When a Book Hits Too Close to Home
Reading Yellowface by R.F. Kuang as a Writer Both Inside and Outside the Frame
I just finished listening to the audiobook version of this novel. It easily hit the trifecta of what I consider essential for an enjoyable read: an interesting premise, an engaging development, and the indispensable presence of good writing technique. If either of those is missing, I tend to struggle, no matter how well the rest is done.
There was, however, one major problem with this book. And I’ll put it bluntly, using not one, but two well-worn cliches: it hit too close to home, and was therefore a bitter pill to swallow.
The Premise
The story is narrated by June Hayward, an author who, like many of us, is struggling to get her work in front of a wide audience. After unsuccessfully pitching dozens of literary agents, she finally lands a book deal with a small press and spends her days hoping for an organic review on Goodreads or Amazon. While her novel sells a few hundred copies, her college friend Athena Liu becomes a literary darling, appropriating the painful real-life experiences of those around her and transforming them into celebrated fiction. June, in her narration, is unapologetic about the envy and resentment this breeds.
The inciting incident comes when Athena cartoonishly chokes on a pancake in front of June. June tries and fails to save her, and Athena dies. June then proceeds to steal her just-finished, experimental manuscript about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I, rewrites the book, and pitches it as her own. It is immediately picked up, and she gets rebranded as Juniper Song, complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo. Thanks to this ruse, she becomes a literary star—until people start having doubts and asking the uncomfortable questions.
The Truth of It
As someone who reveres art and sees it almost as a religion, I’ve never stolen a single word anyone’s written and consider plagiarism the ultimate sin. But I found myself reading this and recognizing my own life in both June and Athena.
On one side, I know what it’s like to be noticed not so much for what I wrote, but for everything I represented when I was starting out. My debut novel wasn’t technically strong, and while it did tell a good story, it didn’t deserve the hype it received, one that many better books were never afforded. But I was the first woman to publish a novel in Montenegro, young and looking a certain way. I had grown up abroad, which made me all the more “exotic,” and I tackled a subject no one else had ever touched in my culture: child abuse. So, the book got attention less for how it was written than for who I was and what I symbolized at the time. Still, back then I wasn’t aware of my shortcomings, and it would have been crazy to pass up the opportunity. In that sense, I was Athena, and I’m sure I managed to make lots of aspiring authors resentful.
On the other hand, now that I put my latest book out there as a self-published author in English, and took all the steps I was taught (Goodreads giveaway, NetGalley, approaching Booktokers who either asked for thousands of dollars or never responded), I know what it’s like to open your pages every morning, hoping for an organic review, and to feel invisible in a system that thrives on buzz. I know what it’s like to put my own money into editing and cover design, to work my ass off, and hope to God that someone will notice and see.
Kuang portrays this with such surgical precision that it goes as far as feeling too on-the-nose. For those of us who live outside the major literary centers, who write in English but not from within its markets, who don’t come with built-in networks or recognizable narratives, the odds are extremely slim. And in Yellowface, the cruelty of that landscape is filtered through satire, which does the opposite of softening the blow.
What is one to do with all the talent and ambition if the door never opens?
The Machine
One of the most damning things Yellowface gets right is how much traditional publishing isn’t about literary merit but about positioning. It’s far more concerned with how you can be sold than with what you actually write. Your face, your name, and especially your online clout often matter more than your prose. A recent controversy on BookTok made this painfully evident: a sweet and well-liked creator announced he’d signed a deal for a fantasy series, despite not having written a single word of that series (or any previous work). The community had a meltdown that resembled June’s feelings toward Athena. Some threw hatred at him directly, while others pointed out that he hadn’t done anything wrong, but that his case was a clear example of everything that’s wrong with the system. Publishing rewards what it can market. If you don’t fit neatly into a current narrative or trend, the system won’t make room for you, not because your work lacks quality, but because it isn’t seen as profitable. A banana taped to a wall will sell for 6.2 million, and a novel that’s clearly written on ChatGPT will become an international sensation, while the book you worked on for so long won’t get any attention unless you get very lucky while taking the time and funds to market it for at least two years.
This machinery is bound to breed both cynicism and desperation. June becomes successful not because she’s talented, but because she’s willing to play the part. She says the right things. She steps into a space that was never hers. And the industry, rather than questioning it, embraces her and sticks by her for as long as it believes her career is salvageable and the profits will keep coming.
The Arena
What Yellowface also gets right (almost too right) is how much of an author’s career now plays out online. Publishing used to require performance mainly on the page. Today, when you fill out an agent query, they want to know your social media presence and look into your numbers. If you have a large platform, they’re much more likely to bet on you, and your job will become to cultivate a persona, engage with readers, defend yourself against bad-faith attacks, and participate in conversations you didn’t start. If you do it well and prove yourself witty, charming, outspoken, or very good-looking, you’ll make it much further than those who are simply good at writing books.
In the novel, June uses social media to manipulate the narrative, weaponize identity, and bury criticism. But the same platforms expose her, subject her to harassment and death threats, and ultimately undo her.
As someone with experience in media, I understand the pressure to perform, to stay relevant, to craft something that will “do numbers” while still feeling like yourself. It’s exhausting. And when you’re also trying to write, it’s easy to feel torn in two directions. The same machine that demands your constant visibility also punishes you the moment you’re seen in the wrong way.
Kuang understands this tension, and she threads it through the novel with precision. The book may be satire, but the way social media operates in it is barely exaggerated.
The Question of Race
Where Yellowface faltered most for me was in its handling of race. It wasn’t that I disagreed with the premise; it was that the execution often lacked nuance. What could have been a layered exploration of identity and cultural appropriation often veered into caricature, reading more like a pamphlet than a work of literary fiction.
I don’t question that Kuang knows what she’s writing about, or the validity of the anger that drives the book. But as a reader, especially one not raised inside American discourse, I find myself in a place of ambivalence around the topic of cultural appropriation. I believe that writers should be free to explore any subject they’re willing to approach with humility and integrity. I would see no issue with June writing a novel about Chinese laborers in World War I if it had been her idea, if she had done the work, and if she had owned her perspective rather than disguising it. The theft was the problem, not the topic, and the commentary around it irritated me throughout the book. Both the attacks against her and her silly racist reactions felt banal.
I’m also unsure about the author’s choice to have June’s publisher actively push her toward creating an ambiguous ethnic identity. It’s presented as part of the industry’s machinery, a cynical branding decision made to maximize appeal, but it also lets June off the hook in a way. She doesn’t need to take full ownership of the deception because the system enables it, even encourages it. I think Kuang was trying to show how complicity works, how institutions can incentivize bad behavior, but it left me wondering where agency ends and manipulation begins. I would have preferred more tension there, more exploration of how much June was pretending, and how much she simply let herself be led.
The same goes for the novel’s broader political commentary. I understand why the Twitter discourse is exaggerated because it’s exactly what it looks like in reality. But when June, as the narrator, starts reflecting on the left, the right, Trump, and free speech, the satire loses some of its sharpness. I despise Trump and everything that movement stands for, but I also find that sort of commentary less interesting when it’s boiled down to easy references. For a novel so attuned to the complexities of ambition, shame, and self-delusion, those moments felt a bit too eager to signal rather than complicate.
The Ending I Needed
I don’t know whether Yellowface is a great novel. What I know is that it’s a necessary one. It stirred something in me I didn’t expect, something that has less to do with its plot than with what it reflects back about the industry, about envy, about performance, and about the hunger to be seen for what you’ve actually made, not what you’re assumed to be.
I kept listening and heard it in the span of a day.