Yellowface: A Chilling Novel of Racism and Cultural Appropriation from the author of Katabasis
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
“Hard to put down, harder to forget.” — Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author
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.
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Community Reviews
What’s it about?
June Hayward and Athena Liu attend Yale together and share the dream of becoming successful authors. A few years later, they are both living in D.C. and have continued a friendship- despite the fact that Athena has become a wildly successful author and June’s writing career is stalled. When June and Athena are out one evening Athena chokes to death on a pancake. June impulsively takes Athena’s latest draft for a novel. How far will she go to become the successful author she always knew she should be?
What did it make me think about?
This novel is brimming with ideas about publishing, writing, discrimination, social media, and how we choose and promote books.
Should I read it?
I read Babel by R. F. Kuang earlier this year and was impressed with her imagination. Babel is categorized as a fantasy novel and Yellowface is firmly planted in reality. Yet the similarity in the novels lies in how smart and thought provoking both books are. While Babel takes on colonialism- Yellowface takes on modern day marketing. In Yellowface we see how books are chosen, published and promoted to the public. While Yellowface was not exactly a page-turner, it was easy to pick up and keep going. I personally was not rooting for either Athena or June so I think that kept me from loving the book. I do really admire the story and how easily Kuang weaves societal issues into her novels. The focus on social media certainly made me think twice about even putting these reviews out. This novel demonstrates so many of the negatives about social media. “They’ve already decided on their narrative about me. Now they’re just collecting ‘facts’ to back it up.” It certainly makes you realize how manipulated we readers are by the publishing industry. In fact, it shows us how manipulated we all are in general…
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“But now, I see, author efforts have nothing to do with a book’s success. Bestsellers are chosen.”
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Wow, “Yellowface.” This was such a fantastic read & I finished it in a single day. While it wasn’t on the same level as “Babel” (few books ever will be) it was such an interesting perspective to read in conjunction with the previous novel.
To start off: Kuang’s protagonist June Hayward (who later stylizes her name as Juniper Song) works well as an unreliable narrator. She withholds information, is incapable of seeing events from other people’s points of view, and generally thinks she’s smarter than she actually is. Her character reminded me a bit of narcissistic criminals who get caught because they either don’t know how to act like an innocent person, or they think they’re a mastermind who will never be caught.
June functions as a vessel for the larger conversations that “Yellowface” attracts, both in the novel’s world and our own. Early on in the book she steals her newly deceased friend’s unpublished manuscript and passes it off as her own; this, of course, is Very Bad. But the book’s own discourse surrounding the early days of her newfound literary success includes both criticism and praise for her writing & research of a little-known area of Chinese history. Is it okay to write about characters outside her own race? Had she not been marketed as possibly Asian herself, could some of the later fallout been avoided?
I have been continuously thinking about this book since I finished it, and while it does read as (on paper) similar to Kuang’s real life experiences—why is that a bad thing? Her commentary on June, Athena, and the publishing industry as a whole packs a heavy-hitting punch. But just as importantly, it forces her audience to confront our own understanding of the relationship between identity & art.
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