I too have wondered if I’m in demand to tick diversity boxes. As an Asian American journalist, I’ve felt pressures similar to those Kuang explores. Talking via phone with Kuang felt like finally divulging secrets we’ve all known. Steph Cha shares a meal and some notes on performing identity with the “Interior Chinatown” author. She scores a big book deal and rides a wave of “own voices” storytelling in ways that make you question everything.īooks Charles Yu knows the world isn’t black and white June, who is white, publishes it as her own, but under a new, racially ambiguous name - Juniper Song. When rising-star novelist Athena Liu dies suddenly, her fellow writer and frenemy June Hayward is right there to pick up the pieces - or rather, to steal Athena’s manuscript, a saga involving Chinese laborers during World War I. A dark satire on the publishing industry and the many-layered ironies of public discourse around Asian American representation, it starts with a first-chapter twist. She has already published four fantasy novels infused with Chinese history and profound questions about colonial legacies, including the “Poppy War” trilogy and last year’s bestseller, “Babel, or the Necessity of Violence.”īut Kuang’s new novel, “ Yellowface,” out Tuesday, is both a departure and a quantum leap straight into the zeitgeist. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.
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