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jdidiongirl 's review for:
Yellowface
by R.F. Kuang
dark
tense
fast-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
2.75 / 5 — yellowface is a satire that feels like watching someone subtweet for 300 pages: grimly funny at times, embarrassingly on the nose at others, and impossible to look away from. it’s a book about writing, race, envy, and the horrors of the publishing industry, but it’s also very much a book about rf kuang herself(probably). and therein lies both its fascination and its downfall.
the good first: kuang can write. the prose is slick, fast-paced, and occasionally laugh-out-loud cruel in its observations. the close first-person perspective is claustrophobic in all the right ways, making you squirm in june’s blinkered self-justifications. there are flashes of real sharpness, moments where the satire lands and you feel that itch in your brain, that mix of horror and recognition.
but the execution? messy. much of the novel is book twitter discourse stretched into narrative, which works as parody for a few chapters but quickly becomes repetitive. satire works best when it exaggerates reality just enough to expose its absurdity, but yellowface often just is reality, reheated. there were times i thought i could get the same effect by doomscrolling my feed.
the larger problem is that kuang never fully interrogates her own material. in babel, she used historical research as scaffolding, which gave the book weight even when the storytelling faltered. here, with no archive to lean on, the novel collapses into self-reference. june, the plagiarist white protagonist, is written as such a cartoon villain that she forecloses any serious discussion about authorship, cultural theft, or who gets to tell what stories. it’s plagiarism = bad, racism = bad, publishing = bad, and … that’s it.
this is what disappoints me most. bc kuang is a technically gifted writer, capable of much deeper inquiry than she allows herself here. she can generate revulsion like a horror novelist, she can craft a page-turner, she can be very funny. but instead of nuance, she gives us strawmen and caricature. worse, the authorial voice bleeds so heavily into the text that it often feels like being told what to think, rather than being invited to wrestle with messy questions.
the result is a book that is undeniably competent, occasionally entertaining, but also exhausting and strangely hollow. there’s massive potential in its premise, but the novel tries to do everything — satire, industry critique, character study, twitter comedy — and ends up doing nothing particularly well.
i didn’t hate it, and i can’t deny kuang’s talent, but i also found myself irritated and bored in equal measure. maybe that’s the point, but i doubt it.
the good first: kuang can write. the prose is slick, fast-paced, and occasionally laugh-out-loud cruel in its observations. the close first-person perspective is claustrophobic in all the right ways, making you squirm in june’s blinkered self-justifications. there are flashes of real sharpness, moments where the satire lands and you feel that itch in your brain, that mix of horror and recognition.
but the execution? messy. much of the novel is book twitter discourse stretched into narrative, which works as parody for a few chapters but quickly becomes repetitive. satire works best when it exaggerates reality just enough to expose its absurdity, but yellowface often just is reality, reheated. there were times i thought i could get the same effect by doomscrolling my feed.
the larger problem is that kuang never fully interrogates her own material. in babel, she used historical research as scaffolding, which gave the book weight even when the storytelling faltered. here, with no archive to lean on, the novel collapses into self-reference. june, the plagiarist white protagonist, is written as such a cartoon villain that she forecloses any serious discussion about authorship, cultural theft, or who gets to tell what stories. it’s plagiarism = bad, racism = bad, publishing = bad, and … that’s it.
this is what disappoints me most. bc kuang is a technically gifted writer, capable of much deeper inquiry than she allows herself here. she can generate revulsion like a horror novelist, she can craft a page-turner, she can be very funny. but instead of nuance, she gives us strawmen and caricature. worse, the authorial voice bleeds so heavily into the text that it often feels like being told what to think, rather than being invited to wrestle with messy questions.
the result is a book that is undeniably competent, occasionally entertaining, but also exhausting and strangely hollow. there’s massive potential in its premise, but the novel tries to do everything — satire, industry critique, character study, twitter comedy — and ends up doing nothing particularly well.
i didn’t hate it, and i can’t deny kuang’s talent, but i also found myself irritated and bored in equal measure. maybe that’s the point, but i doubt it.