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pt_barnum 's review for:
Yellowface
by R.F. Kuang
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
R.F. Kuang proved herself to me as a good writer who had greater potential with Babel. It was a good story, but she can do far better. So I already had a good opinion of Kuang going into this book, and I was hoping for something better than Babel. That is what I got. She has more potential, but Kuang is definitely starting to blossom into a truly remarkable writer.
Yellowface follows the story of June Hayward, a white girl, who steals a book about the strife of Chinese laborers in WWI from her dead friend, Athena Liu, who dies in such a comically hilarious way I wouldn't even want to spoil it despite the fact that it happens like twenty pages in. The book then follows the cognition and mental health of June Hayward as she has to deal with all of these really complex issues about race and cultural appropriation, while balancing her attention the hateful discourse of social media with her narcissistic desire for that very attention. My issue with Babel is that there wasn't any subtlety. When you're talking about colonialism, you have to have subtlety because realistically everyone has already come to the conclusion that it's bad, so you don't need to beat the reader over the head with how bad it is lest they fail to comprehend the passage whilst their brain melts out of their ears. On the contrary, in Yellowface, the lack of subtlety works. This is such a viscerally angry book. Like, so angry that it's actively uncomfortable to read at times. By way of arguments made around June, the reader has to form some opinions on their own about these very complicated cultural issues. What does it mean to be racist? When does the identity of an author affect what they can appropriately write about? How does reverse-racism work, and is it as bad as normal racism? Kuang bashes the readers skull in with these questions like one would with a folded metal chair, throughout the entire book. It works especially well because it's also done through social media, which makes the book feel even more claustrophobic and raging. The reader isn't calmly suggested to look inward and see what they think, they're inundated with the kind of frothing vitriol and anxiety that can only be found on Twitter.
Part of this book being so heavily about the effects of social media on these discussions is that they don't go anywhere. Yes, the reader is prodded to think about things like the commodification of racial minorities, and that, at least in me, generated more sensitivity. However, these hate-fuck, go nowhere, scream fights over social media don't accomplish much other than spreading anger. They don't solve anything.
Ultimately, when the actual questions are dissected from the vile sludge and miasma of twitter discourse about racism, I was left feeling conflicted when I was provided these questions. Do minority voices need to be heard, and amplified because in our society white people are more privileged? Yeah! But to an extent they're fetishized. It's gross, calling Asian people "diverse", as is done by publishing companies. This is just an example, but there are lots of kinds of these black and white dichotomies just like this in Yellowface. So I'm left feeling entirely conflicted because it almost seems like that racism is inevitable, which is just upsetting. If racial minorities aren't hated on by Nazis and crypto-Nazis alike, they're commodified by the very industries and groups that claim to care about them. Huh, maybe our societal obsession with race is bad. Who would've thought?
But, of course, I would never say the discussions brought up in Yellowface aren't worth having. To show proper respect to minorities, they need to be accurately and fairly represented in ways that celebrate them, not commodify them. I know I'm like virtue-signaling or whatever, but reading this book is part of my journey towards sensitivity. I'm white. I am a member of the LGBTQ+ community, but that's the extent to which I am a minority. I have regrettably said racist shit and held racist beliefs in the past that I now deeply regret. So to try and better myself, I want to read things like this, because they sensitize me to problems that I as a white person might never encounter, even if I wasn't insensitive in the past. So reading this book felt especially weird for me because I'm in this headspace of personal development, one in which I want to learn from minorities, but this book kind of gives off the vibe that our biggest problem is our societal neuroticism about race, not necessarily just racist, so although I'm already trying to walk the line between "passively supportive" and "white guilt complex", this book makes me think that one of the best ways I can get become more sensitive is by just taking it easy a little more.
Should you read Yellowface? Yes. It's very well written, to the point where a book that could otherwise be a mundane analysis of societal racism and the publishing industry is more like a thriller. The main character is hateable, to the extent of a Dhar Mann video villain, where the person is so explicitly awful you want to keep watching just to see them fail, and although she is 100% racist, most of her racist actions aren't 100% racist so instead of thinking "damn, that's really racist" I just feel icky and kind of off. The book talks about a lot of complex topics, but let it's themes and questions fester in you for a bit, because although this book provides questions and the wrong answers, it doesn't provide the right ones.
This is a book I will want to have on my bookshelf for the rest of my life. Not because it's the greatest thing ever made, but because it's so damn special.
Yellowface follows the story of June Hayward, a white girl, who steals a book about the strife of Chinese laborers in WWI from her dead friend, Athena Liu, who dies in such a comically hilarious way I wouldn't even want to spoil it despite the fact that it happens like twenty pages in. The book then follows the cognition and mental health of June Hayward as she has to deal with all of these really complex issues about race and cultural appropriation, while balancing her attention the hateful discourse of social media with her narcissistic desire for that very attention. My issue with Babel is that there wasn't any subtlety. When you're talking about colonialism, you have to have subtlety because realistically everyone has already come to the conclusion that it's bad, so you don't need to beat the reader over the head with how bad it is lest they fail to comprehend the passage whilst their brain melts out of their ears. On the contrary, in Yellowface, the lack of subtlety works. This is such a viscerally angry book. Like, so angry that it's actively uncomfortable to read at times. By way of arguments made around June, the reader has to form some opinions on their own about these very complicated cultural issues. What does it mean to be racist? When does the identity of an author affect what they can appropriately write about? How does reverse-racism work, and is it as bad as normal racism? Kuang bashes the readers skull in with these questions like one would with a folded metal chair, throughout the entire book. It works especially well because it's also done through social media, which makes the book feel even more claustrophobic and raging. The reader isn't calmly suggested to look inward and see what they think, they're inundated with the kind of frothing vitriol and anxiety that can only be found on Twitter.
Part of this book being so heavily about the effects of social media on these discussions is that they don't go anywhere. Yes, the reader is prodded to think about things like the commodification of racial minorities, and that, at least in me, generated more sensitivity. However, these hate-fuck, go nowhere, scream fights over social media don't accomplish much other than spreading anger. They don't solve anything.
Ultimately, when the actual questions are dissected from the vile sludge and miasma of twitter discourse about racism, I was left feeling conflicted when I was provided these questions. Do minority voices need to be heard, and amplified because in our society white people are more privileged? Yeah! But to an extent they're fetishized. It's gross, calling Asian people "diverse", as is done by publishing companies. This is just an example, but there are lots of kinds of these black and white dichotomies just like this in Yellowface. So I'm left feeling entirely conflicted because it almost seems like that racism is inevitable, which is just upsetting. If racial minorities aren't hated on by Nazis and crypto-Nazis alike, they're commodified by the very industries and groups that claim to care about them. Huh, maybe our societal obsession with race is bad. Who would've thought?
But, of course, I would never say the discussions brought up in Yellowface aren't worth having. To show proper respect to minorities, they need to be accurately and fairly represented in ways that celebrate them, not commodify them. I know I'm like virtue-signaling or whatever, but reading this book is part of my journey towards sensitivity. I'm white. I am a member of the LGBTQ+ community, but that's the extent to which I am a minority. I have regrettably said racist shit and held racist beliefs in the past that I now deeply regret. So to try and better myself, I want to read things like this, because they sensitize me to problems that I as a white person might never encounter, even if I wasn't insensitive in the past. So reading this book felt especially weird for me because I'm in this headspace of personal development, one in which I want to learn from minorities, but this book kind of gives off the vibe that our biggest problem is our societal neuroticism about race, not necessarily just racist, so although I'm already trying to walk the line between "passively supportive" and "white guilt complex", this book makes me think that one of the best ways I can get become more sensitive is by just taking it easy a little more.
Should you read Yellowface? Yes. It's very well written, to the point where a book that could otherwise be a mundane analysis of societal racism and the publishing industry is more like a thriller. The main character is hateable, to the extent of a Dhar Mann video villain, where the person is so explicitly awful you want to keep watching just to see them fail, and although she is 100% racist, most of her racist actions aren't 100% racist so instead of thinking "damn, that's really racist" I just feel icky and kind of off. The book talks about a lot of complex topics, but let it's themes and questions fester in you for a bit, because although this book provides questions and the wrong answers, it doesn't provide the right ones.
This is a book I will want to have on my bookshelf for the rest of my life. Not because it's the greatest thing ever made, but because it's so damn special.