Yellowface
Summary Yellowface
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
...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.
Episode list
One
I remember reading a news article a few years ago about a sorority girl
I once went to a talk by a successful fantasy writer where she claimed
Five
So he ordered that the men were not allowed to leave their barbed-wire
The most widely circulated hate piece is an essay review in the Los
One bespectacled old man asks a very blunt question about the size of my
industry starts
Thirteen
My agent and editor have conducted their own independent investigations and have found
Sixteen
I once met a poet who carried a tiny notebook everywhere she went
I requested in the workshop guidelines that the subject of critique bring
And once this scandal has been transformed and preserved in novel
When the nonfiction sources turn up no helpful advice on exorcising
That the world should put them on a pedestal and shower them with
