Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface made me think deeper about how easily narratives can become accepted as truth, particularly when the public has neither the time nor the means to verify everything we encounter in the digital age.

June’s claim to Athena Liu’s manuscript is harmful not in the least because she deceives others, but because she gradually reconstructs and adjusts her story until she herself appears to believe that the work is partly, or even primarily, her own. This distinction between an objective truth and perceived truth is central to the novel: a claim can be false while still producing very real social consequences if enough people accept it. Kuang, therefore, made me more skeptical both of narratives themselves and of the authority that’s granted to those who tell them. Although June is spectacularly exposed by the novel’s end, real life rarely offers such a neat resolution. The text consequently reinforces the need to ask not only whether a claim is true, but who benefits from presenting events in a particular way, especially in political and media discourse.