Yellowface
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
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 laborers 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. And Helen Laser’s narration is right on point, putting us right into Juniper’s mind and allowing us to experience her bizarre rationalizations and comical self-righteous indignation. Yellowface is the kind of book that everyone will be talking about.
Customer Reviews
Enjoyed
Good story that really made me think. It was just a little too long for me.
Great book
Very interesting how the author brought humor to a sensitive topic that is so present today in social media. I had fun throughout the whole book, though a little bit disappointed with the End.
Had to force myself to finish the book
Too much explanation of subjects that didn’t matter to the story, some part of story lines was good at the beginning, the middle was just a bunch of fill in, the end dragged on.