Yellowface: The instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick from author R.F. Kuang
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Yellowface: The instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick from author R.F. Kuang
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This industry is built on silencing us, stomping us into the ground, and hurling money at white people to produce racist stereotypes of us.’
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang | Goodreads Yellowface by R.F. Kuang | Goodreads
Do you know what it's like to pitch a book and be told they already have an Asian writer? That they can't put out two minority stories in the same season? That Athena Liu already exists, so you're redundant?’ Sounds a bit fake, but I genuinely think R. F. Kuang was the right person to tell this story. No matter how many times she REINVENTS herself, the story always feels like it was made just and only for her. I can't wait to read the Poppy War trilogy. RFK is a fantastic writer and skillfully navigates the loneliness and pressure authors feel, making the drastic decisions juniper makes feel somewhat morally grey rather than outright wrong (as we know plagiarism is). and even though its done in a satirical way (which isnt my favourite), i enjoyed the exploration of topics like authors in reader spaces, own voices stories, and the different standards and treatment of white vs minority authors.I also think this book does open up important conversations. Yes, at times it makes its point bluntly/crudely and in an obvious way, though through this satire Kuang raises deeper questions too, such as whether anyone can remain truly ethical or generous in a brutally capitalist publishing industry. I liked how Kuang didn’t make Athena a perfect character because by doing so, she highlights how people of color can engage in problematic and oppressive practices too. I reread this for my book club and am so glad we did a buddy read and live show. This is a book worthy of discussion. It has both blatant and nuanced themes of racism and xenophobia that might go over some reader's heads or might seem too in-your-face for others. A group discussion can help reader's recognize the realism of R.F. Kuang's literary approach and see that even if you don't relate to the content, you still have to understand that it's other people's reality. I usually roll my eyes when people call a book “compulsively readable”, but in this case, I get it. June is asked to speak on panels, go to book clubs, and mentor student writers. When the aforementioned people learn she is not Chinese, heads begin to roll. June does not take this in stride. She thinks she is entitled to write Chinese stories, because she "did research." Do we remember the American Dirt debacle? I do. I won't touch that book with a ten foot pole. It's not a matter of who can tell what stories. (Well, it is, but no matter.) It's that a white woman received a seven figure advance telling the trauma stories of a marginalized group that will never see a cent of that. Where are the stories from actual undocumented immigrants? No one in any famous book club will ever read those. Have you ever read a book that is so timely and effective in its message that you do not feel the slightest bit qualified to review it? That your thoughts on such a masterpiece are not even worthy of being put to paper, literally or figuratively, because they are trite, vapid, and banal in comparison to the quality of the text being discussed? That’s how I feel trying to put the proverbial pen to paper with my thoughts on Yellowface.
Yellowface – HarperCollins Publishers UK
it's now 2023. in short, the ending is less a bang, and more of a whimper. rfk rules out a geoff-style ending for june, someone who disappears quietly from public memory after the scandal and becomes old news. she's too attached to athena's image. this is the right choice--june is too much of a villain-protagonist to get an unearned, 'soft' ending at the end of this. but then the 'crash-and-burn' ending needed to be a lot more to be satisfying for me. we get hallucinations, suicidal ideation, her isolating herself from her support network, all of this building and building and building--and then it goes... I found this issue of plagiarism particularly ironic because Yellowface didn't strike me as very original, essentially a mashup of The Plot by Jean Hanoff Korelitz and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum. Furthermore, RF Kuang had a scene in The Poppy War (published 2018) where the main character was training by carrying a pig up a mountain. Oops. This is very ranty. Anyway, some of the reviewers feel bad for June, but I don't. I think she gets exactly what is coming to her. which was a big thing that irked me with tpw. people would make criticisms of rfk's narrative choices and plot points and the response would be ‘well, rin is an unreliable narrator!’ yes, but there is such thing as framing and context which are important things to consider when trying to figure out what an author actually is saying, intentionally or not. but anyways.) 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.I really enjoyed being inside June’s head, as morally ambiguous as it was. This worked particularly well on audio as the narrator nailed June. This is clever, smartly written satire, and the author was able to drive her point home in a non-preachy way with snark and humor. The plot, the flawed characters, and the writing - all superb! Read only if you enjoy satire and snark. This book truly blew my mind. I was unable to put it down, yet also needed to take breaks due to the chaotic and anxiety-inducing experience of living within Juniper's mind. The character evokes strong emotions, including frustration towards her misogyny, blind ambition, and obnoxious justifications for her actions.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang - Goodreads Editions of Yellowface by R.F. Kuang - Goodreads
R. F. Kuang doesn't speak with or to you when she writes, she HAUNTS you. It takes a genius to achieve that. The ensuing story is told in such an unreliable, insidious way that it creeps under your skin. What’s so scary is that it’s 100% believable. You can follow June’s descent into worse and worse offenses (though she started out pretty damn bad), while at every step the reader is trapped in her head as she justifies why she is the one in the right, the victim. this was like reading the diary entry of someone who has just had an extremely bad day at work. it was like that trope that seems for some reason very exclusive to the mid-2000s in which people have the worst day of their lives are doomed to relive it, or die and go to purgatory or something like that enjoyed a specific renaissance in spirit in this book.
Bona fide stars’: Victoria De Angelis and Damiano David of Måneskin on stage at Lollapalooza, 2022. Photograph: Scott Legato/Getty Images in line with the theme of the book, i’m going to completely steal another reviewer’s words that i can’t stop thinking about. 'the problem with kuang is that, despite a reputation for in-depth research, she refuses to interrogate beyond her scope.' go read it. and i’d like to add to that: a lot of her most avid readers don’t have the appetite for anything beyond that, either. and take it incredibly personally when at the end of the meal, you’re still hungry.
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