A searing satire of publishing, plagiarism, and identity, Yellowface exposes truth with dark, biting humor.
Publishing’s Ugly Mirror: Identity, Envy, and the Author’s Mask
This is brilliant writing. Truly. How can an author create a character who is both antagonist and protagonist? R.F. Kuang pulls it off masterfully in Yellowface, a blistering, biting satire of the publishing world and a psychological study of envy, authorship, and appropriation.
June Hayward is the quintessential anti-hero—or, in literary terms, an unreliable narrator. One moment, she finds literary darling Athena Liu unbearable. The next, she calls Athena her best friend. And in a remarkable twist of narrative audacity, when social media readers and authors come for June, she genuinely believes she’s the injured party.
From the onset, we know June Hayward is a piece of work. After watching Athena die in a freak accident, June steals Athena’s unpublished manuscript and passes it off as her own. She even allows her publisher to rebrand her as Juniper Song—a name that carries racial ambiguity and sparks controversy. But while the theft of a dead woman’s manuscript is appalling, it soon takes a back seat to something even more disturbing: the ruthless, often invisible, forces driving the quest to be a relevant author in a hyper-competitive, social-media-driven publishing industry.
This is a story about envy, greed (not just June’s, but the industry’s), racism, plagiarism, cultural appropriation, and the brutal game of survival in an author-eat-author world. Kuang doesn’t just peel back the curtain on the literary establishment—she shreds it. And she does so with wit, sharp insight, and relentless tension.
Kuang is so good at her craft that midway through the novel, I found myself sympathizing with June Hayward. How is that even possible? I had to keep reminding myself: this woman is a thief, a fraud, a cultural appropriator, and—beneath it all—an inherent racist. Yet her descent is so well-rendered, her desperation so real, that it becomes hard to look away.
Yellowface is shocking. It’s dark. It’s a satire so close to reality it’s uncomfortable. And still, I devoured it. Kuang has written a razor-sharp novel that forces readers to confront not only June’s moral rot but the systemic issues of race, authorship, and exploitation that pervade the publishing world.
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About the author(s).
R.F. Kuang is the award-winning author of The Poppy War trilogy, Babel, and Yellowface. A graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Cambridge, she holds degrees in Chinese studies and contemporary literature. Kuang’s work spans epic fantasy and literary fiction, often blending incisive social commentary with sharp prose and rich world-building. Yellowface, her first satirical novel, became a New York Times bestseller and sparked widespread discussion on race, authorship, and ethics in publishing. She is also a Marshall Scholar and has taught creative writing at several institutions. Kuang currently resides in the U.S. and continues to write full-time.
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