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Staff Pick
Reading Yellowface was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. In this scathing indictment of racism and tokenism in the book world, you spend the book inside the head of the deeply unlikeable and unreliable narrator, a white woman who steals a novel from an Asian author and publishes it herself. You won't be able to tear your eyes away from the pages as she scrambles to keep her secret and postpone her downfall, revealing a plethora of very real issues in the publishing industry today. Recommended By Eloise B., Powells.com
Months before its release, this book is generating equal parts buzz and polarization among reviewers, which you’ll find, after reading it, is actually the most fitting reception imaginable. Yellowface is incisive, infuriating, clever, cringeworthy, deeply meta, full of ugly publishing industry truths and Book Twitter drama, devoid of likable characters and redemption. I loved-slash-hated it. Recommended By Tove H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences... Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn't write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American — in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author R. F. Kuang.
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena's a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who 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 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 grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang's novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
Review
"Excellent satire from Kuang...This is not to be missed." Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
“Her magnificent novel uses satire to shine a light on systemic racial discrimination and the truth that often hides behind the twisted narratives constructed by those in power.” Booklist (starred review)
Review
"A darkly satirical thriller about greed, truth, identity, and art — and who a story really belongs to. Reading Yellowface was like riding a roller coaster with no safety belt. I screamed the whole way through!" Peng Shepherd, author of The Cartographers
About the Author
Rebecca F. Kuang is a Marshall Scholar, Chinese-English translator, and the Astounding Award-winning and the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of the Poppy War trilogy and the forthcoming Babel. Her work has won the Crawford Award and the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.