Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is now currently being hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Blurb from Goodreads

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody 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 to the British and French war efforts 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.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! How was everyone’s weekend? I hope you were able to spend it wisely and that you were able to rest and recover well in preparation for the challenges that the coming week will present. Yeah, I do realize that Monday is the least favorite day of the week by most of you but I hope everyone had a great start to the week. I hope that you will all be able to accomplish all the tasks you set out to accomplish. I hope everyone will have a productive week. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in mind, body, and spirit.

To kick off another week of blogging, I am sharing a fresh Goodreads Monday update. I spent June basking in the diversity of Asian literature. Despite having a very productive reading month – with fifteen books completed, it is my most prolific reading month ever – I have decided to extend my stay in Asia this July. With the exception of Japanese literature, I recently realized how lacking my exploration of Asian literature is. My forays into Chinese and Indian literature, for instance, are lacking. My venture into my own Filipino literature is also starkly lacking. To redress this dichotomy is one of my goals in dedicating two months to works of Asian literature.

Since April, I aligned the books I featured in this weekly update with my current reading motif. As such, I will be featuring a work by an Asian writer for this Goodreads Monday update. Today, I am featuring R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface. Born in China but was raised in the United States, Kuang shot to fame in 2018 with the publication of her debut novel, The Poppy War. It was followed by two sequels. I think a friend was asking me if I have a copy of the trilogy as it was recommended to him by a co-worker. The book was also ubiquitous. Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of the books. Besides, I have never heard of Kuang before.

A couple of months later, I would again encounter Kuang. While searching for books to include in my 2023 Top 10 Books I Look Forward to List, I learned about her upcoming release. Yellowface, it seems, is quite different from her first three works; her fourth novel, Babel, is a work of historical fiction. The book is an exploration of the publishing industry, which kind of reminds me of Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl. Speaking of Harris’ debut novel, the title of Kuang’s fifth novel reminds me of the controversial blackface. I am interested to check out the connection between this and the publishing industry through the lens of Kuang.

I just obtained a copy of the book and I am hoping that it will make part of my July Asian Literature Month. How about you fellow reader? How was your Monday? What books have you added to your reading list? Do drop it in the comment box. For now, happy Monday and, as always, happy reading!