Yellowface by R.F. Kuang @ Baldwin's Book Barn

We will meet at Baldwin's Book Barn in West Chester and discuss the book Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (fiction, 336 pages, 9 hrs audio). Optional lunch in West Chester after the meeting.

Park at Baldwin's Book Barn, 865 Lenape Rd, West Chester, PA. If you are interested in carpooling from the Penn Medicine Valley Forge parking lot, send me a message or post in the discussion.

White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang.

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo?

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media.