Review of Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

*Yellowface* by R.F. Kuang (2023). Published by The Borough Press.

Yellowface has been one of the must-read books of the summer for me. As someone who has been a writer actively publishing her work for about eight years now, and also as someone who has worked and dabbled with the publishing industry, I love a good shade towards the industry and its practices.

As an Iranian-American I’ve noticed how my own work has been treated by white editors and competitions, which has made me often step away from the publishing side of things and performing to meet the expectations of a white audience. I just write whatever I want these days. Regardless, what I was hearing Yellowface was about was straight up my alley.

So I joined the waitlist of fifty other people at my local library to get my hands on a physical copy. I had previously read Babel and thought it was okay; the world building was incredible, but Kuang ended up going way too overboard trying to make it seem like a historical text—I thought the characters and format felt very off because of it.

Yellowface isn’t historical so I thought I could come into it breathing easier, so I ended up landing my copy right before my trip to Florida. I ended up reading the entire book on the flight to Sarasota—I literally couldn’t put it down except to board the plane.

Here’s my review!

When bestselling author Athena Liu chokes to death on a pancake, June sees her chance and steals the now-dead girl’s manuscript.

Our protagonist in Yellowface is June Hayward, who is jealous of Athena Liu. The two first met as undergraduates at Yale University, but their paths quickly diverged as their friendship fizzled out and became more an acquaintance thing. Athena got her MFA, published her manuscript the same time as June, but the two got drastically different results.

Athena shot into literary fame and became the darling of the publishing industry, while June faded into the background and didn’t really do anything with her debut novel. This story begins in Washington D.C., where they both live, after June and Athena meet up for the first time in awhile.

First they go drinking, and then they return to Athena’s apartment (June notes, with envy, that it is an expensive one). Athena decides she wants pancakes and so they make them, and when Athena takes a bite of her pandan pancakes, she starts choking to death. Unable to save her, June ends up watching the girl die right in front of her.

She calls the police, but there’s one heinous crime she commits on her way out: she takes the unpublished manuscript Athena had been talking about and brings it to her house. It’s about Chinese labor workers in the middle of World War I, and when June reads it, she realizes it could be even greater than it already is if she edits it.

So she does edit it. She decides to publish it under her name, and the narrative goes to great lengths to show her perspective in justifying how this is now her property.

The book lands a bidding war after her agent sends it out, and a decent company ends up buying out the rights for the book. June ends up becoming Juniper Song, a rebranding suggested by her publisher, and one of the Asian American employees at the company becomes uncomfortable by all of this.

She ends up suggesting that there be a sensitivity reader to doublecheck all of the facts because of how June is a white author writing Asian stories, but June makes her first mistake when she shuts down this idea and acts super weird about. The girl is fired after June discovers she left a one star Goodreads review and reports it to her team.

The book is published, and June is now the starlet of the literary world. It becomes a NYT Bestseller and she ends up making a ton of money off of royalties, meaning she, too, can live like Athena once did when she was alive. However, this is not without controversy.

There are Asian Americans making a fuss about how June ended up writing a story that was ridden with inaccuracies and stereotypes, which I found to be showing of the divide between Asian Americans themselves—they aren’t a monolith, after all.

People also end up inevitably comparing it to Athena Liu’s work, especially because June pulled many different stunts claiming her and Athena were close after she died.

There’s also the fact that Juniper Song makes June sound like she’s Asian. She’s not. She’s invited to book clubs and also mocked because of the fact she’s a white woman trying to appear as something she is not, which irks her obsessive personality.

Athena’s ex-boyfriend also emerges when he makes a Twitter account claiming that June is plagiarizing off of Athena, which makes waves in the online communities.

This is the first whisper of June’s acts, but her publisher and agent believe her when she says she didn’t do it. She ends up threatening the ex for his silence, but things get even worse from June when she publishes a follow-up novella to ride off the coattails of her newfound fame.

Yet again she double dipped from Athena’s papers, and this time it was a story she had publicly workshopped. Those in the workshop knew immediately that June has plagiarized because of the opening paragraph, and it’s impossible for her to deny these allegations. She becomes haunted by a ghost of Athena, as someone is posting on her Instagram, and things go even more viral as June cracks down on everything she’s done.

She even is invited to teach a workshop for Asian American youths and humiliates a teenager publicly after she catches them talking about her plagiarism scandal.

She’s eventually caught when the former editorial assistant from the publisher tricks her into confessing her sins, and the girl sells the rights to the confession and profits off of it to write her own tell-all memoir. We see June at the end trying to dig herself out of the hole by trying to figure out how to write her own memoir about the situation, perpetuating this cycle even further.

Overall Thoughts

Because we’re stuck inside of June’s head the entire novel, it can be both hilarious and disturbing. The lengths this girl goes to justify her actions, which are horrible and unethical as a writer, is insane.

It’s especially disturbing how she interacts with the Chinese and Asian American communities, especially because of how at the book club for older people even she thinks she’s going to throw up eating basic Chinese American food.

Girl can’t even eat a lo mein without thinking she’s going to puke—that’s peak stereotypical white people behavior right there.

But the ending reveals the cycle of abuse happening, as well as the competition. People are profiting off of each other. This is also shown with Athena, who ripped stories from other people, including June when they were at Yale. There’s a layered variety of issues depicted in this novel, which makes it fascinating to read.

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