I have been familiar with books by R.F. Kuang since I’ve read The Poppy War several years ago. However, I couldn’t get through it at first, so I needed a second try and loved the entire trilogy ever since. Babel happened to not be for me at all and I had a feeling that would apply to Yellowface as well. It’s satire and I’m not it’s biggest fan. Did it exceed my quite sceptical expectations?

About the book

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Published by William Morrow on May 25, 2023
Pages: 329
ISBN: 9780008532789
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, General fiction

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.

My thoughts

When I saw this book everywhere on every single reviewing platform possible, I saw that it got mixed reviews. I’ve had it on my TBR for a long time before I decided it would probably not be for me and removed it. The release of the Dutch translation of this book – which I’ve read – triggered me to put it back on my TBR and I actually picked it up straight away. I’m glad I did, because I eventually did enjoy it in the end, even though it’s satire.

This story follows June Hayward, an author who’s career bombed dramatically. She published her debut novel in the same year as former yale classmate and friend Athena Liu and where Athena got to celebrate success after success, June barely got any sales which resulted in a writer’s block. She has lots of self doubt which comes creeping in and this is written well. Also, I got the feeling she dislikes Athena and her succesful carreer. She appears to be jealous and to want this for herself. On the other hand, Athena is not likeable either, because she comes of as self-centered and maybe even selfish. She is friendly to June, calls her her best friend in public, but later on we find out some shocking revelations about her. I think this is Kuang’s purpose, to make both June and Athena quite insufferable because it really works well for the story.

This is probably one of the lightest reads by this author so far. Both The Poppy War trilogy and Babel are very heavy on politics and that makes them both quite heavy and tense reads. Compared to these books, Yellowface is almost lighthearted, despite the serious topics like racism, yellowfacing (please correct me if this is poorly worded) history, cultural apropriation, theft and betrayal. Athena is from the Chinese diaspora and she was in the process of writing a new book about the Chinese workers during the first world war. June, a white woman, impulsively decides to take Athena’s unfinished manuscript with her after her sudden death and finishes it. She actually doesn’t know anything about Chinese history but publishes it as her own book. It’s an instant bestseller and everything seems to go smoothly, but of course this can’t stay like this forever. People are trying to uncover her and this results in lots of hate campaigns on social media. Actually it’s something that happens a lot nowadays and I have the feeling Kuang wants to address this topic because it’s not a nice world we live in these days.

I recognized a lot from the current book community in this book and it made me cringe a lot and actually makes me angry. Because the book community described in this book is not a nice place to be in, but it unfortunately is today’s reality. I find lots of bookish social media toxic as hell, especially book Twitter. Maybe it’s because I’m a little older than most people on there these days, because I don’t have that feeling in the blogging world where many of us are millenials or older. This is, in my opinion, typical a Gen Z thing and it also seems to occur since the Covid Pandemic. Society has become hardened since 2020 and it seems like a lot of common sense, nuance and empathy has been erased. Kuang addresses this in depth in June’s storyline. It’s absolutely not okay what June did to Athena, let me be clear about that, but sometimes I felt for her because of all the hate campaigns on Twitter and that’s what I recognized a lot from my own timeline. Therefore, this story is really interesting and intriguing, because it’s scary what the (bookish) world is turning into.

Yellowface is one of the lighter reads by R.F. Kuang, despite its serious issues. The author addresses a lot of current topics in depth and that’s one of her strongest qualities as an author. I’ve noticed the deep elaboration of heavy topics in her other books as well, although these are centered a lot around politics. The characters have been written well, they are insufferable and that works best for this type of story. I recognized a lot from the current book community and it’s actually pretty scary. Is satire not really your cup of tea? You still might try this book because it’s not what it seems like.