Yellowface
Rebecca F. Kuang
HarperCollins Publishers
(The Borough Press)
ISBN: 9780008532772
322pp.

Any blurb, author interview or online marketing of Rebecca F. Kuang’s latest thriller, Yellowface, is like the recent Mission Impossible movie trailer — it almost gives the entire plot away.

And just like an action movie which pumps viewers with adrenaline through most of its runtime, Yellowface is a read-in-one-day kind of a book that you will probably choose not to mull over for a long time once you finish reading.

I will attempt to tell you what the book is about without giving the story away. Yellowface charts the highs and lows of one average white writer, a 20-something Juniper Hayward. Juniper passes off her highly successful Asian American friend and writer Athena Liu’s brilliant World War-I epic about Chinese Labour Corps, who were recruited to support British troops in the war by digging trenches, repairing roads, delivering supplies and cleaning up the bloody battlefields — unbeknownst to Athena — for publication under her new name, Juniper Song.

Yes, Juniper ‘yellowfaces’ here, but no, Song is really her middle name, and any ambiguity the Korean family name (derived from the Chinese surname Song) generates apropos to Juniper’s racial identity, is a bonus she is ready to cash off of! After all, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Naturally, the consequences are drastic.

Rebecca F. Kuang’s latest novel is a story of racial tensions, loneliness and the mechanics of a prejudiced publishing industry

If you pick Yellowface because you want to read something like Kuang’s Locus Award-winning dark academia novel Babel: A Necessity of Violence — a highly researched, dense, and satisfying novel — you will find your trust misplaced in the first 50 pages. However, if you enjoy choppy accounts of blood-sucking, parasitic relationships and texts that read in the manner of social media conversations, then this book will be your short-term jam.

Readers should not expect Yellowface to be a study of character developments and military strategies, like in Kuang’s brilliant debut and three-part fantasy series The Poppy War, or have plots underscoring languages, translations and magic, as in Babel. Yellowface is about the jeopardies and agonies of a ruthless contemporary culture, selfish behaviours and a disturbing publishing world toxic to writers (and its employees).

Through Juniper’s (and Athena’s) experiences, Kuang explores grey areas between morality and immorality, the monetisation of race, dopamine-rushing social media feuds and the perils of achieving too much, too fast.

The author lays out a spectrum here: on one end lie non-white writers — mostly female and working twice as hard to get noticed — while on the other end are the same writers whose high-profile racial identities and pedigrees are playing cards celebrated by publishers. Many of these authors are, in fact, outstanding but this is not really about merit. All of this is rather bizarre, painful and unjust.

In typical Kuang-like manner, where characters are impulsive, convoluted and mostly unlikeable, Juniper is self-serving and unreliable. Juniper can be manipulative and bitterly envious but, worse, she is a thief.

If you enjoy choppy accounts of blood-sucking, parasitic relationships and texts that read in the manner of social media conversations, then this book will be your short-term jam.

Through everyday encounters, Juniper finds that triumph comes at a cost. With constant self-victimisation, she must continually deal with egotistical employees, invasive PR strategies, pressures to be prolific in a very short time, emotional and actual blackmail, and harsh reader reviews (yes, popular book appraisals and ratings on Goodreads are often taken seriously).

However, Juniper’s contrived actions are dreadful precisely because she is always appeasing her guilt-ridden psyche by redefining her boundaries of right and wrongdoing as they suit her agendas.

With four highly acclaimed novels, Kuang has accumulated ample insight (and bravado) to highlight the dark side of publishing with her fifth novel. The narrative tempts you to understand it as a list of criticisms Kuang might have faced herself as an American writer of Chinese heritage with an elite schooling background. However, it is also vital that readers distinguish the author’s biography from her literary work of fiction, so that they may enjoy an edgy work of contemporary fiction.

The fact that Yellowface got the green light may be due to Kuang’s success as a writer, in addition to its thrusting plot about self, race and culture; most publishers would be highly resistant to print a cracking satire about themselves.

Kuang tries to present a “horror story of loneliness”, one that is also ironic, a betrayal and a crime narrative, all presented at the same pace in a measured tone. This is where it loses me. Sometimes, I find the text shoving the messaging about racial appropriation and publishing politics in my face even more blatant than Babel’s not-so-subtle anti-colonial anthem. Seriously, readers can make up their own minds.

In an interview with The Guardian, Kuang has asserted that she would not write in the same genre twice, since there are so many to explore in one lifetime. Excellent! However, I hope that anything she writes and publishes next is not as blunt and rushed off by the end like Yellowface and its predecessors.

The reviewer is a Fulbright scholar, art historian, art and book critic, and an industrial designer.

She can be reached on Instagram @pressedpulpandink and Twitter @nageen_shaikh

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 20th, 2023