Yellowface
FinishedSummary
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.
The best way to hide a lie is in plain sight.
My Review
Insufferable is the word I would use to describe the main character of this story, June Hayward.
Rebecca F. Kuang, whose tragic series The Poppy War I had heard so much about, was an amazing discovery through her novel Yellowface. Unlike many books where the main character is portrayed as either a kind-hearted hero or a sarcastic antihero you can’t help but grow attached to, Rebecca F. Kuang chose to make hers as insufferable as possible.
Between racism, jealousy, betrayal, bad faith, pathetic behavior, and a complete lack of self-awareness, you might expect June to eventually learn from her mistakes—but not at all. That’s actually what makes this book so fascinating: every time you think she’s hit rock bottom, she somehow manages to dig herself even deeper. What’s even more surprising is the confidence with which she keeps making one terrible decision after another, even though most of her problems are entirely self-inflicted.
Overall, this was a huge favorite of mine. I’ll definitely be reading more of Rebecca F. Kuang’s books.