My sister bought me Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang for Christmas, and it was unashamedly a tactical sibling purchase, because she wants to read it after me!
I’ve seen all of the hype for Yellowface. (If you love books, then it’s probably been hard to miss it!) My copy is the gold cover, released when it hit a million copies sold. I usually navigate away from the “big books”. I’m not sure why, but as soon as a book gets a lot of hype, I don’t want to read it. I’ve always been like this! It’s the reason I’ve never read Gone Girl. That said, if I’m gifted a copy, I’ll read them. This was how I read The Girl on the Train, and now Yellowface.
I’ve not read The Poppy War series, nor Babel, which are both published under R.F. Kuang. I’m not a big fantasy reader at all, so that ruled out The Poppy War. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t think my brain is highbrow enough to tackle the historical fantasy and deeply intellectual, Babel. Yellowface is by far the most commercial fiction option for me! I notice that it is published under Rebecca F. Kuang and I wonder if that is also intentional to publish with a slight change in name for a different genre and audience type.
Yellowface
June Hayward is a white woman, jealous of the life that her frenemy, Asian author Athena Liu has. Athena is a hugely successful author, while June’s career is stalling and struggling. When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her latest manuscript and decides to publish it as her own work. She convinces herself that she has made enough edits and performed enough research to deservingly call the book her own. She continues to double-down on this lie throughout. There then follow more instances of June, now writing as Juniper Song in order to pass as ambiguously Asian, of stealing ideas and content from Athena, or using her as a muse in order to fuel her career.
I really like the premise of stealing a manuscript and passing it off as your own, only to be found out. I also like that this concept is explored through the lens of race, discrimination, greed, and popularity. However, I did feel that the book slightly over laboured the point. It’s not that it’s not important, it absolutely is. However, because it becomes a continuous cycle of deceit, cover up, exposure, lie your way through it and repeat, I was beginning to lose reading momentum and interest. I completely applaud the message, but because I felt June was never going to learn her lesson, ultimately I was ready for the end.
The characters are messy and flawed. Despite her obviously tragic death, we are fed narratives of Athena that make her less wholesome. She is a superficial friend who doesn’t go beyond the surface level, and who has used details of June’s own life to kickstart her early writing career. This betrayal feeds June’s validation for her own actions years later. I found June to be so egotistical and narcissistic, that the driver for my reading was all about her getting her comeuppance.
Ultimately, with none of the characters being hugely likeable, by the end I was ready to not have anything further to do with them! A lot of the book is taking aim at also calling out social media trolls and the racial bias within the publishing industry. Having worked in a publishing adjacent role for a number of years, it rang very true. Yet more reasons I’m so glad I’m no longer on Twitter/X. I’ve seen how the pile-ons play out.
Overall, I’m happy to have read Yellowface. It highlights really important issues and problems of racial inequality within the publishing industry. I’m pleased my sister bought it for me, and it will be nice to chat about it with her too. She can now officially get her hands on my copy!
