Yellowface

Yellowface

Rebecca F. Kuang

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

What's the harm in a pseudonym? New York Times 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. Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena's a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn't even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I. So what if June edits Athena's novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song--complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn't this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That's what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can't get away from Athena's shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June's (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang's novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.


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  • rulietta_ldnn
    Mar 09, 2025
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  • ineschca
    Mar 10, 2025
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  • jessar
    Jan 20, 2025
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    This was a really great read! Maybe it's the white woman in me but I truly felt like we could empathise with June/Juniper even though we knew she was not taking the best course of action - very much a "I don't agree with it but I get it" kind of feeling and I think that's the point. I truly can't imagine the entire point of the book is just "white woman, amirite?" because the reality is being human is messy but humans are inherently messy on their own personal emotions, traumas, history and your average human isn't acting from a racially motivated place BUT and this is a big BUT, we also live in a world where we can no longer ignore racial implications especially on a systematic level. We have to acknowledge how the industries we are part of contribute to an issue and how our choices within those industries allow those issues to carry on. I do think Yellowface will continue to be relevant but it was published at a perfect time - I mean, are we not sick of Goodreads and Booktok and "X" and all the discourse that happens round and round in circles, for ultimately... nothing. No real change. No real disruption. A vacuum of people being mad because others are mad and because you are such a superior reader if you have the know to be mad at something and blah blah blah!!!!! If we get mad at everything then nobody fucking cares when we're mad with good reason.
    Anyways, June was fucking delulu and it was hilarious in how insane it was. Real life second hand embarrassment. I was hooked. It's like a car accident you don't want to look at but can't help doing so. It's soooooooo fucking good how the author truly takes us through it and we know what she's doing but we're falling for it the entire time anyways. Brilliant. This is the kind of book I look forward to picking up in another 10 years and thinking about how my opinion/feelings have changed since.
    The one and only thing I don't like are the references that date this book to the now but that's more of a pet peeve of mine. I like for the realities of my books to exist outside of my reality especially so, so that it can feel "real" whenever I read it and not aged over time but whatever, I also get the choice to make this reality so present, so current, so now that we have to frame it within our own true reality and change the way we look around us.

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