Yellowface: A Reese's Book Club Pick

This was a recommendation from Reece Witherspoon's Book Club, so when I received an Amazon voucher for my birthday I decided to treat myself. Good story, well written. Book arrived in excellent condition.

The book came without the cut!!!

Received a used book the first time and after returning it, got a damaged book with torn pages the second time!

The pages of the book were not in good condition

Loved it so funny and witty

R.F. Kuang is a Chinese-American writer, young, and blessed with talent. Her previous novels were fantasy, her characters were fantastical and exaggerated. In Yellowface, Kuang takes a candid jab at the publishing industry, for their repeated and performative treatment of ethnic characters. It’s metafiction on the nose, and the nose is pointed! Since 2020, publishers have pledged to represent ethnic minorities with authenticity, instead of pressing them into reductive and ornamental molds. Kuang’s twisty plot reveals her audacious theme, and her theme is a response to publishing’s failure to pivot as they vowed. The industry continues to tokenize people of color (YF focuses on Chinese American POC), presenting them as one-dimensional figures, sugary and saccharine and simple. It’s condescending and cringey. Ms. Kuang took a deserved thwack at the industry, and the outcome is a wild and frantic ride inside the publishing houses. Yellowface is suspenseful, plot-propelled, a cat-and mouse drama with satirical varnish. Kuang is a siren when she creates characters---I thought they might walk off the page! It has a staccato pace and a comical touch in all the fatal, tragic places. The voice is light, so the book isn’t turgid, despite the torment of protagonist June Hayward. June is a white American writer who wants success, awards, fame. She’s gotten, instead, a first-book flop. Her nemesis is brainy, beautiful, and self-possessed Chinese American Athena Liu, a celebrated novelist with a Netflix series on the way. Kuang created a complex character in Athena, breaking the stereotypical “good girl” that publishers crank out with Asian characters. Fictionally, the character of Athena allows herself to be tokenized by publishing giants in order to prevail as a celebrity best-selling author. Kuang pulls no punches--Athena is cunning and egocentric. And so is June, her white frenemy who steals her secret manuscript when Athena chokes and dies on a pancake (that’s in early pages). A lot of the suspense comes from Twitter screech, where people are not afraid to be their uglies selves. The story moves at a game clip, and we watch June use her first and middle names for the manuscript she steals and cleans up from Athena, and now her heritage sounds more ambiguous. Her first name is Juniper and her middle name is Song, given to her by her hippie mother, but fortuitous for the moment—folks may think it is Asian, as the story, The Last Front (a bit of irony there) refers to a history of the Chinese Labor Corps recruited by the British Army and sent to the Allied Front during WWI. The reader is kept guessing as each new event raises the stakes for June/Juniper. The last 40 or so pages were a bit too much telling and it didn’t sustain the earlier pace or suspense, it got breathless but less credible, a the plot seemed to fall over itself at times. It was fervent and long-winded, with a lot of crowded add-on that was jammed with info. It’s a minor irritant in what was an otherwise engaging thriller of competition and cultural controversy within an industry that yet remains covetous and veiled to outsiders. One of my favorite reveals is when Athena states she is "ethically troubled" because her parents and grandparents lived through the pain of their history, yet, in her privileged position of looking back from a comfortable life, Athena admits that "I have the indulgence to look back, and be a storyteller" (and get wealthy off their story). But June states, "I've always found that line to be a cop-out...We're all vultures, and some of us--and I mean Athena here--are simply better at finding the juiciest morsels of a story, at ripping through bone and gristle to the tender bleeding heart and putting all the gore on display."

I am excited to read it but, I order the first time and the book was in a bad condition then ,I returned and I ask for replacement however, it came the same problem in bad condition because the papers of the book is not good I am confused now I hate the book when it’s not in appropriate way I can’t read it I feel that is something wrong.

Llego impecable y en perfectas condiciones. Excelente libro, muy recomendado.

The book was packaged nicely and of course it was a nice read

J'ai beaucoup aimé ce roman mais la fin est laborieuse : ça aurait pu finir 50 pages avant. Mais je recommande quand même !