Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

Lots of people found this to be an immersive satirical novel takes the reader on a thrilling journey through the eyes of a writer who struggles to make her own way in the cut-throat world of publishing. It was the reader's fiction choise for Goodreads, and the New York Times put is on their Notable Books list for 2023; it found critical acclaim elsewhere as well. I, on the other hand, did not care for it. I am not much for satire, of course, and that could be the heart of my problem with it, but I just found it cringe worthy, not eye opening. The plot it this: a young white author who steals the manuscript of her dead Asian friend, finishes it, and publishes it as her own. She works to maintain the lie that her first big hit novel The Last Front, a story about Chinese workers in the British Army during WWI, is indeed her work and her work only--she is convincing both the reader and herself. The irony is that not only does she face accusations of theft and plagiarism, but the optics of a white woman writing about and therefore profiting off the work of an Asian event, which creates a platform for accusations of racism. The issues with who can write about what being taken to an extreme are well presented, but I struggled with the unfortunate series of events and where the story landed as a result.