Book Summary and Reviews of Yellowface by R. F Kuang

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Cathryn Conroy

A Can't-Put-It-Down Satirical Literary Thriller That Is Also an Uneasy, Stomach-Churning Read
This is a can't-put-it-down satirical literary thriller that is also an uneasy, stomach-churning read that left me twitchy and nervous, but anxious to keep turning those pages. This book should come with a bottle of aspirin.

Written by R.F. Kuang, this is the story of Juniper Song Hayward. She is in her late 20s, a graduate of Yale University, and a published novelist. But her mediocre debut novel hit the dustbins almost before it was released. Living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., Junie's only friend is fellow novelist and Yalie Athena Liu. It's a friendship fraught with angst, intense envy, and maybe a bit of hatred. Athena is wildly successful with multiple bestselling novels, scads of literary awards, and a stuffed-full bank account. She is living the dream of all novelists. Yes, she is pretentious and devious, but for some reason Athena and Junie still meet for drinks and chats.

The book opens with the two of them celebrating Athena's new Netflix deal, imbibing adult beverages on the rooftop of a pricey Georgetown bar. They go back to Athena's gorgeous Dupont Circle apartment and continue talking. They get hungry. They make pancakes. And Athena chokes…and dies. (This is not a spoiler; it's the entire basis on which the book's plot is built.) Junie then does something shocking: She steals Athena's latest manuscript about the 140,000 men in the Chinese Labour Corps who were forced to work for the British Army on the battlefields of Europe during World War I. The novel is still a very rough first draft, and June edits it—polishing the words, filling in the blanks, excising parts, adding more. She then passes it off as entirely her own work. It's a blockbuster—a bestseller beyond June's dreams of anything she could have written. Her life changes—drastically.

Will she be caught? The façade begins to crumble but Junie—now known as Juniper Song—must defend her work. She is White; Athena was Asian American. There is so much going on here from plagiarism to racism, from the overwrought power of social media to the despicable effects of cancel culture. After all, who gets to write the stories? Are we only allowed to write about what we intimately know? Can a Black novelist create a White protagonist?

I wonder how R.F. Kuang did it. Juniper is not a likeable person; it's difficult to be on her side knowing what she did. But somehow, I felt supportive of her. That's writing skill.

The ending? It's just as twitchy, nerve-wracking, and stomach-churning as the rest of the book. (Where is that aspirin?)

Bonus: As a reader, if you ever wondered the process authors go through to publish a book and then promote it, all the information is here. It's a fascinating, deep (deep!) dive into the publishing industry. In a word, it's brutal.