16 Great Yellowface Book Club Questions
Looking for Yellowface book club questions for your next reading group meeting? Here are 16 thought-provoking discussion questions to get you guys going!
Yellowface is R F Kuang’s fifth book and was another roaring success by this talented young author. This book has quickly become one of my favourite reads and I’ve been recommending it to everyone ever since I finished it.
It’s super readable, and simultaneously entertaining and thought-provoking, which makes it perfect for book club discussions. You can check out my full Yellowface review here.
Yellowface Summary
Yellowface tells the story of June Hayward and Athena Liu, two young women living in Washington DC, friends (or “friends”) and writers.
Athena is a very successful author already, but June is struggling to get her agent to even respond to her.
When Athena suddenly passes away, June takes this opportunity to steal Athena’s unpublished manuscript right from her study.
June edits and finishes the novel before sending it to her agent under her own name.
The draft is incredibly well-received, and June snags a book deal with a top publisher.
But Athena’s final story is about the Chinese Labour Corps and their role in WW1, and June is not Chinese.
The book is published under a racially ambiguous pen name, Juniper Song, but this leads to a lot of assumptions and questions for June.
Yellowface explores a huge number of themes in a relatively short number of pages: diversity in the publishing industry, cancel culture, racial appropriation and intense jealousy.
Here are some book club questions to get the conversation started with your group.
16 Yellowface Book Club Questions
- Do you think June could have done more to save Athena? Do you think she may have deliberately let Athena choke?
- What do you think was going through June’s head when she took Athena’s work? What do you think June expected to happen?
- Do you think June and Athena were ever really friends? Do you think either June or Athena has any real friends or relationships?
- What did you think of the character June? Did your feelings about her change at all while reading Yellowface? Did you ever find yourself agreeing with her opinions or actions? Did you sympathise with her?
- We mostly learn about Athena through the eyes of others: June, her ex, her mother. Did you like the character Athena based on what you learnt about her? Did your opinion of her change over the course of the book?
- Do you think that June plagiarised Athena’s work by publishing The Last Front? What about her second story with material ‘borrowed’ from Athena? Where do you think the line is between copying and inspiration for writers?
- What do you think of June changing her name to Juniper Song when she published The Last Front? Do you think it’s unethical to use an ambiguous pen name?
- Do you think June had any right to write about the Chinese labour corps? Did Athena? Do you think stories can only be written by people with personal lived experience of the issues discussed?
- What did you think of June’s attitude when people found out that she had no Chinese heritage? Do you think the way she acts is justified?
- June falls into a negative spiral of reading what people say about her and her works online. Do you think authors should always avoid looking themselves up online? What do you think of reviewers tagging authors in their reviews? Should reviewers only tag an author in a positive review?
- Did you suspect the identity of June’s online stalker? Who else did you think it might be?
- What do you think happens to June after the end of the story? Do you think she goes on to have further literary success?
- Given the author is an Asian American writer herself, how much truth do you think there is in Yellowface about how diversity is treated in the publishing industry? Do you think certain events in the book might have been inspired by real events?
- The title of the book is a play on words. What do you think of the title of the book?
- Yellowface has won numerous awards since its publication but was mysteriously excluded from the Hugo Awards hosted in China in 2023. Kuang was not the only author of Chinese descent to have been excluded. What do you think of this controversy? Do you think awards like this should not be held in countries that have different political systems and beliefs that might be at odds with typical ‘Western’ values?
- Kuang has award-winning books in totally different fields – The Poppy War Trilogy, Babel and Yellowface. Have you read any of these other books by R F Kuang? Do you think her success is justified, or do you think her success may be down to her being the “token” Asian author (as Kuang herself has been told before).
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I hope you have a fun and thought-provoking book club discussion with the above pointers!
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