First of all, WHAT?!

This is the second time I’ve engaged with Rebecca F. Kuang’s work. The first was reading book 1 of The Poppy War series which is genres apart from Yellowface. Yellowface, is the one that stole my heart.

Now I’m not sure if I would have felt this way had I not read The Poppy War because high on my list of fascinations is how she can move from high fantasy to such a great piece of literary fiction! Please! What??

Alright, so, Yellowface follows June Hayward, a delusional mess of a somewhat unreliable character if there ever was one. We meet June moments before her peer, a fellow writer, Athena Liu, accidentally dies in her presence while the two were engaging in an eating competition. One of those drunken late night bad decisions. The one that occur after you should have actually gone home. This leads the reader into a discovery of June, who, though innocent of murder, is guilty of so much more.

Yellowface was a reread for me. I first engaged with it earlier this year via audio and knew it was a book I needed to own. When Wordsworth sent me the hard copy, I dived into it and was able to unpack so much more off the pages than I had on audio.

In this one Rebecca starts a rather loud discourse on the publishing industry, professional envy and the appropriation or misappropriation of culture, how race and skin colour may outrank talent and who gets to tell which stories and why.

She also talks to peer-peer jealousy within the industry, plagiarism, entitlement and when one should begin to protect their intellectual property. There is also a discussion on what happens when talent, and art, start being treated only as a bottom line.

Rebecca has factored in all players involved in a writer’s journey in modern day. The online influencer and bookish community, peer reviewers (some unsolicited), the publishing agent and publishing houses, the hunger to make it as much as the next writer, fame and this repeat call to outdo your last work in order to stay in the spotlight. She captures these concepts so well all the while entertaining us in a humorous display of the human potential for desperation, delusion and a complete abandon of morals.

While navigating these human intricacies, Rebecca, whom I believe is a historian at heart, does not miss the chance to share some Chinese history with us. After all yellowface is the Asian equivalent of blackface and in order to fully grasp the danger in appropriating the culture, it’s history needs to be understood and appreciated. 

I’m still in awe over how she schooled us, called out an entire industry, entertained us and convicted us all while we were laughing along. The power in this work lies in just that – you have no choice but to introspect and account for your part in it, good or bad.