Books & Boba discussion

For our April "Patron's Choice" pick, we are reading YELLOWFACE by RF Kuang, which was perfect as this book's been on both Marvin and Reera's TBR list for a while now. Yellowface tells the story of a white author who steals the manuscript from her recently diseased Asian friend and publishes it as her own. Read along with us on here (or on Discord if you're a Patreon supporter)!

Went into Yellowface completely blind, though I knew the story would be decent because I enjoyed Babel. This book was a great introduction to book/booktok/publishing drama that I had previously not been aware was even a thing. The main character is incredibly unlikeable and reading her takes on Chinese culture, food, etc. made me want to throw the book across the room (which definitely speaks to how well the character is written). I completed the book feeling like I had learned something about the world of publishing, even though the lesson was that I needed to take my rose tinted glasses off (i.e., nothing in this world is merit based, despite how much we want to believe it is). After the deep reddit rabbitholes post-read, I learned that there were other readers that wished that Kuang had gone deeper into the privilege that is baseline for authors to even write a book, nonetheless have a "successful" book, but that didn't bother me as much.

I read this a while ago and really liked it, although not as much as Babel. I agree with you about the lead character but I admired Kuang's ability to make June sympathetic as well as obnoxious. I did think that Kuang had a tendency to try to deal with too broad a range of issues though and the overall structure felt a bit unbalanced/uneven.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I started it today and it’s giving me so much anxiety! I want so badly for June to get busted, but as she digs her hole deeper we get to think about another layer of the ugliness of racism, privilege, competition, etc. What a clever premise to allow us to consider these things.

Episode #269 on Yellowface is excellent. Really enjoyed it!

This had me think a bit about Bill Cheng's Southern Cross the Dog

Ming wrote: "Episode #269 on Yellowface is excellent. Really enjoyed it!"

Aww, thank you so much for listening. We really could have talked forever on that episode.

Rebecca is giving a talk near where I live in October. Cheapest ticket is £36 though. I’ve never been to a talk like this before though. Is it worth it?

Chris wrote: "Rebecca is giving a talk near where I live in October. Cheapest ticket is £36 though. I’ve never been to a talk like this before though. Is it worth it?"

That depends. Does the ticket come with a book? I would still try to attend the talk because Rebecca is very eloquent and thoughtful with her answers. You can also see if she has any book talks/signings in local bookshops. Sometimes authors do multiple events in one city before moving on in their tour.