Karen commits plagiarism and loses mind over Twitter trolls - Yellowface by R. F. Kuang (Review)
A/N: This review contains mild spoilers for Yellowface by Rebecca. F. Kuang. This is your spoiler warning.
The writing is engaging and accessible. It’s hard to put down and made me laugh wryly at times which I guess should be expected from a satirical piece about the publishing industry. My main concern was how little it actually explored the racism in said industry like the pitch suggested it would. More time was spent in Book Twitter and Goodreads drama. It focused more on the reviewers than on actual writers at times and every mention of Athena or June’s contemporaries was to emphasize either about how jealous they were or to say that they were superficial humans organized into cliques and everything was a popularity contest. The messaging was rarely subtle and sometimes the characters just seem like caricatures of their stereotypes. While I can acknowledge that it could be a clever literary decision on Kuang’s part, I did feel that it detracted from the book at times because of how surface level it was?
It is a good book and for the uninitiated, this would be a great point to start reading about the literary world and the attached online drama. But if you're looking to understand the publishing sphere, this isn’t something I’d recommend. The book does have some great discussion about internet fame and social media toxicity and also about how even with Asian voices being brought to the forefront, not everyone gets to be heard. Privilege is real and diversity is often a money-making tactic. I really did enjoy the book so let’s just talk about the author for a moment.
I did my research on the internet as one does after reading a book that they really liked to see what everyone else thinks about it. There’s talk about the writer being petty/ using Athena’s character as a self-insert to address some criticism in the reviews she’s gotten for her previous work. All I want to say is if we as a community can enjoy Harry Potter because apparently ‘the art is separate from the artist’ despite transphobia then Yellowface can be read without the author’s alleged refusal to take criticism being a major issue. But that’s just me speculating.
Here’s three things that amused me about the book:
- The constant name dropping of authors, publishers and actors
- The unnecessary inclusion of words like antimiscegenation, consanguinity, epistemology, simulacrum, etc.
- The definition of terms like sensitivity readers, dramatis personae, etc., being included?
Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.
(The aesthetic of a writer’s life that this book delivers was fun to read about.)
Athena was not a real Marxist; she was a champagne socialist at best.
(This made me giggle.)
Kim Jong Un’s girlboss propagandist sister immediately comes to mind.
(I was not supposed to cackle at this like I did. Oh my god, this was super racist in the book’s context.)
The more popular a book becomes, the more popular it becomes to hate on said book, which is why revulsion for Rupi Kaur’s poetry has become a millennial personality trait.
(I wonder if Rupi Kaur knows.)
A/N: It is hard to tread the line between just being plain rude and being a constructive critic and I worry about it all the time. I hope you pick this book up because the drama was a roller coaster ride and just fun to read. I love satirical discussions about sad stuff like racism and sexism.
Thank you for reading the tenth installment in my ‘Women of Words’ series where I read feminist literature by a new feminist author each month.
What is your favorite feminist read? Please feel free to drop your suggestions so that I can add them to my already excessively long TBR list for this series.
To read the previous installment, here’s my take on The Haunting of Alejandra by V.Castro.
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