Asian American Representation in Literature: An Author Talk with Rebecca F. Kuang

We welcome you to register for a thrilling conversation with Rebecca F. Kuang (R.F. Kuang) as she chats with us about her New York Times bestselling novel, Yellowface. Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media.

In Yellowface, 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? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

White lies, dark humor, and deadly consequences await within the pages of Yellowface. With its totally immersive first-person voice, Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable. Register to join the conversation! 

About the Author: Rebecca F. Kuang is the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Chinese literature, and Asian American literature.