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Yellowface
352 pages
A deliciously toxic, anxiety-inducing spiral into the mind of a desperately ambitious fraud.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like watching a slow-motion car crash through the screen of a doom-scrolling smartphone. It is a relentlessly propulsive, anxiety-inducing experience that traps you inside the mind of a deeply unreliable, fiercely defensive narrator. The prose is sharp and conversational, pulling you into a claustrophobic echo chamber of frantic justifications and mounting paranoia. As the protagonist's stolen success begins to unravel, the atmosphere grows increasingly frenetic, drenched in the toxic, hyper-vigilant energy of internet call-out culture. It is a deliciously uncomfortable read, balancing dark, biting satire with genuine psychological dread. Perfect for readers who delight in messy, unlikable characters and the morbid thrill of watching someone dig their own grave, one terrible decision at a time.
- Mood
- claustrophobic
- anxiety-inducing
- frenetic
- cringe-inducing
- Tone
- biting
- defensive
- satirical
- cynical
- darkly comedic
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- cultural appropriation · toxicity of social media · white privilege · literary ambition · commodification of identity
- The writing
- Sharp, conversational, and relentlessly internal, trapping the reader in the narrator's increasingly unhinged and defensive justifications.
- The arc
- Begins with envious desperation, surges into the dizzying high of stolen success, and spirals into a paranoid, frantic descent.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love messy, unlikable narrators, biting industry satire, and the morbid thrill of watching a slow-motion car crash of bad decisions.
Content notes
- racism
- death of a friend
- cyberbullying
- panic attacks
- gaslighting
About the book
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 R.F. Kuang, the author of Babel.
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 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.
Description from Open Library.
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