What happens when a struggling writer gets the opportunity she has always wanted, only because someone else is no longer around to claim it? In R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, June Hayward finds an unpublished manuscript belonging to her successful friend Athena Liu after Athena’s sudden death. She takes it, polishes it, and publishes it under her own name. What follows is part literary thriller, part satire, and part deeply uncomfortable look at the stories we tell ourselves.
June knows exactly what she is doing, even when she finds increasingly elaborate ways to convince herself otherwise. The manuscript tells the story of the Chinese Labour Corps during the First World War, making June’s decision even more complicated as questions of race, cultural appropriation and who gets to tell particular stories begin to surface. Soon, her stolen success becomes tangled in social media outrage, publishing politics and the fear of being exposed.
