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A review by anl2633
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
5.0
I'm reeling from this book. Wow, that was good. Kicked me right out of a reading slump too. I'm honestly amazed that R.F. Kuang was able to tell a story like this. It's a scathing critique on the publishing industry and online bookish communities like Book Twitter and BookTok. And it's done so well.
First, the cover is a delightful little in-your-face representation of June Hayward. It's a block of yellow, no defining "Asian" features other than a cartoonish set of slanted eyes. All the traits that an absolutely ignorant white person would try to pass off as "Asian" just as she changes her pen name to Juniper Song to pass off as "Asian enough" for people to pick up her book. The real tea is that when you remove the dust jacket, the actual hardcover underneath is all white. I guffawed.
It is extremely uncomfortable sitting in June's head throughout the book. June has all the audacity and delusion of a well-intentioned white person with a lot of internalized racism. Maybe not even well-intentioned. In most of the book, she tries convincing us readers and herself that she stole Athena's manuscript and published it as her own because she wanted to give Athena's voice back to the world. When in actuality, June did it to leech off Athena's success and gain a taste of her success and fame. It's crazy that in the first part of the book, she tells herself that it's fine to publish the book because it's mostly hers anyway, she transcribed it into a Word document, edited it, and padded it up in places. And then by the end of the book, she's fully convinced herself that she actually wrote most of it and Athena was just an inspiration to her.
I was shook at a lot of the internalized racism that June shows in this book:
1. The way she edits Athena's manuscript to take out some places she feels are exhaustive when vilifying the French and British soldiers. And then she adds a British girl that walks through the camps for the Chinese laborers to fawn over and gawk at.
2. Every time she talks to someone of Asian descent, whether it be the guy working at a restaurant in Chinatown or a group of readers at an author event, she just assumes that they probably don't speak English that well. And then she's shocked that they do speak great English or she deliberately slows her speech down and talks extra loud to them like she's coaching a toddler.
3. Every time she brings up the idea that diversity is all the rage in the publishing world, and that if you're a white author, you have to work so much harder to get picked up by a publisher because your story doesn't matter enough now. There have to be boxes checked (aka racism, aka queer).
4. When June eviscerates a 17-year-old's short story out of revenge for that girl talking about the article circulating online about how June probably stole Athena's work and passed it off as her own.
5. The way she judges people who rightfully call her out. Like the girl at the Cambridge event, Adele Sparks-Sato, Candice, the girl she mentors, Diana Qiu, etc. She either insults their appearance or she goes on a whole racist rant about how these women are being racist right back to her, doing it for clout, delusional, and villainous.
6. The way she'll look at a POC and basically think that they're only at the panel or the barcon for diversity points.
June tries to pass herself off as the victim at every turn. She is absolutely despicable, and it's not subtle at all. Your stomach turns on every page. But R.F. Kuang also gives this story a lot of nuance, and that's something a naive author wouldn't be able to do. There are moments when you do feel bad for June.
There's a lot of good mental health rep in this book. June has some pretty serious trauma, and I think R.F. Kuang handles it so well. We get little glimpses of it here and there in the beginning, and then by the middle it spirals into anxiety attacks and delusions, and by the end June's mental and emotional health has rocketed toward mania, hallucinations, paranoia, and a lost grip on reality. I think it's really well done, and honestly, there are moments where I relate to her. That anxiety you feel after you've done something wrong and you're waiting for the hammer to fall. There were so many moments in this book that I started to feel that uncomfortable twist in my stomach too, secondhand anxiety at all the wrong things June has done and at the anticipation of the backlash.
A lot of R.F. Kuang's anxieties about community reception peek through in this book as well. I haven't seen any talk really about the middle of this book from reviewers or people on YouTube and TikTok. I don't know if it just went over their heads, they don't want to talk about it, or maybe I'm just reading into it the wrong way. But I do think there's a critique in here on the sort of drama that erupts and sparks unruly outrage across social media.
Especially if you've ever spent time on Book Twitter, BookTube, or BookTok, you've seen it. There are entire accounts dedicated to "spilling the tea" or going over bookish drama. Most people who use these platforms are cool. But there are a lot of rollercoaster moments of pure and unadulterated outrage where one account calls something out, and then there's just a dogpile of outrage in the kind of mob mentality that's disgusting and terrifying. I'm all for calling out problematic behavior and expecting change, but when it gets to the point that it eventually does in this book (i.e. death threats, i.e. threatening to find June's location and beat her, i.e. harassment, i.e. plaguing her with edited photos of her dead friend/acquaintance Athena as a stretch-faced demon). June is honestly correct to say that a lot of drama on Twitter is utter bullshit. People find something to go crazy about, but then a week later the outrage has boiled over and instead turned on something new. Sometimes there is good change. Sometimes there are cases when such a mobbed force is required against a creator who really is harmful, but other times it really is just a punishment to call out problematic behavior and then other accounts make all sorts of abusive comments that drive a creator into deactivating their social media for a time. I do agree that some social media accounts these days just want to see drama. They want to see creators be eviscerated. They seek out moments when people are problematic because this kind of content gains followers and attention. Sometimes it is about educating the community on someone that shouldn't be getting praise for problematic behavior. Other times it is just about watching the mob descend on someone.
I found myself terrified a bit of the whole process of publication. After your book has gone out, the world can do and say whatever they want to about your creative expression. If they want to tear it apart, there's no stopping it. And often, rather than calling out problematic moments and giving creators the space and time to educate themselves and then start the process for change, people would rather have those creators spiral to depression under threat and bullying. Again, it becomes a punishment rather than a way to educate. And that is not only terrifying, but it's also kind of turned away the part of me that has always wanted to write and publish books. Maybe I'll just stick to fanfiction.
I do think this book starts this question but also doesn't necessarily answer it for you: Can white authors write stories about marginalized communities? And the answer in this book at least is clear in the case of June. Because June doesn't publish the book out of the desire to make the world aware of a forgotten part of history (the involvement of Chinese laborers in World War I). She does it for the fame that the book promises. And while you could argue that she does educate herself later, she does read all of the sources in Athena's bibliography, she does research about Chinese naming conventions, and she also does try her hand at learning Chinese. None of it, however, was out of a true desire to learn. It was all done so she could save face during Q&As and interviews that would call out her ignorance. And she is highly defensive about hiring a sensitivity reader to scope out the moments in her book that show internalized racism. I think R.F. Kuang builds upon this question deeper, though, and exposes a conversation that I still think we probably aren't ready to have. And that is: At what point are you marginalized enough to write stories about your ancestry, and at what point are you too far removed from that cultural history? Because while Athena wrote visceral accounts of her family, she never actually had to deal with the same oppression. She couldn't speak Chinese. And she didn't only write stories about Chinese ancestry. She won awards for publishing stories from Korean veterans without giving credit to them. Was she the right person to tell that narrative? Was she the right person to write about the outrage of racism and oppression experienced by her parents and their parents when Athena only ever lived in America?
Again, it's an entirely nuanced conversation to have. How do we judge who has the right to tell the stories they want to tell? And again, the questions aren't answered bold-faced on the page. I'm still not sure of the answers, but one thing is marked in both questions. And that is that the intention behind the writing matters.
Last, this book is also a scathing critique of the publishing world. I think this book would actually hit harder for people who work in publishing. There were so many eye-opening moments that have also turned away the part of me that wants to write and publish books:
1. The showboating and jealousy over other authors' advances and success. Instead of being genuinely happy for others, a lot of these authors just gossip behind each others' backs.
2. The idea that publishers turn away most of the work from POC because they've already published a work from a marginalized voice for the year and it would be too formulaic to do another. Also, the idea that they only bring on one POC to be their token diverse representation and turn away other authors because they already have the one token POC.
3. The way some books are marked immediately as bestsellers and get all the resources toward marketing and advertisement, reviews, interviews, tours, signings, awards, etc. I mean, it makes sense from a profit standpoint, but it's really just shitty.
4. That POC are pigeon-holed into one thing. I'm talking about the fact that Athena was always expected by her publisher to write historical Asian trauma porn. She couldn't branch off and do something else. It had to be "asian" and it had to be tragic.
All in all, I loved this satire so much. I definitely think a lot of this love stems from the fact that these are recognizable conversations from online bookish spaces. A lot of this information wasn't necessarily new to me, but it's packaged in a way that makes all this conversation more visceral and horrifying. I think people who are in the know about publishing will appreciate this book more than someone who has probably just entered this space. I'm definitely planning to re-read this one to see what new things will pop out at me. And I want to pick up R.F. Kuang's other work. Technically this is and isn't my first Kuang book. I've read a good chunk of both The Poppy War and Babel and honestly loved what I read of both, I just wasn't at a place in my life where I could finish either. But I definitely want to read all of R.F. Kuang's work all the way through because this novel was just brilliant! And I'm also so excited for what she has in store for us in the future.
First, the cover is a delightful little in-your-face representation of June Hayward. It's a block of yellow, no defining "Asian" features other than a cartoonish set of slanted eyes. All the traits that an absolutely ignorant white person would try to pass off as "Asian" just as she changes her pen name to Juniper Song to pass off as "Asian enough" for people to pick up her book. The real tea is that when you remove the dust jacket, the actual hardcover underneath is all white. I guffawed.
It is extremely uncomfortable sitting in June's head throughout the book. June has all the audacity and delusion of a well-intentioned white person with a lot of internalized racism. Maybe not even well-intentioned. In most of the book, she tries convincing us readers and herself that she stole Athena's manuscript and published it as her own because she wanted to give Athena's voice back to the world. When in actuality, June did it to leech off Athena's success and gain a taste of her success and fame. It's crazy that in the first part of the book, she tells herself that it's fine to publish the book because it's mostly hers anyway, she transcribed it into a Word document, edited it, and padded it up in places. And then by the end of the book, she's fully convinced herself that she actually wrote most of it and Athena was just an inspiration to her.
I was shook at a lot of the internalized racism that June shows in this book:
1. The way she edits Athena's manuscript to take out some places she feels are exhaustive when vilifying the French and British soldiers. And then she adds a British girl that walks through the camps for the Chinese laborers to fawn over and gawk at.
2. Every time she talks to someone of Asian descent, whether it be the guy working at a restaurant in Chinatown or a group of readers at an author event, she just assumes that they probably don't speak English that well. And then she's shocked that they do speak great English or she deliberately slows her speech down and talks extra loud to them like she's coaching a toddler.
3. Every time she brings up the idea that diversity is all the rage in the publishing world, and that if you're a white author, you have to work so much harder to get picked up by a publisher because your story doesn't matter enough now. There have to be boxes checked (aka racism, aka queer).
4. When June eviscerates a 17-year-old's short story out of revenge for that girl talking about the article circulating online about how June probably stole Athena's work and passed it off as her own.
5. The way she judges people who rightfully call her out. Like the girl at the Cambridge event, Adele Sparks-Sato, Candice, the girl she mentors, Diana Qiu, etc. She either insults their appearance or she goes on a whole racist rant about how these women are being racist right back to her, doing it for clout, delusional, and villainous.
6. The way she'll look at a POC and basically think that they're only at the panel or the barcon for diversity points.
June tries to pass herself off as the victim at every turn. She is absolutely despicable, and it's not subtle at all. Your stomach turns on every page. But R.F. Kuang also gives this story a lot of nuance, and that's something a naive author wouldn't be able to do. There are moments when you do feel bad for June.
There's a lot of good mental health rep in this book. June has some pretty serious trauma, and I think R.F. Kuang handles it so well. We get little glimpses of it here and there in the beginning, and then by the middle it spirals into anxiety attacks and delusions, and by the end June's mental and emotional health has rocketed toward mania, hallucinations, paranoia, and a lost grip on reality. I think it's really well done, and honestly, there are moments where I relate to her. That anxiety you feel after you've done something wrong and you're waiting for the hammer to fall. There were so many moments in this book that I started to feel that uncomfortable twist in my stomach too, secondhand anxiety at all the wrong things June has done and at the anticipation of the backlash.
A lot of R.F. Kuang's anxieties about community reception peek through in this book as well. I haven't seen any talk really about the middle of this book from reviewers or people on YouTube and TikTok. I don't know if it just went over their heads, they don't want to talk about it, or maybe I'm just reading into it the wrong way. But I do think there's a critique in here on the sort of drama that erupts and sparks unruly outrage across social media.
Especially if you've ever spent time on Book Twitter, BookTube, or BookTok, you've seen it. There are entire accounts dedicated to "spilling the tea" or going over bookish drama. Most people who use these platforms are cool. But there are a lot of rollercoaster moments of pure and unadulterated outrage where one account calls something out, and then there's just a dogpile of outrage in the kind of mob mentality that's disgusting and terrifying. I'm all for calling out problematic behavior and expecting change, but when it gets to the point that it eventually does in this book (i.e. death threats, i.e. threatening to find June's location and beat her, i.e. harassment, i.e. plaguing her with edited photos of her dead friend/acquaintance Athena as a stretch-faced demon). June is honestly correct to say that a lot of drama on Twitter is utter bullshit. People find something to go crazy about, but then a week later the outrage has boiled over and instead turned on something new. Sometimes there is good change. Sometimes there are cases when such a mobbed force is required against a creator who really is harmful, but other times it really is just a punishment to call out problematic behavior and then other accounts make all sorts of abusive comments that drive a creator into deactivating their social media for a time. I do agree that some social media accounts these days just want to see drama. They want to see creators be eviscerated. They seek out moments when people are problematic because this kind of content gains followers and attention. Sometimes it is about educating the community on someone that shouldn't be getting praise for problematic behavior. Other times it is just about watching the mob descend on someone.
I found myself terrified a bit of the whole process of publication. After your book has gone out, the world can do and say whatever they want to about your creative expression. If they want to tear it apart, there's no stopping it. And often, rather than calling out problematic moments and giving creators the space and time to educate themselves and then start the process for change, people would rather have those creators spiral to depression under threat and bullying. Again, it becomes a punishment rather than a way to educate. And that is not only terrifying, but it's also kind of turned away the part of me that has always wanted to write and publish books. Maybe I'll just stick to fanfiction.
I do think this book starts this question but also doesn't necessarily answer it for you: Can white authors write stories about marginalized communities? And the answer in this book at least is clear in the case of June. Because June doesn't publish the book out of the desire to make the world aware of a forgotten part of history (the involvement of Chinese laborers in World War I). She does it for the fame that the book promises. And while you could argue that she does educate herself later, she does read all of the sources in Athena's bibliography, she does research about Chinese naming conventions, and she also does try her hand at learning Chinese. None of it, however, was out of a true desire to learn. It was all done so she could save face during Q&As and interviews that would call out her ignorance. And she is highly defensive about hiring a sensitivity reader to scope out the moments in her book that show internalized racism. I think R.F. Kuang builds upon this question deeper, though, and exposes a conversation that I still think we probably aren't ready to have. And that is: At what point are you marginalized enough to write stories about your ancestry, and at what point are you too far removed from that cultural history? Because while Athena wrote visceral accounts of her family, she never actually had to deal with the same oppression. She couldn't speak Chinese. And she didn't only write stories about Chinese ancestry. She won awards for publishing stories from Korean veterans without giving credit to them. Was she the right person to tell that narrative? Was she the right person to write about the outrage of racism and oppression experienced by her parents and their parents when Athena only ever lived in America?
Again, it's an entirely nuanced conversation to have. How do we judge who has the right to tell the stories they want to tell? And again, the questions aren't answered bold-faced on the page. I'm still not sure of the answers, but one thing is marked in both questions. And that is that the intention behind the writing matters.
Last, this book is also a scathing critique of the publishing world. I think this book would actually hit harder for people who work in publishing. There were so many eye-opening moments that have also turned away the part of me that wants to write and publish books:
1. The showboating and jealousy over other authors' advances and success. Instead of being genuinely happy for others, a lot of these authors just gossip behind each others' backs.
2. The idea that publishers turn away most of the work from POC because they've already published a work from a marginalized voice for the year and it would be too formulaic to do another. Also, the idea that they only bring on one POC to be their token diverse representation and turn away other authors because they already have the one token POC.
3. The way some books are marked immediately as bestsellers and get all the resources toward marketing and advertisement, reviews, interviews, tours, signings, awards, etc. I mean, it makes sense from a profit standpoint, but it's really just shitty.
4. That POC are pigeon-holed into one thing. I'm talking about the fact that Athena was always expected by her publisher to write historical Asian trauma porn. She couldn't branch off and do something else. It had to be "asian" and it had to be tragic.
All in all, I loved this satire so much. I definitely think a lot of this love stems from the fact that these are recognizable conversations from online bookish spaces. A lot of this information wasn't necessarily new to me, but it's packaged in a way that makes all this conversation more visceral and horrifying. I think people who are in the know about publishing will appreciate this book more than someone who has probably just entered this space. I'm definitely planning to re-read this one to see what new things will pop out at me. And I want to pick up R.F. Kuang's other work. Technically this is and isn't my first Kuang book. I've read a good chunk of both The Poppy War and Babel and honestly loved what I read of both, I just wasn't at a place in my life where I could finish either. But I definitely want to read all of R.F. Kuang's work all the way through because this novel was just brilliant! And I'm also so excited for what she has in store for us in the future.