it’s honestly a bit hilariously grim and grimly hilarious to anyone who’s ever needed to close booktwt and touch grass, but also interesting to anyone moderately familiar with books, writing or publishing. Yellowface is meant to be drama and dark satire. i know this runs the risk of me describing something one way, but then you going and reading it and interpreting a different way, but until it actually comes out and i can drop the ‘extended’ (and hopefully more sophisticated) review, this will have to do. I’ve decided not to include any quotes from the book and talk in general terms with minor details to avoid spoilers (not anything that’s not in the premise, anyway), but i’m still talking about how i felt about different parts of the book, including the middle and end, even though I won’t be talking about what happens in them. i feel like me and the book are engaging in some inside joke.

two, the book is very meta about twitter and book reviews-ratings on goodreads even make up several important plot points. for one, Yellowface isn’t out until next year. Kuang's novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable. 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. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. 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.īut June can't get away from Athena's shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June's (stolen) success down around her.

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.

Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

But Athena's a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn't even get a paperback release. Kuang.Īuthors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. 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.

Rf kuang yellowface