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toshita's reviews
199 reviews
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
2.0
Oh god.
This is my first R.F. Kuang book. She's a literary darling, so I was familiar with her already and I knew going in lit fic was a new genre she was venturing into. To start, I will say Yellowface is for the most part smartly written. A snappy page-turner that I finished in one day. The main character, Juniper Hayward, is a psychopathic racist who plagiarizes the unpublished manuscript of her dead acquaintance, Athena Liu.
However, literally 20 pages in something felt off. On page FIVE, Kuang writes about Athena, "So why, then, do some people skyrocket to stardom on their first try? ... she accrued nominations for the Booker, Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, two of which she won." I flip to the Kuang's bio on the back of the jacket and there it was; 3 of the 4 awards mentioned. What proceeds for the next 300 pages is the most chronically online, least self-aware, self-insert, "fuck the haters" display that should be beneath a Georgetown-Cambridge-Oxford-Yale educated academic.
A lot of the discussion around Yellowface was that it was a critique on the publishing industry and how it engages with authors of color. But the premise of the book operates on a false assumption: that publishing is a meritocracy. An unknown white author who brought a manuscript of a historical fiction WWI novel about Chinese laborers instantly got offers from every major publishing house and received full financial and marketing backing on release? The underlying takeaway there was that Athena was so good of a writer that if an unknown name was attached to her manuscript it would instantly be snapped up. But the reality is publishers pass on thousands of amazing manuscripts.
As the truth of Juniper's deception slowly unravels, she spirals and spends hours poring over social media searching for her name and reading endless vitriol. Kuang describes Juniper's anguish of wanting to refute every critique line by line, but knowing it would just make it worse. In those disturbingly clear descriptions, I fear Kuang may have inadvertently exposed herself as doing the same. Someone who is good at taking criticism would never write Yellowface.
Athena's background is obviously inspired by Kuang's — grew up wealthy, Ivy League education, instantly achieved success in publishing and has never known failure. Many of the professional criticisms of Athena in Yellowface mirror VALID criticisms Kuang herself has received! Criticisms about her problematic portrayal of indigenous Taiwanese people and if she's justified in writing traumatic stories about the working class in her homeland while being an extremely wealthy diaspora kid sound a lot less valid when spewed by delusional racist Juniper Hayward. EvenCandice Lee's character feels like a mouthpiece for her Asian critics when in the climax she proclaims, "Who gives a fuck about Athena? Fuck Athena. We all hated that bitch. This is for me." It's not a good look to reduce all criticism to jealousy. In the end, Kuang's refusal to address her and Athena's privileged backgrounds is why this book doesn't work. Yellowface is an embarrassing display of someone who refuses to engage with the idea that wealth and status were a part of their success, even if they do deserve it.
And she DOES deserve it! This book got two stars instead of one because she's a great writer who kept me interested in this cringefest autobiographical fanfiction. How I feel about <i>Yellowface</i> is not going to deter me from Kuang's other work. This book received acclaim from thousands of readers because it was written well.
I don't want to discount the racial issues brought up by Yellowface. I know people in the industry probably do think like Juniper — We just had the review bombing incident with Cait Corrain last month. Kuang's own Babel experienced a racist review that went viral on social media for "being too complex" and "racist to white people." However, Kuang made this personal and it got in the way of whatever meaningful critique this book may have had to offer. I think she has it in her to write a scathing satire of publishing and racism, but Yellowface is not that story.
This is my first R.F. Kuang book. She's a literary darling, so I was familiar with her already and I knew going in lit fic was a new genre she was venturing into. To start, I will say Yellowface is for the most part smartly written. A snappy page-turner that I finished in one day. The main character, Juniper Hayward, is a psychopathic racist who plagiarizes the unpublished manuscript of her dead acquaintance, Athena Liu.
However, literally 20 pages in something felt off. On page FIVE, Kuang writes about Athena, "So why, then, do some people skyrocket to stardom on their first try? ... she accrued nominations for the Booker, Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, two of which she won." I flip to the Kuang's bio on the back of the jacket and there it was; 3 of the 4 awards mentioned. What proceeds for the next 300 pages is the most chronically online, least self-aware, self-insert, "fuck the haters" display that should be beneath a Georgetown-Cambridge-Oxford-Yale educated academic.
A lot of the discussion around Yellowface was that it was a critique on the publishing industry and how it engages with authors of color. But the premise of the book operates on a false assumption: that publishing is a meritocracy. An unknown white author who brought a manuscript of a historical fiction WWI novel about Chinese laborers instantly got offers from every major publishing house and received full financial and marketing backing on release? The underlying takeaway there was that Athena was so good of a writer that if an unknown name was attached to her manuscript it would instantly be snapped up. But the reality is publishers pass on thousands of amazing manuscripts.
As the truth of Juniper's deception slowly unravels, she spirals and spends hours poring over social media searching for her name and reading endless vitriol. Kuang describes Juniper's anguish of wanting to refute every critique line by line, but knowing it would just make it worse. In those disturbingly clear descriptions, I fear Kuang may have inadvertently exposed herself as doing the same. Someone who is good at taking criticism would never write Yellowface.
Athena's background is obviously inspired by Kuang's — grew up wealthy, Ivy League education, instantly achieved success in publishing and has never known failure. Many of the professional criticisms of Athena in Yellowface mirror VALID criticisms Kuang herself has received! Criticisms about her problematic portrayal of indigenous Taiwanese people and if she's justified in writing traumatic stories about the working class in her homeland while being an extremely wealthy diaspora kid sound a lot less valid when spewed by delusional racist Juniper Hayward. Even
And she DOES deserve it! This book got two stars instead of one because she's a great writer who kept me interested in this cringefest autobiographical fanfiction. How I feel about <i>Yellowface</i> is not going to deter me from Kuang's other work. This book received acclaim from thousands of readers because it was written well.
I don't want to discount the racial issues brought up by Yellowface. I know people in the industry probably do think like Juniper — We just had the review bombing incident with Cait Corrain last month. Kuang's own Babel experienced a racist review that went viral on social media for "being too complex" and "racist to white people." However, Kuang made this personal and it got in the way of whatever meaningful critique this book may have had to offer. I think she has it in her to write a scathing satire of publishing and racism, but Yellowface is not that story.