communities, she literally just ignored me. And, as I've written about in at least one other review, one time I gently called in a white woman for doing her dissertation on Asian American women (with no Asian American women as coauthors) and she called me aggressive and "untrusting." sigh!
August 2, 2023
Yet again I'm here to disagree with the masses.....
I can't do it. I can't spend another minute with this whiney, pretentious, self-aggrandizing, and horrid main character anymore. This is like 300 pages of a poor me pity party and I am totally over it. 😒 2 stars because Kuang's a skilled and talented writer, I'd give 0 stars to enjoyment of story.
I can't do it. I can't spend another minute with this whiney, pretentious, self-aggrandizing, and horrid main character anymore. This is like 300 pages of a poor me pity party and I am totally over it. 😒 2 stars because Kuang's a skilled and talented writer, I'd give 0 stars to enjoyment of story.
September 19, 2023
”Who has the right to write about suffering?”
Have you ever read a book that is so timely and effective in its message that you do not feel the slightest bit qualified to review it? That your thoughts on such a masterpiece are not even worthy of being put to paper, literally or figuratively, because they are trite, vapid, and banal in comparison to the quality of the text being discussed? That’s how I feel trying to put the proverbial pen to paper with my thoughts on Yellowface.
Is this book satire? Obviously and not quite so much. What I mean is, it’s clearly satire, but to an extent that these characters are not exact flesh and blood, but the issues discussed in this book are far from farcical. Most reviewers have noticed the central themes in Yellowface rearing their ugly head in the real world, especially in the past few years, so it is refreshing and exhilarating to read a fictional novel encompassing these issues in a way that only R.F. Kuang could create.
”Give me your bruises and hurts, she told us, and I will return to you a diamond.”
Let’s be clear: June is not a character that you will feel empathy for. She will not be redeemed, rooted for, or endeared by the end; however, watching her downfall is oddly satisfying in a way that I cannot quite explain. The insight into the process of releasing a book with a Big Five publisher is compelling and intriguing, and it’s, sadly, easy to see how something like this story could transpire. The beauty of this tale is no one is safe from criticism; Kuang makes it clear that there are various forms of privilege that transpire across lines of race, class, gender, etc., and every single character really has something to answer for.
In one word: Brilliant.
*Many thanks to the publisher for providing my review copy.
Have you ever read a book that is so timely and effective in its message that you do not feel the slightest bit qualified to review it? That your thoughts on such a masterpiece are not even worthy of being put to paper, literally or figuratively, because they are trite, vapid, and banal in comparison to the quality of the text being discussed? That’s how I feel trying to put the proverbial pen to paper with my thoughts on Yellowface.
Is this book satire? Obviously and not quite so much. What I mean is, it’s clearly satire, but to an extent that these characters are not exact flesh and blood, but the issues discussed in this book are far from farcical. Most reviewers have noticed the central themes in Yellowface rearing their ugly head in the real world, especially in the past few years, so it is refreshing and exhilarating to read a fictional novel encompassing these issues in a way that only R.F. Kuang could create.
”Give me your bruises and hurts, she told us, and I will return to you a diamond.”
Let’s be clear: June is not a character that you will feel empathy for. She will not be redeemed, rooted for, or endeared by the end; however, watching her downfall is oddly satisfying in a way that I cannot quite explain. The insight into the process of releasing a book with a Big Five publisher is compelling and intriguing, and it’s, sadly, easy to see how something like this story could transpire. The beauty of this tale is no one is safe from criticism; Kuang makes it clear that there are various forms of privilege that transpire across lines of race, class, gender, etc., and every single character really has something to answer for.
In one word: Brilliant.
*Many thanks to the publisher for providing my review copy.
July 18, 2023
I'M CRYING, THROWING UP, RIPPING MY HAIR OUT AND THEN CRYING SOME MORE!
Rebecca F. Kuang is THE WRITER of our generation.
The author, honestly just like with Babel, had me in the palm of her hand from page 1. And my attention lasted until the very last page. I spent every waking hour thinking about this book, while I was reading it and while I was NOT. I cannot possibly imagine something this good can be written, but it turns out it can, I'm witnessing the magic happen, right?
I'm not that hard to please when it comes to my reading, and I give five star ratings (fairly) easily. But it doesn't happen every day that I GO MAD loving a book. That fact speaks for itself.
R. F. Kuang doesn't speak with or to you when she writes, she HAUNTS you. It takes a genius to achieve that.
She explored every possible aspect or every question you might have, every side you could possibly take on this subject, doesn't leave much room for the reviewer, but I'm not complaining (I like my thoughts planted)
PLOT The blurb is short and easy to understand, so i don't feel the need to retell it once more (I know I would do a poor job). I saw that most reviews on here surrounded the issues of the publishing industry as the central theme of this book, but I wouldn't agree. Just like with Babel, the racial debate takes the biggest piece of the cake, just dressed in different icing. But again, I'm not complaining. The book community is rarely not problematic, let's be honest, we are witnessing whitewashing and white supremacy on here every day. So, to not be blind and ignorant, we should learn about the topic EVERY DAY. As a white woman, I wasn't offended with any of the thoughts from this book, and I quite frankly think, that hating it (the story it explores) is an act of racism.
BABEL Yeah, it's not one of those 'if you like this you'll like that' situations. This book is different in every aspect, if I hadn't known I wouldn't think it was written by the same person. BUT IT'S EQUALLY AS BRILLIANT. Doesn't that really picture the talent and originality of this writer?
CHARACTERS I'm quite possibly the biggest fan of morally ambiguous characters. Especially when they're well written, they amaze and intrigue me. Life is far from black and white, right? I feel like the author inserted bits and pieces of herself in each of the characters, I don't feel like she chose just one. Both are writers and artists, both flawed (chronically unoriginal), but both for sure do have redeeming qualities.
Sounds a bit fake, but I genuinely think R. F. Kuang was the right person to tell this story. No matter how many times she REINVENTS herself, the story always feels like it was made just and only for her. I can't wait to read the Poppy War trilogy.
In the end, the intended question remains:
Would it be the same if a white woman wrote this?
💕📖💕
(What i wrote before reading)
This will make me or break me (I'm so serious)
Rebecca F. Kuang is THE WRITER of our generation.
The author, honestly just like with Babel, had me in the palm of her hand from page 1. And my attention lasted until the very last page. I spent every waking hour thinking about this book, while I was reading it and while I was NOT. I cannot possibly imagine something this good can be written, but it turns out it can, I'm witnessing the magic happen, right?
I'm not that hard to please when it comes to my reading, and I give five star ratings (fairly) easily. But it doesn't happen every day that I GO MAD loving a book. That fact speaks for itself.
R. F. Kuang doesn't speak with or to you when she writes, she HAUNTS you. It takes a genius to achieve that.
She explored every possible aspect or every question you might have, every side you could possibly take on this subject, doesn't leave much room for the reviewer, but I'm not complaining (I like my thoughts planted)
PLOT The blurb is short and easy to understand, so i don't feel the need to retell it once more (I know I would do a poor job). I saw that most reviews on here surrounded the issues of the publishing industry as the central theme of this book, but I wouldn't agree. Just like with Babel, the racial debate takes the biggest piece of the cake, just dressed in different icing. But again, I'm not complaining. The book community is rarely not problematic, let's be honest, we are witnessing whitewashing and white supremacy on here every day. So, to not be blind and ignorant, we should learn about the topic EVERY DAY. As a white woman, I wasn't offended with any of the thoughts from this book, and I quite frankly think, that hating it (the story it explores) is an act of racism.
BABEL Yeah, it's not one of those 'if you like this you'll like that' situations. This book is different in every aspect, if I hadn't known I wouldn't think it was written by the same person. BUT IT'S EQUALLY AS BRILLIANT. Doesn't that really picture the talent and originality of this writer?
CHARACTERS I'm quite possibly the biggest fan of morally ambiguous characters. Especially when they're well written, they amaze and intrigue me. Life is far from black and white, right? I feel like the author inserted bits and pieces of herself in each of the characters, I don't feel like she chose just one. Both are writers and artists, both flawed (chronically unoriginal), but both for sure do have redeeming qualities.
Sounds a bit fake, but I genuinely think R. F. Kuang was the right person to tell this story. No matter how many times she REINVENTS herself, the story always feels like it was made just and only for her. I can't wait to read the Poppy War trilogy.
In the end, the intended question remains:
Would it be the same if a white woman wrote this?
💕📖💕
(What i wrote before reading)
This will make me or break me (I'm so serious)
November 1, 2023
Yellowface by RF Kuang was fast-paced, satirical, intriguing, and unique! I've never heard of or read a book with a similar concept, which I found so refreshing. June's internal monologue was absolutely insane, especially in the first half. I didn't even know how she could dig herself deeper into the hole, but she never failed to dig herself deeper and deeper. I was left with my jaw dropped at the end of multiple chapters.
I really enjoyed the insight into the publishing industry that Yellowface gave as well. One of the sentences that struck me the most was "Bestsellers are chosen. Nothing you do matters". I assumed this was often the case, however, it opened my eyes to how much ads and promotions for certain books impact the chance of me reading them.
Overall I had such a fun time buddy reading Yellowface with Sue! I've heard incredible things about RF Kuang for years, so I am very happy to finally have picked up one of her books. needless to say, I'll be reading her entire backlist!
I really enjoyed the insight into the publishing industry that Yellowface gave as well. One of the sentences that struck me the most was "Bestsellers are chosen. Nothing you do matters". I assumed this was often the case, however, it opened my eyes to how much ads and promotions for certain books impact the chance of me reading them.
Overall I had such a fun time buddy reading Yellowface with Sue! I've heard incredible things about RF Kuang for years, so I am very happy to finally have picked up one of her books. needless to say, I'll be reading her entire backlist!
August 18, 2023
Dziś doszłam do wniosku, że Rebecca F. Kuang zaprzedała duszę jakiemuś bóstwu pisarzy, bo inaczej to się nie da tak pisać.
December 19, 2023
well it was definitely a book
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