Yellowface
A Novel
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3.7 • 194 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
“Hard to put down, harder to forget.” — Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… 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, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel.
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who 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 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 grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We were sucked into this smart and shocking comedy of errors about race and the publishing industry. Struggling author Juniper Hayward can’t help feeling a tinge of envy about her friend Athena Liu’s literary celebrity and ever-growing collection of bestsellers. Then one drunken night, Athena shows Juniper her latest work in progress, a brilliant lost history of Chinese labourers that Juniper desperately wishes she’d written herself. And after a tragic mishap leads to Athena’s death, Juniper makes some seriously bad decisions. Author R. F. Kuang’s satiric gem takes on the hot topic of cultural appropriation in a unique and highly entertaining way. She puts us right into Juniper’s mind, allowing us to experience her bizarre rationalizations and comical self-righteous indignation. Yellowface is the kind of book that everyone will be talking about.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A struggling novelist passes off a manuscript left by her dead college friend in this excellent satire from Kuang (Babel, or the Necessity of Violence). Athena Liu, who is Chinese American, dies accidentally by choking at her Washington, D.C., apartment while celebrating a movie deal for one of her novels. At the celebration is June Hayward, who met Athena when they were at Yale together, and whose own career has stalled after her publisher folded. Since then, while watching Athena's meteoric rise, she came to find her old friend "unbearable." In the commotion after Athena's death, June, who is white, pilfers a manuscript from her desk. Titled The Last Front, it's a historical novel about the role of Chinese laborers in WWI. After June gets a six-figure deal for it, she excises slurs used against Chinese laborers and adds a love story between a white woman and a Chinese soldier. Against objections from Candice Lee, a Korean American editorial assistant, the book goes to market, where it climbs up the bestseller list and attracts a vociferous backlash from the AAPI community, plus a scathing review from a prominent critic, who calls it a "white redemption" narrative. June grows increasingly anxious as she's accused online by @AthenaLiusGhost of stealing Athena's work, then starts thinking she's seeing Athena at readings and around town. Kuang provides a sharp analysis of publishing's blind spots and guides the plot toward a thrilling face-off between June and Athena's "ghost." This is not to be missed.
Customer Reviews
R.Kuang Yellowface
I liked the tension. The literary world’s horrible infighting was frightening. It seemed plausible and hyperbolic.
A fiction book about writing books
I loved this book. It makes for a great book club pick! I was totally enthralled from the get-go reading about the main character’s trials of getting published and the all too real phenomenon of plagiarism in the digital age. Can’t wait to read future books from this author!
Wow
I’ve never read a book like this before. Amazingly written from a prospective that I personally haven’t read from. It’s refreshing to hear the story, for once, from the bad side. Absolutely demolished this book.