Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Yellowface

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Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

108 reviews

jackierobinson's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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lawbooks600's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Representation: Asian characters
Score: Six points out of ten.
I own this book.

How come Yellowface won Best Fiction and not Maame? (which was better.) Let's cut to the chase: I wanted this novel for so long, after seeing it in my recommendations, but so many library patrons placed a hold on it that I had to buy it. Afterwards, I read and enjoyed it, but it could've been so much better than what I read. For starters, what is this story supposed to be? A satire? A thriller? A critique and discourse of the publishing industry? A discourse on social media? A piece of literary fiction or metafiction?

It starts with the first two characters I see, Athena Liu and June Hayward who are both authors. As a work of metafiction, it works well because an author wrote about some authors' experiences of publishing their works. As for everything else, it didn't work as well as I hoped, for reasons I'll explain later. After Athena passes, June steals her manuscript (a story about the Chinese in WWI called The Last Front) and publishes it as hers after significant edits, and she believes if she didn't do that, the work would never see the light of day. Here's where the flaws surface: the characters are only the beginning of the issues I saw in Yellowface, because they were so flat. The only thought I can think of is that June is racist since she wrote a work of fiction about Asians even though she's white, and Athena, the Asian, did nothing wrong (but that is untrue, as seen later.) I didn't give Yellowface three stars only because of the unlikable characters (somehow I could bear with them), but I gave it that rating because of other problems.

June rides high on her success, but eventually, questions arise, and soon enough, she gets caught and cancelled online. Yellowface relies heavily on social media, creating multiple layers of self-awareness since it included professional reviews, BookTube, Bookstagram, BookTok, Goodreads (even The Choice Awards) and most prominently, literature discussions on Twitter, sorry I mean X. Did I mention Twitter changed to X? Yellowface is outdated already. June calls Athena's prose frustrating and inaccessible which perfectly describes the writing style that uses unfamiliar words like praxis and anti-miscegenation laws (anti-interracial marriage legislation.) The only commentary Yellowface provided me is that racism is unacceptable. I get it. Could you tell me more? Unfortunately, it has nothing else to say. I appreciated Yellowface for shedding light on cultural appropriation in fictional works, but it could've used more nuance by concentrating on minorities besides East Asian Americans like South Asians, Asian Australians, British Asians and Southeast Asians rather than focusing only on the first group.

The most imperative question here is who can tell a tale. Can a white person write about people outside their culture? RF Kuang thinks not because she used sledgehammer-like responses to answer the inquiry (which felt so preachy and heavy-handed, I heard thoughts from the author like, 'No, it's racist!') Also, why does Athena feel like an RF Kuang self-insert? Athena is so similar to the author, it feels uncanny. Yellowface doesn't work as a satire, because too many parts are realistic, save for some exaggerated sections. It doesn't work as a thriller, since it's slow-paced. Yellowface shines as a critique of the publishing industry when it exposes tokenism, appropriation and the difficulties authors of colour face when trying to publish. However, Yellowface missed out on the class aspect, and June infuriated me when she said publishing was a meritocracy (it clearly isn't.) Athena isn't successful because she's Asian, like June stated. Athena's only well off because she's rich, which the narrative forgot to mention. As for the discourse on social media, Yellowface could've done better as it was only looking at a terminally online person, and finally, it's a successful literary fictional composition, because no one knows what genre it belongs to.

As far as I know, I've covered everything concerning how RF Kuang could've improved her latest offering. Let me know if I left out anything else.

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bellebookcorner's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Ini pertama kalinya aku baca buku karya R.F Kuang dan ini tidak akan menjadi yang terakhir kalinya!

Alur cerita yang kompleks serta gaya penulisannya yang unik dan terkesan blak-blakan berhasil membuatku tertarik untuk terus membaca hingga akhir cerita.

Beberapa topik yang diangkat di dalam cerita ini juga ditulis dengan cukup baik seperti kejamnya media sosial dan dampak dari tekanan dari popularitas yang datang secara tiba-tiba kepada seorang penulis.

Sebagai pecinta buku, aku paling tertarik dengan topik seputar dunia penerbitan yang menimbulkan banyak pertanyaan, seperti adanya perbedaan perlakuan antar penulis serta kesulitan yang dialamai para penulis untuk bisa mempublikasikan karyanya karena masih adanya diskriminasi.

Aku ga terlalu suka dengan si karakter utama – Jun, karena sering membuatku kesal dan frustrasi dengan dirinya yang selalu berpura-pura menjadi korban dan membenarkan semua tindakannya.

Jun dan beberapa karakter lainnya di cerita ini tidaklah sempurna yang membuat cerita ini terkesan lebih ‘real’ karena tidak semua orang sepenuhnya baik ataupun jahat.

Hanya ada satu hal yang menurutku sedikit kurang yaitu endingnya. Jujur aja, aku ga terlalu puas di bagian akhirnya karena terasa nanggung dan juga berakhir terlalu cepat.

Secara kesuluruhan aku suka dengan buku ini, ada banyak hal yang bisa kita pelajari dari cerita ini; jujur adalah salah satu hal yang penting karena hidup dalam bayang-bayang penyesalan dan ketakutan benar-benar ga sepadan.

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rhirush's review against another edition

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dark funny informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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imstephtacular's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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pastelmeganes's review against another edition

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emotional informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I started this book without reading anything about what it’s about. Was so confused on why the character was so unlikable for a good chunk in the beginning till i understood that was the point! The writing style was very eloquent and it was interesting to see the inner workings of the publishing a work of literature. Scored it a 4 for mostly the writing style. Felt for June in some parts but overall found her nauseatingly aggravating.

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