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.

Yellowface

Rebecca F. Kuang