A review by gorgeousgirl
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Did not finish book. Stopped at 30%.

thought i would give it a shot but it's soooo droning & superficial, which i guess could be explained away by June being an intentionallly unlikeable narrator... but like the concerns of this novel are those of a very young & online writer who seeks traditional acclaim. i couldn't make it v far but it's v didactic & so it's clear to me how the reader is meant to take June's edits to Athena's work & her racial positioning: it's extremely disingenuous of her to take on this Chinese diasporic story & erase the real history referenced within the text. 

but my dislike of Kuang bleeds in here, bcz i feel the her own work (The Poppy War trilogy) actually does the same? suuuuuper intellectually disingenuous lifting & implanting of the historic incidents of the Rape of Nanjing + the Sino-Japanese wars into her ultimately v silly fantasy series. & then to make a whole other book decrying that kind of grift....... idk kinda a mess, not worth diving into for me