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rubellaface's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
This book is triggering, fascinating, and has messed me up for the foreseeable future.
Highly recommend to anyone who has been vilified by white fragility or would like to be taken on a wild ride by an unreliable narrator.
Graphic: Grief, Death, Toxic friendship, Racism, Violence, Rape, War, Panic attacks/disorders, Body shaming, Sexism, Mental illness, Cultural appropriation, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Alcohol, Xenophobia, Suicidal thoughts, Injury/Injury detail, Cursing, Colonisation, Stalking, Sexual assault, and Hate crime
shannnne_reads_words's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Moderate: Cultural appropriation, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Toxic friendship, and Vomit
Minor: Medical content, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Gaslighting, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Stalking
meksreads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Racism, Cultural appropriation, and Death
Moderate: Rape, Injury/Injury detail, and Suicidal thoughts
jackierobinson's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Cultural appropriation, Toxic friendship, Cursing, Bullying, and Death
Moderate: Stalking, Gaslighting, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Rape
Minor: Alcohol, Blood, and Suicidal thoughts
lawbooks600's review against another edition
- 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
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.
Graphic: Bullying, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Grief, Cultural appropriation, Cursing, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, Vomit, Gaslighting, and Racial slurs
Full trigger warnings: Death of a daughter and friend from choking and a father from suicide, racist and sexist slurs, cultural appropriation, physical assault and injury, blood, grief and loss depiction, near-death experience, hospitalisation, suicidal thoughts, emesis, gaslighting, bullyingscmiller's review
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
4.0
Graphic: Body horror, Racism, Death, Cultural appropriation, and Mental illness
Moderate: Violence, Colonisation, Toxic friendship, Panic attacks/disorders, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Bullying, Grief, and Classism
Minor: Rape, Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, War, Medical content, Death of parent, and Confinement
amaya_jam's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I should mention that this is the first book I've read by her so I'm going completely based on the hype.
Ultimately it didn't meet my expectations. The commentary felt simplistic, repetitive, and obvious. But I also just couldn't put it down. Though the topics are quite serious, the language was a nice break from my usual classics reading. I'm giving it four stars for now since I can't deny that I enjoyed my reading experience. It was just fun and that's just what I needed at the moment.
Graphic: Toxic friendship, Racism, Death, Cultural appropriation, Panic attacks/disorders, and Mental illness
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Vomit, and Alcohol
Minor: Suicidal thoughts and War
obsessivebooklover's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- 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
Graphic: War, Death, Toxic friendship, and Racism
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexual assault
Minor: Suicide
c_wilkinson's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Moderate: Racism and Cultural appropriation
Minor: War, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Grief
emily_journals's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
The main thing I had an issue with was the pacing. There was a good chunk in the middle of the book that I was getting bored and finding my mind wandering as we're waiting for the next plot point to come and I wish some of the rambling that the main character does on the same points over and over again had been trimmed a little more. Then the ending felt really rushed to me and some of the character choices in the climax and end of the book felt really rushed and unexplained, so I think some of the middle could have been trimmed and the end could've been expanded a bit to make the pacing more consistent throughout the whole book without risking the book getting too long.
What really shines through in this book is the character work. Kuang does such a masterful job of creating such hate-able and authentic characters. Kuang does a really good job of especially highlighting how awful and racist June is, but writing June's internal monologue in a way that she almost convinces you June might be doing this all unintentionally. This book is also such an insightful look into and criticism on the publishing industry and what a dumpster fire it is.
Graphic: Death, Racism, Body horror, Cultural appropriation, Sexual assault, and Grief
Moderate: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Alcohol, Eating disorder, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, and Medical content
Minor: Toxic friendship