yellowface review 😶 r.f. kuang
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- Опубликовано: 15 июн 2023
- just want to make it clear that i recognize the racism and white priviledge that exists in publishing, and how it's still very much white-dominated, and poc definitely do not get the same equal opportunities. i didn't explicitly mention that in the video because i kind of just think of that as something we're all aware of and have already discussed at length. but y'know, just in case anyone isn't aware~
there is also a great review by bethany on goodreads!
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I walked away from the book just frustrated with all of them because they were all bad people in different ways and it was driving me crazy. 😂
this is very much a mood with this book 🤣
To add on, I was left wondering what Athena's mom wanted to keep hidden. It never fully revealed that
from what i recall, her mom never read her notebooks either, right? june kind of put this idea in the mom's head that athena would have written about all the rawest parts of her relationship with her parents, which her mom would not have wanted the world to see
I enjoyed this book so much and really appreciate your review 😊 June is such an unhinged point of view character to read from and I felt like the commentary on publishing was really on point
aaaa thank you so much!!! and yes, completely agree!
Really interesting discussion. I do think how people react will have a lot to do with their background in publishing. And yeah, the self-insert stuff is kind of weird, I’m not sure how to feel about it.
true!!! i feel like it's an inverse relationship haha, like the more you know about the industry, the less you will enjoy the book because it is just reiterating things you already knew (or may even be incorrect)
We have a very similar experience with this book. I was satisfying to listen you voice the same impressions I had lol
yay i'm happy to hear!!!
I appreciated hearing your critique and how you mixed looking at the positive and negative. I wanted to get out of my bubble of loving the novel and hear what someone else thought to think more about what I liked or didn’t and process my feelings around the book. I would probably say it’s 4.5/5 for me. I actually really liked the ending although not perfectly executed. June’s last thoughts gave me end of Hitchcock Psycho vibes. But I thought it lost steam and was less engaging towards the end before it IMO stuck the landing. I suspected Athena was a meta standin but I liked how it was handled and I think it was handled with a lot more grace than other meta responses to critics I have seen in stories. I’m sure the novel is probably polarizing and there are surely some fair points made out there, but it gave me a lot of food for thought about my own racist mistakes as a white person, how I have grown to deviate from June, and how I have further to grow. The writing style also clicked with my ADHD mind and made me curious about checking out more of R.F. Kuang at some point. I got undiagnosed ADHD vibes from Athena. There is a lot more I could say, but there’s only so much I can write in a comment.
100% agree with you! I loved the way you covered all of these topics. Very well said 🖤
thank you nina!!! i was a bit nervous about this one heh heh
@christeascozycorner you touched on a lot of topics people tend to avoid voicing, but I think it's so important that you did! It makes for a really great and important conversation to have!
I’m reading it now and I’m like 70% of the way through. The only thing that is kinda bugging me is how dumb June is with many of her decisions. She keeps making decisions that are OBVIOUSLY going to get her into trouble. Don’t get me wrong: I know she’s bad and I want her to get caught, but it isn’t very interesting to me if the decisions that lead to her downfall are so foolish that I can’t imagine someone actually making them. If she was more cunning it would make the book a little more interesting and would make her predicament a little more believable.
I read this recently and also gave it 4 stars. I have such a mixed bag of emotions about this book and I wanted to say more on my Goodreads reviews but was scared because in this day and age as a white person, anything I might say could be construed as racist. Which is not the case because I don’t see colour, I see a person and whether that person is good or not.
Anywho I think the aspect I enjoyed the most was the insight into publishing and how savage it can be.
I agree with what you said about how the comparisons between character and author, it did kind of read like it was from experience but a little more dramatised and glamourised.
Great video review 😊
thank you! 💗
and yes i get what you mean~ i think it is okay and we should be able to criticize a book when we have issues with it! with a book like this though, race and skin color is the forefront of the messaging and is very relevant to the story, so i don't think it's possible to ignore color entirely
Wasn’t sure if I’d be into this book or not but I’ve put a library hold on it now
if you don't like it it means you hate me jk 😂
Heya! I just finished the book and I was very indecisive. I hated it and had to put it down because I was so upset with June’s decision and denial. However listening to your review made me gain more insights. I want to go and see those references she made about other books because for example I have American Dirt on my physical TBR. I’m really glad you’ve made this video as it was evident you have a clear point of view but delivered it so thoughtfully! I hate when people want to speak half truth to not influence the listener even though we usually already have our opinion and we just want to hear other’s opinions. I’ll be posting it on my bookclub page as discussion post ♥️🌻
ooh yay i'm so glad my review could help you!!! i appreciate it! 💗
For the self-insert part, maybe not just an acknowledgment of her own privilege and luck, but maybe also exorcising a little bit of imposter syndrome? Or maybe not. It's definitely a little bit uncomfortable to speculate about these things. But she had to know that readers who are familiar with her would be thinking about these things.
Also I disagree with you about the end. I think its perfect. I mean, what a choice for Juniper to make. 😒
yeah there were a lot of interesting choices made in this book that just have me curious, like hmm why was it done this way 😅and tbh i don't even remember what happened in the ending anymore LOL it was so underwhelming
I'm so glad I came across this book review! I've been avoiding watching videos about Yellowface because I'm teaching this book for my class. It's not perfect, and there are some parts that I think could've had more work like the ending. I would've preferred it if Athena's mother had opened her journals and discovered that June stole The Last Front and exposed this to the public, simply because it makes sense rather than that publishing employee showing up out of nowhere.
Overall, I think this is a very good book and has plenty of layers to discover. Kaung could've left our her notes at the end of the book, but I'm so glad she's sharing her sources that she used for inspiration and understanding of the topic she was writing about. I get that the internet loves to hate on her, but I think it's rare to see a successful young writer who's in the mainstream, pursuing a PhD at Yale. I believe that some credit should be at least be given her in that aspect because most authors either studied a bachelor's in English (and don't write well but got published anyways) or didn't study literature or creative writing and got a book deal. Out of all young popular writers, I give her the most credit because she's putting in the work to be a better writer.
I also get the self-insert thing about Athena Liu possibly ticking some people, but I personally don't find it off-putting because authors has been doing this since the beginning of literature history. The Bell Jar is technically Plath's self-insert story, but I don't see people criticizing that story on that fact when they're doing the same for Yellowface.
Overall, I think this book is fantastic. As someone who's in academia, I could see it possibly be picked up to be read in undergraduate English classes. I'm rooting for Kuang to get better at writing and I would love to see what research she's doing in her PhD.