Genre Fiction
![R. F. Kuang - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0788VXRHP.jpg)
Yellowface: A Novel
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.
Editorial Reviews
"Reading Yellowface felt like being inside a wild, brutal, psychological knife fight with a deranged clown. A merciless satire that left me screaming inside... from both its horror and humor." - Constance Wu, star of Crazy Rich Asians and author of Making a Scene
"Yellowface is one of the most transfixing novels I've read in ages… Kuang boldly interrogates literary hot-button issues like privilege, appropriation, and authenticity, leaving it open for readers themselves to decide where to draw the line." - Zakiya Dalila Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Black Girl
"Yellowface is a brittle, eviscerating read that affected me bodily. Kuang's oeuvre consistently finds new ways to expose and interrogate systems of power, in this case tackling the commodification and consumption of art with both swagger and sophistication. Yellowface really is THAT bitch." - Olivie Blake, New York Times Bestselling author of The Atlas Six
"A spiky, snarky, shady, smart, sinister take on white privilege." - Nikki May, author of Wahala
"Yellowface is brilliant satire--thought provoking, thrilling, and hitting a little too close to home. A must read commentary on the line between representation and exploitation and those who are willing to cross it for fame. Everyone in publishing's wide orbit should read this, and take a long look in the mirror." - Vaishnavi Patel, New York Times Bestselling Author of Kaikeyi
"Yellowface is a spicy, satirical page-turner that skewers the racism and tokenization in the publishing and entertainment industries, the vanity of social me...
"Yellowface is one of the most transfixing novels I've read in ages… Kuang boldly interrogates literary hot-button issues like privilege, appropriation, and authenticity, leaving it open for readers themselves to decide where to draw the line." - Zakiya Dalila Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Black Girl
"Yellowface is a brittle, eviscerating read that affected me bodily. Kuang's oeuvre consistently finds new ways to expose and interrogate systems of power, in this case tackling the commodification and consumption of art with both swagger and sophistication. Yellowface really is THAT bitch." - Olivie Blake, New York Times Bestselling author of The Atlas Six
"A spiky, snarky, shady, smart, sinister take on white privilege." - Nikki May, author of Wahala
"Yellowface is brilliant satire--thought provoking, thrilling, and hitting a little too close to home. A must read commentary on the line between representation and exploitation and those who are willing to cross it for fame. Everyone in publishing's wide orbit should read this, and take a long look in the mirror." - Vaishnavi Patel, New York Times Bestselling Author of Kaikeyi
"Yellowface is a spicy, satirical page-turner that skewers the racism and tokenization in the publishing and entertainment industries, the vanity of social me...
Readers Top Reviews
W from Chicago Me
R.F. Kuang is best known for her fantasy novels. The Poppy War Trilogy is amazing. Babel is amazing. This book is an easy read and certainly well written. It is just a bit more mundane. To me it felt like a reasonable beach read, but not something that I would think about much after reading. Not a complete waste but not a masterpiece to be sure.
AnaW from Chicago
Crushed this book in three days. Funny, dark, and cringe, all rolled into one!
PRAnaW from Chica
Highly entertaining, one of the best unreliable narrators out there. Catnip for anyone who loves gossipy frenemy stories and/or inside stories of the literary and publishing worlds.
Dylan ByrnePRAnaW
Yellowface is not black and white or yellow. It posses serious questions about privilege and the right to pass judgement. Is Athena good or bad or an ambiguous image? If we disregard the unreliable narrator's shading of Athena, we are left with the question: does the success that comes from the 'privilege' of talent, good-looks, wealth, expensive education and ethnicity – make one unworthy of that success ?
LA in DallasDylan
Juniper Song Hayward, the first-person protagonist (dare I call her a "hero"?) of R.F. Kuang's Yellowface, is a thief who gets caught. She steals a draft novel from her best friend Athena Liu, who has just choked to death, revises it, and publishes it as her own. It is wildly successful, and June is now wealthy and famous. But then, in a slow-rolling disaster, she gets caught and exposed. (The publisher's blurb lays out the entire plot of Yellowface, so I can write all that without much worry of spoiling.) It is how June reacts that really makes the story for me. She defies her detractors. She doubles down on defiance. She is not a picture of conventional courage, being fragile and stressed out -- she spends much of the book freaking out -- but to my mind that only underscores her strength of character. Let there be no mistake -- June is evil. She becomes a horrible person who behaves badly out of indefensible and selfish motives. For instance, this happens "I used to think that mean teachers were a special kind of monster, but it turns out that cruelty comes naturally. Also, it’s fun." June is NOT a nice person. It will not have escaped you that the names June Hayward and Athena Liu, suggest a white woman stealing from a Chinese-American one. And the story she steals concerns the Chinese, "an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I" as the publishers describe it. Indeed, it is clear both from the title Yellowface and from R.F. Kuang's writings about the book that in her mind, the racial issue is what Yellowface is ABOUT. But that was not what interested me most. It was the arguably more universal story of how evil develops. Yellowface is not, by the way, the story of a Manichaean Good vs Evil struggle. No one in this book is especially good. Indeed, almost everyone is awful. (Yellowface doubles as an exposé of the horrors of the publishing industry.) You will form your own opinions of their relative awfulness, and I see no point in parsing my complicated feelings out in this review. So, an exciting, fast-moving and intriguingly weird horror story of an evil woman. It'll stir you up.
