Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links were used. Read my full disclosure policy here.
Billed as a literary thriller about a stolen manuscript and a satirical look at the darker side of the publishing world, the premise of Yellowface drew me in immediately. I haven’t read R.F. Kuang's previous books for no reason other than their blurbs never appealed to me.
Yellowface is an intense and compelling read, but for me, it tried to do too much and fell flat as a result. The tl;dr is that I loved the premise, but not the execution!
June Hayward's debut novel wasn’t exactly a hit. Athena Liu is a bestselling author and literary darling. Their relationship is complicated. They are not quite friends but not quite colleagues either. When Athena dies (it's in the blurb, so not a spoiler), June steals her unpublished manuscript and sets out to have the career she feels she should have from the beginning. Say goodbye to June Hayward and hello to Juniper Song.
I don't subscribe to the notion that everything a fictional character does or says is rooted in the author's beliefs. But here, I found it difficult to separate what I know about Kuang's opinions on people writing whatever they want instead of solely writing what they know regarding race, gender, sexuality, etc. Yellowface didn't feel like an exploration of racism in publishing, cancel culture, and white privilege so much as being whacked over the head repeatedly by 'the point'.
There is nothing wrong with an author setting out to make a specific point; I love a good issue-focused novel. But with Yellowface straddling two genres – literary fiction and satire – the balance between them got lost, which left me wishing the story was wrapped up much sooner than it was.
In the weeks since reading it, I have returned to one question; who was Yellowface written for? The novel is an international bestseller, so it has an audience. However, I'd love to know what people who aren't terminally online or knowledgeable about the publishing industry discourse of the last few years think about social media's role in the story. Some of Kuang's best writing is during the online cancellation campaign. But does that seem as equally far-fetched to people not in the know as the rest of the novel? Even though the accuracy of Kuang's portrayal of social media cancel culture is the novel’s strength.
It is also fascinating to watch the publicity campaigns around Yellowface and how they echo some of what Kuang discusses in the novel about how publishers decide to put their money into massive PR campaigns for X novel versus barely promoting Y novel.
Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang is published by The Borough Press in Europe and William Morrow in the US, both imprints of HarperCollins. Yellowface is available in hardback, trade paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.
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