Hardcover, 350 pages
English language
Published Sept. 24, 2023 by HarperCollins Publishers Limited.
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'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.
This book is about a writer who borrows notes on a book idea from her dead friend, writes a bestseller based on that, and then spirals into madness when social media figures out that the work is 'plagiarised'.
I'm not sure she did anything wrong.
It's another book about the evils of social media, more than anything. It's well written, and I sped through it.
This was a wild ride from start to finish. Every character is fabulously written to be spectacularly awful. Any last lingering daydreams I had of being a professional author went out the window with this one.
This was a wild ride from start to finish. Every character is fabulously written to be spectacularly awful. Any last lingering daydreams I had of being a professional author went out the window with this one.
Twitter scandals are like snowballs; the more people that see it, the more who feel it necessary to weigh in with their own opinions and agendas, creating an explosion of discourse branching off the instigating conversation.
This sure was a wild ride! I can’t quite remember the last time I read a story with a protagonist so thoroughly unlikable and, for the most part, had fun following it. Although at some point, the way Juniper reacted to yet another instance of her tower of lies crumbling underneath her did have me skimming more than reading for about a chapter, because I was absolutely dying from… secondhand embarrassment, I guess? Like, how can someone be so unapologetic and righteous in their mundane villainy, OMG. So yeah, June came very close to being too insufferable, and yet I was kept engaged by the promise of her getting her due in the end …
Twitter scandals are like snowballs; the more people that see it, the more who feel it necessary to weigh in with their own opinions and agendas, creating an explosion of discourse branching off the instigating conversation.
Artistic writing. Even though you hate the protagonist from the first chapter, the author leaves it up to you to decide how much and how far you disagree with her actions. Engaging read in surprising ways
Writing an actual review for this one because I found my thinking changing on it as time has passed since completion.
There's a lot going on in this book. It tackles themes of cultural appropriation, tokenism, and privilege in world of book publishing, while at the same time critiquing notions that people can only write a story from their lived perspective. If you think those lines are complex to navigate and somewhat fluid, you'd be right, and Kuang herself seems to have trouble drawing it over the course of the book.
It's a very tense read and moves quickly. Written from June's first-person perspective– certainly an unreliable narrator –it is often an uncomfortable read, which is as it should be when racism is a topic. But June's detractors don't come off particularly great either. The book seems less researched than her other works, but makes up for it in the …
Writing an actual review for this one because I found my thinking changing on it as time has passed since completion.
There's a lot going on in this book. It tackles themes of cultural appropriation, tokenism, and privilege in world of book publishing, while at the same time critiquing notions that people can only write a story from their lived perspective. If you think those lines are complex to navigate and somewhat fluid, you'd be right, and Kuang herself seems to have trouble drawing it over the course of the book.
It's a very tense read and moves quickly. Written from June's first-person perspective– certainly an unreliable narrator –it is often an uncomfortable read, which is as it should be when racism is a topic. But June's detractors don't come off particularly great either. The book seems less researched than her other works, but makes up for it in the intensity of the controversy June must weather as her lies start to unravel.
It's a good book, attempting to tackle real issues, but not Kuang's best. When I finished it, I would have put it at a five stars, but as I've mulling it around in my brain, I think it's probably more like four stars. There's something that feels off, like an unexpected flat note in what is otherwise a tense piece of music. Maybe it's the nature of the topic, but it feels like Kuang wasn't sure which of her points she wanted to drive home, and so attempted to make all of them unevenly. Ultimately, few of the characters seem to learn anything from their experiences.
And as mentioned above, these topics are difficult, so maybe Kuang's goal is simply to illustrate the mess as opposed to providing any answers. But given some of the early build-up, that comes off as disappointing.
Nothing if not captivating
This book is so well written, and I hate it deeply. Kuang is brilliant in her presentation of the publishing industry and all of the perverse incentives it creates; the characters are compelling and believable, the problems are captivating, and it kept me reading chapter after chapter, feeling by turns vaguely disgusted and exasperated with every character in the book. What's worse for me is that the issues addressed feel like they need solutions, and none ever appear, aside perhaps from the ultimate conclusion in which no problems are resolved, but every terrible thing keeps the system propped up and running. As an allegory for human existence it's both accurate and depressing. As a direct representation (and maybe also satire) of the publishing industry it seems accurate and is definitely depressing.
Started this and was so annoyed by the main character that I did not finish. I really enjoyed Babel, I may try this again at some point. Leaving it in the tbr pile for now.
This tale from a deeply unreliable, envy-driven narrator is more of a sharp satire of liberal racism than its publishing industry setting. It's at its least compelling when discussing Twitter drama, but there's ample snark just underneath each turn of phrase, and more than enough ratcheting tension to have kept me turning the pages.
Everyone raving about this and I am very meh on it. Struggled to finish.
I did not think it was possible for one tale to have so many twists and turns that it became a spiral, one that was out of control. Sadly, that is what this story does. The writing is wonderful, the literature aspects are strong. But, I am completely dizzy. The "me too", "culture wars" aspects of this tale are simply too much for me.
My main problem with the book was that I don't think I've ever read a first-person book in which I've found the main character so unlikable, which made it a little hard to read. But it was a compelling story that was hard to put down.
I enjoyed this book! Wonderfully written and I couldn’t put it down.
This feels like every publishing twitter drama distilled into a single novel.
