Synopsis
In Yellowface, R.F. Kuang tells the story of a young white woman and an Asian woman. Both writers, one is at the zenith of her career, a household name who is living the dream of every writer, and the other muddles around in her shadow.
June witnesses the death of her “friend” Athena and, in the process, steals her manuscript and later passes it off as her own. Things spiral out of control, and she is left to pick up the pieces of the lie she created.
Thoughts
First, I have to say that Yellowface was a good read. It started pretty engagingly, and both characters were equally flawed.
Fast forward to the middle, and it started to stall, and I felt like there was a lot of run around. June clearly wasn’t a very talented writer, but she possessed the generic entitlement of a white person. She was also heavily racist, and although she was trying to portray the loneliness and pressure that came with being a writer and the danger and onslaught that online bullying brought, it was tough to sympathize with her. She was that delusional and manipulative.
Athena wasn’t a saint either, but it’s kind of hard to drill a dead person.
Yellowface explored the struggles of being a published writer. The story exposed some of the tricks and techniques of the publishing world and how small and sometimes brutal the industry can be. It also highlighted the toxicity and plain stupidity of internet trolls and international publishers’ marginalization of diverse authors.
This was a good read, even if it didn’t blow my mind because it was sort of shoved down my throat by Bookstagram, but I quite liked it.
I haven’t read anything from the author before, so I can’t exactly compare, but I liked that Yellowface was fast-paced, albeit not gripping. Nevertheless, the characters weren’t at all likable, and I found it hard to connect with any of them, so I sort of viewed their woes from a detached perspective.
