Welcome friend! Today I bring you the review of a popular novel. Yellowface by R. F. Kuang presents the dark side of publishing. For a writer, looking to get traditionally published, Yellowface is a tale of the lengths to which one may go to earn a living in this highly competitive career that has only gotten more ruthless and volatile with social media. Here is what this book is about:
R.F. Kuang | Goodreads
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.
So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song–complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.
But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
Content notes include bullying, gaslighting, cyberbullying, verbal abuse, death, racism, cultural appropriation, sexual assault, suicidal thoughts.
Yellowface – Review
June, Athena and Success
In recent memory, I haven’t read a book where I was set up to hate the protagonist. June is an author whose first book did not leave much of a mark. Though highly educated from a prestigious writing school, she is insecure and in awe of the success that other people have had with their writing. She wants to make it big. Writing has helped her survive so far. Her father is long gone and her mother and sister do not understand her passions. They want her to settle down and have a normal job that will support her. All June wants is success. Yellowface does a good job of exposing why June makes the choices she does, setting her up as a well thought out character.
She has been an acquaintance of another author, Athena, for some years now. They went to the same university and June has seethingly seen Athena’s writing career skyrocket. Both are in their late twenties yet their publishing stories are completely different. While Athena is a woman of color, June is white and feels that part of Athena’s success comes from her background.
When June comes across Athena’s latest finished manuscript that no one else could possibly know about, she decides to make it her own. In Yellowface, she continues to justify her theft to herself as a posthumous collaboration with Athena that she would have consented to. What follows is June making it big, becoming a popular bestselling author thanks to a story about Chinese history. This brings up many big questions in publishing that I will talk about in the next section. First, I need to tell you about Athena.
Athena may not be a perspective in Yellowface but she is the catalyst for everything that happens. She is a famous writer. She is not perfect and June hardly ever has anything nice to say about Athena. The Athena we see through June’s eyes is drenched in June’s jealousy and hate.
Athena is a brilliant writer and her ideas sell. She has what June wants. In time, June becomes so attached to Athena’s ideas that she starts to equate success to writing what Athena would. Plagiarism once was not enough, she starts to turn to the pages she stole from Athena for inspiration.
June may be a published writer but she has a very superficial idea of Athena’s success. They were never close and never talked about the kind of stories that were expected of Athena from her publisher, nor did she share the broader reality of being a writer of color in the industry. That is what Yellowface exposes through this interplay between June and Athena’s careers.
Making it in Publishing
Before becoming a reviewer, I would get books from friends and family or buy some from a bookstore. I never really gave much thought to how they came to be, how many years of effort went into them, and how much money an author made from them. These are not facets of my reading experience. Though as a reviewer I interact with authors, publishers and publicists, I am engaged when the book is ready to be published or already out. I do not know what it actually takes to query, find an agent or all the magic that needs to happen to get a publisher to take on a book. On Armed with A Book, I have been honoured to connect with people who have shared their experiences in traditional and indie publishing. I will link to those articles at the end of this review.
Yellowface exposes the dilemmas of a writer who wants to be a successful author. Should she write the story she wants to write or the one that will sell? Should she write about her culture and experiences she knows or is it ok for her to explore other cultures, times and situations in her story? Each author would answer these questions differently. For some, maybe the story they want to write is the one that will sell. Some people can get the best of both worlds, others have to try a lot harder.
That is June. June wants quick and easy success and fame. When Athena’s manuscript is right there in front of her to make her own, she takes the easy way to embrace it. She doesn’t tell a soul but it eats her up.
What is mindblowing about Yellowface is that the publisher foresees these challenges and how they handle these questions. They know June has no Chinese roots but they see the potential in the manuscript and want to give it the best shot. This means making her name ambiguous enough that someone would not question her heritage. To cover it up from her side, June starts to take steps to portray an image of an ally of Asians. She throws money to be in good books of charities and writing communities. But her pen name leads to some very uncomfortable situations because no matter how much she pretends, she knows nothing and by being ambiguous, she creates opportunities to be mistaken.
Sensitivity Readers
An assistant editor brings up sensitivity reviews too late in the process and June is very much against it when her dream to be a famous author is so close.
Sensitivity reviewers are engaged to identify content that may be offensive, inaccurate or stereotypical (read more here). Working with them is a great practice, especially when writing a culture that the author may not know well. They are not the catch all, they are about due diligence.
June’s resistance to sensitivity reviews causes her a lot of unforeseen problems. Yellowface dives deeper into the challenges of being a professional that has been wrongly given a bad rep. Just how June is trying to survive, there are others like her such as Candice who offer the side of publishing that June will never understand.
Social Media and Cancel Culture
A good part of Yellowface happens on Twitter. That is where rumors are considered truth and anyone and everyone with little to no inkling about the matter at hand is ready to take up arms against an author and cancel them. In the book, Twitter is often used as a platform for debate when gossip is all that sells (as June finds out with her bad press and escalated book sales). To be obsessed with a virtual image amongst people who June never meets but they matter because that is where popularity seems to be decided.
Yellowface is a social media nightmare. It beautifully portrays the horror of being socially shunned online and how online platforms can be used for coercion and bullying.
When I think of Yellowface, it is a hard story about wanting fame and being shameless in getting it. June is guilty and she drives herself mad in the fear that she will be found. She recognizes as well that bad images on social media only last so long and there are many sides to a story. And if she is so inclined to, she can twist the tale another way. That is who she is.
It is important to remember that as individuals, we have many layers and experiences that influence our actions and thoughts, whether we are readers, writers, publicists, or business persons. June is an imperfect human being, propelled forward by a system that wants to make a lot of money and sees potential in “her” work.
Sometimes, this book is way too heavy on questions and themes to process. The sheer number of bad choices make June a hard perspective to sympathize with yet it does happen and Yellowface is a book that is hard to put down.
Does Karma take revenge?
Yes, she does.
Is it satisfying?
No, it was not.
Yellowface is a satire, a look at the darkness in publishing from a personal point of view and how as a society, we may be having a tough time navigating issues of representation and cultural appropriation. What leads to complications is where we bring in these nuanced realities into something that is a business where fame and popularity are reduced to numbers – money, followers, sales. How many marginalized voices can actually be heard? How many stories about the same cultures and time periods can be sold? Who gets to publish them? How much value do we put in cultural roots over research? How do we balance representation when the underlying goal is to make as much money as possible? Is that something we can even hope to do?
When there is competition, someone has to lose. It is not always obvious who but someone always does. Some stories are just seen as more promising than others.
At the end of the day, publishers want to make money. That is how they stay relevant. According to Toner Buzz, each year, 500,000 to 1 million new books come out just through traditional publishing in the US. Publishers are ones who decide how many copies to print, whether it will be just hardcover or paperbacks, whether audiobooks will be created, whether a reprint will even happen… They make a lot of decisions and when they sign up authors, it is in the hopes that the story is truly as good as they think based on what they know. They have done the market research and know which books and stories have sold, and which ones still continue to sell.
It is good that in recent years there are more and more publishers to pitch to and authors have the opportunity to find people who believe in their literary vision.
Yellowface is not a book you will come out feeling good about. It poses moral dilemmas and questions that need time for reflection. It is hard to put down.
If you pick up Yellowface, I would love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to link to your review below. You can add this literary fiction book to your Goodreads if you want a fast thoughtful read.
Some posts about publishing:
Stephanie Caye – On Cost Of Self-Publishing
Amanda Denham – On Traditional Publishing
Savannah Cordova – On Finding The Perfect Literary Agent For You
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