we've never hated a main character more - yellowface by r. f. kuang

Athena Liu had everything Juniper Hayward wanted... and then she died. and so begins the story for Juniper 'June' Hayward, our completely despicable and unhinged (white) protagonist who can't. stop. lying. 

in this month's episode, we dig into Yellowface by R. F. Kuang. we talk about books written about influencers in the age of influencers, the murky and confusing connections between fiction and reality, and what could make a book with such an unlikeable protagonist so compulsively readable. throughout the episode we touch on cultural appropriation and ask the question: who gets to tell what story?

synopsis music by James Minor

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join talk lit, get hit podcast for deep dives into the hottest BookTok recommendations, trending contemporary fiction, and literary favourites! each episode features book discussions, spoiler-filled chats, and thoughtful literary analysis of novels everyone is talking about - from viral romance and fantasy to modern classics. whether you’re looking for BookTok book reviews, author interviews, or a virtual book club experience, out podcast is your go-to space for readers who love stories and want to explore them in depth.

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Transcript

Laura 0:00

And it was all yellow. Hello and welcome to Talk Lit Get Hit, a podcast where we read viral books the internet won't shut up about and rate them lit or shit.

Bridget 0:10

We're your hosts Bridget and Laura, lovers of sad girl fiction and tragic endings, heroes of smart, urban fantasy, and the Who Did This To You trope. Join us as we pick apart all the books the internet loves and embark on a journey to figure out why.

Laura 0:25

It is the age of Instagram, the age of algorithms, swiping right and swiping left, thumbs up, thumbs down, and the ever-present threat of cancellation. It is the age of influencers. And for the month of May, we are reading the satirical thriller all about white lies, appropriation, and their deadly consequences. This month we're reading Yellowface by R. F. Quang. Bridget? Hello, hello.

Bridget 0:46

Hello, hello, how are you?

Laura 0:47

I am so well. How are you? I'm well. It's cold today. I know.

Bridget 0:51

I bust out a jumper, got socks on. It's like the second it gets below 23 degrees, I'm like, oh, it's so chilly.

Laura 1:00

Yeah, not to expose you, but you did actually light a fire last night.

Bridget 1:04

I know for the first time. We didn't light it last year because we were too scared that it was broken. But we got some guy to come and look at it and he was like, Yep, seems fine.

Laura 1:12

You guys just don't know anything about fire.

Bridget 1:14

No, also like survival instincts, I guess, because we built it and then about half an hour later it fizzled out to nothing. So we might have another go.

Laura 1:21

Apart from becoming the first man, what else have you been up to?

Bridget 1:26

Embarrassingly, I've gotten back into Pokemon Go. So that's taken up a lot of like time.

Laura 1:32

I'm actually amazed it's still supported and operating.

Bridget 1:36

It is pumping, let me tell you. The amount of money they're getting from me is incredible because you can buy like tickets to events. I've been hitting up the local park for events every weekend. There's so many people playing it, you just need to know where to look. I played it from the first day it was out, but probably like four years. And then maybe COVID I stopped. Just picked it back up again. I didn't even like Pokemon as a kid.

Laura 1:57

No, it's never been a feature in your personality.

Bridget 2:00

I love games. I love iPhone games. And this is one that is just so easy to spend all your time on.

Laura 2:05

Yeah, I was thinking about your love for games recently because when I was on holiday, I tried to download some phone games. I have a new phone now, I have more storage slash any storage, and I was like, it's the new me. I'm getting into phone games. And I asked you for some recommendations, and every single one you recommended, I downloaded it, played it for like 10 minutes, deleted it instantly. Because you knew it was gonna take your whole life. No, because I just don't have any patience for games. I kept Sudoku and I kept Solitaire.

Bridget 2:35

Fair. I've been playing Roller Coaster Tycoon. I downloaded that. Remastered for Apple Arcade, and that's taken up a lot of my time and anguish because that was just one level that oh, I just couldn't get past. But I've been playing it on my iPad, which makes me feel like a middle-aged mum playing Candy Crush at night or like Heyday. It's so much better on the iPad. It's so fun.

Laura 2:56

Yeah, I think an iPad would be great. That's probably another thing I don't like, the tiny screen. I've entered in a different way, I've entered middle-age. What have you been up to? I think the main event of my month was going on holidays. We finally made it to New Zealand, which is where my husband's from. So it was sort of like our honeymoon slash family time slash holiday. And it was so nice. It looked fantastic. It was great. New Zealand just had a cyclone as well in a baffling turn of events. I feel like that should be bigger news than Brisbane having a cyclone because that seems even weirder to me, but maybe it's normal. I don't know. New Zealanders weigh in. Is that right? But um we had good weather, thankfully. It was a real treat. It was just lots of sightseeing, eating, and op shopping, actually. Kind of in the theme of jackets. I think one of the main things that was getting us to think, should we just move to New Zealand? was that in every op shop there was such a smorgasbord of jackets and like really cool retro ski ones and like hoodies and stuff. I feel like when you get that in Australia, they're flogged to death because you're not buying them all the time. But in New Zealand, they're in great condition. We're big jacket people.

Bridget 4:06

I think you don't really get a chance to wear them that much here either. Like you maybe wear them in the morning, and then as the day warms up, it's like, get this jacket off me. Imagine moving to New Zealand. Oh, what made you come? Oh, just the jacket. Just the jacket culture. I'd get evicted.

Laura 4:21

I do think the bakeries in New Zealand are second to none. And I think the way that they've hung on to not really elevating their bakeries to become patisseries is truly remarkable. But that's not to say there's no craft behind what's going on there. Because like everyone we went to had an utter smorkers board of pies with the most intriguing and delicious flavours, like smoked fish pie, lamb and mint pie, butter chicken pie, creamy pork and mushroom. And it wasn't just a concept, it was executed flawlessly. Honestly, I'm New Zealand's pies' biggest advocate. Bring them here.

Bridget 4:57

What about their like cakes and stuff? Because I was imagining that when you said bakeries. Do they have good pastry selections?

Laura 5:03

They have excellent pastry selections. And I think it's funny because everyone I spoke to had a different one or two things that you have to try in New Zealand. It was like, oh, you've got to get white bait fritters and a raspberry milkshake. Oh, you've got to get a cheese scone and a cheese and mince pie. And mine was ginger slice, which I know you can get in Australia, but just seems to be more plentiful in New Zealand. I do love a cheese and mince pie. The Afghan biscuits with the chocolate and cornflakes and the little walnut on top. Oh, I love a vanilla slice.

Bridget 5:33

Even though they're quite hard to eat because it's like a big slab of nothing.

Laura 5:37

I could talk bakeries all day.

Bridget 5:40

Could be a bonus chapter.

Laura 5:43

What about reading? What have you been reading this month?

Bridget 5:45

I had a bit of a frenzy of a few days where I read the Rebel Blue Ranch series. And I read this because we got the third book as an ARC, and I always feel bad if I don't read the first few books in the series. I don't know, I just like can't give a review if I don't know what's going on, if that makes sense. I feel like it's unfair.

Laura 6:03

Yeah, it does make sense. You can't be making claims about the plot if you're not there from the origin.

Bridget 6:09

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have bothered with this one, but I did enjoy the first book, so that was done and dusted. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking, this is a saddle club book, this is a thoroughbred book. More horses, please. Unfortunately, after that, it didn't really follow that trajectory. Like the second one, Swift and Saddled, they barely rode horses. So why call it Swift and Saddled if you're not even gonna get on a freaking horse?

Laura 6:34

For God's sake!

Bridget 6:37

I'm gonna report them to the ACCC or whatever they're called. But actually, it was quite embarrassing because I was reading them on my Kindle and I left my Kindle in the hotel that I was at in Brisbane, and I was reading the second book, Swift and Saddled, my enemy. I mean, I loved the covers. I think they're very fantastic, like Western Mills and Boone style, really nice. But it's an unfortunate one to leave in a hotel that seems to be staffed exclusively by upper class men. On the front cover of this one is a cowboy, obviously, and he's got his hand on the stomach of the girl, and she's wearing overalls, and one side has come unclasped. So she's just like half undressed. And I was so embarrassed, and I got actually Brian to call her, and I was like, I can't go in this is so embarrassing. So he had to go and get it. Other than that, it's sort of been a slow reading month. I really enjoyed two books that I read back to back: Henry Henry by Alan Bratton. That was another ARC that we got, and Swimming in the Dark by Thomas Jadrowski. Both of them are quite tragic in different ways, and sometimes I think you just need to have a run of tragic books to really get you in the mood. How about you?

Laura 7:43

Yeah, I've also had a slow period of reading. I did tick off two of my 25 for 25. So one was NW by Zadie Smith, and I thought that was pretty good. I don't know if it was the right place to start because Zadie Smith does have quite a few books, but I thought that the prose and the characters were interesting enough to make me want to read something else by her, if not the plot. But it did kind of leave me with a slightly empty, unsettled feeling, which is sometimes what I look for in a book. So I think I liked that. I also read Monstrilio by Gerardo Simano Cordova. This was also on my 25 for 25, and this was really good. It was kind of unlike anything I've ever read before. The premise is sort of around a family whose I think it's like 10 or 11-year-old son dies, and in her grief, the mother cuts out a piece of his lung and feeds the lung. It comes to life and is this monstrous little creature, and it's sort of grappling with these questions of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a human and the terrible shapes that grief can take and the strange things we do to cope. But I really couldn't get past this one review that said whole family gay as hell, OMG. Because actually, like as the story progresses, most of the characters dip in and out of homosexuality. And it's just such it was a really beautiful book. That review ripped me straight out of it. But they did rate it four stars, so there's that. Another book that I read that I really enjoyed was Hunger Stone by Kat Dunn, and it's a feminist reworking of a book called Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Lafarnu. So that was released in 1872. Um, so it was like pre-dating Dracula, and it's kind of like this gothic vampire tale. I loved it. It was very like sapphic, very seductive. The word that kept popping into mind was delicious, and I don't think I think that very often about books. I thought it was weird that it was floating around in my head, but um, I really can't think of a better descriptor. I really, really enjoyed this book. The last thing that I read that's worth commenting on is Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley, and I've seen a heck of a lot of hype about this over the last few months, and it was fine. It was okay. I don't you may feel differently if and when you read it. There was something of tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow about it. But to me, it kind of felt like one of those books that was just telling you all about the love that was there and like self-mythologizing in real time kind of thing. I just didn't really find that I cared about it.

Bridget 10:20

Am I right in thinking it's talking about real songs?

Laura 10:24

Yeah, so it is talking about real songs and real bands, real deep cuts. And actually that was probably the more interesting element of it to me, which is strange because I've never really considered myself someone that's sort of really interested in reading about music writing, much less writing about artists and songs that I'm not really familiar with. Um, but I liked the descriptions of them and I liked the kind of interpretations. What I didn't really like was the characters, which was unfortunately what was holding everything together. I did read a review that said this felt like the author had a lot of really 2000s music opinions and really wanted to share it somewhere. That was my takeaway as well, and I think probably she should have just done that because it was good.

Bridget 11:02

It is kind of dumb, but I find books where people are talking about songs that I know kind of annoying because they sort of talk about it as if no one else has ever heard the song, or the song doesn't mean anything to anyone else but them. And I don't know if that's just me, like for some reason it just annoys me. I don't know why.

Laura 11:17

Yeah, I had the same sort of feeling when I was reading this, and it was something that I think the characters were trying to be a little bit self-aware about. I was thinking about our discussions of things like if we were villains, because I find myself getting this sort of secondhand embarrassment when people talk in this really grandiose way about music and by extension art. It's too complicated for me to figure out why. I was wondering if it is that real element of earnestness that shines through, like people saying, This is what this song means to me, and this is how it made me feel as a definitive take. Maybe that's what I find strange or uncomfortable about it, but anyway. I didn't love the experience of reading it. We should probably talk about Yellowface, the book that this episode is meant to be all about. Probably. Alright, so you'd never read this book before, is that right?

Bridget 12:06

I have never read any book by RF Kwang before. She is one of the authors that I've been saving. I bought a copy of Yellowface and Babel a few years ago. They've just been sitting in a stack of books staring at me, waiting for me to read them. I just see a lot of people whose tastes align with mine talking about how much they loved them and I'm really interested in the subject matter. I just have always thought that sounds like my kind of book, but didn't want to read it because I wanted to save it for something good or save it for the podcast. Because there's a few books that I've thought, I'll save that for when we read it on the podcast. You have read this book before though, am I right?

Laura 12:41

I have read this book before, but it's the only RF Quang book that I've read, and it was interesting to hear that you have that opinion of her. I was thinking about how I have this idea that she's this infallible genius. I don't know where that idea really comes from because I have only read Yellow Face by her. I own all of the Poppy War books and I own Babel. And even when her new book, which isn't yet released, Catabasis, was announced, I was like, oh, genius, amazing, flawless. It sounds great. I can't wait to get my hands on it. And I don't really know why I'm so enamoured with her because I haven't really read anything by her.

Bridget 13:18

I have the same perception. I don't know why. I think I might have seen a few TikTok videos where she's speaking in panels or, you know, author events, and I just thought, wow, she sounds so smart.

Laura 13:28

She does sound so smart. So apparently I read it at some point in October 2023, and I couldn't remember too much about the plot which worked out in my favour this time around, but I know that I felt favorably overall. It was probably sitting somewhere around a four-star, and I didn't really think about it too much or couldn't articulate it, but there are a few things that just weren't quite right that meant it didn't quite make it to that five star. But overall, I was like, yeah, this is great. I was excited to read it again though and see if that changed because so many people were asking us to read it that it made me think, oh, do people think it's shit? Or do people think it's really good? In this episode, we'll be discussing the plot of Yellowface by R. F. Quang in detail. This means there will be spoilers. If you haven't read the book and don't want spoilers, make sure you save the episode before you hit the pause button. We'll always be here when you're done reading.

Bridget 14:16

In our episode this month, we may be discussing themes of racism, assault, blackmailing, self-harm, suicide, and death.

Laura 14:26

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?

Bridget 14:38

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 labourers during World War I.

Laura 14:50

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.

Bridget 15:08

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.

Laura 15:23

Permission to ask for your post-reading feelings? Permission granted.

Bridget 15:28

I loved it. I think it was juicy. I wanted to keep reading constantly. I think it is always a mark of fantastic craftship when you absolutely hate the main character. They're just the worst person you've ever experienced in your life, but you just can't keep from reading on. I thought it was so funny, so smart. And I also feel like I know the character of Juniper so well. She did a great job at capturing that certain person. How about you? How did you feel in your second time?

Laura 15:57

Yeah, I think you echoed my thoughts exactly. I thought it was so smashable while not being trashy. I thought that was something that was especially good about it. Even though, you know, I think, as we'll discuss her, a few things that I thought detracted from it somewhat. Overall, I was like, wow, this is really smart, but I'm getting through it and I don't feel like I'm being bogged down with thinking and interpreting. Same as you, I just felt like I couldn't get enough of June, even though she was despicable. It was like watching a dumpster fire. And I just felt like my mouth was loose on its hinges the whole time I was reading this. I just kept scoffing like, oh constantly. For some reason, earlier this week I was thinking about books that I would recommend generally to people. And I really, on the whole, don't like giving book recommendations because I think I like a very specific type of book. And I don't know too many people that like the same sort of book. Basically, you're like the person that is a good bet, and then everyone else is up in the air.

Bridget 17:06

I feel the same way.

Laura 17:09

Maybe you like it, I don't know. Sorry, you don't hate me. I was just trying to think, like, I think I saw a question, a book that I would recommend to anyone, and I was like, I really cannot think of a book that I would recommend to everyone. And this is probably as close as I've come. I think the way that it dips between these different genres, like it's kind of satire, it's quite funny, it's dark, it's a little bit spooky, it's reasonably literary, but at the same time, it's quite commercial and easy to get through. I think that gives it quite a broad appeal. And even though Athena is unhinged, depending on where you slot in on the political scale, one way or another, there's something you're gonna get out of June's character, whether it's sympathy or repulsion or whatever in between. I just think it's very interesting.

Bridget 18:01

I was reading an article from Rolling Stone from when Yellowface was first released. They described it by saying, reading it feels like you opened a Dickens novel that turned out to be a snappy Colleen Hoover thriller. And while I wouldn't want my writing to be compared to a Colleen Hoover thriller, I think I understand what they're saying, and it's just like what you said. Like it is snappy, but I think another word to describe it would be accessible. I have seen a few criticisms of the way that the author puts race theory and racism into her books, and people say that she's explaining it a bit too far, and she's sort of rubbing it in people's faces, and there's no nuance left for people to uncover themselves. I think sometimes blatant racism on the page is something that people need to see because all of these things are microaggressions, and people get pissed off when they're accused of microaggressions because they don't understand what that means. But I think having something written on the page so blatantly will help people that are sort of, you know, seesawing between right wing, left wing, maybe make their minds up and think, oh, this is what people mean when they say that. It might act as sort of a mirror as well for like little things that people say and they don't realize they could be harmful. I mean, that's wishful thinking, I think. But I just think about some people in my life who say things like Juniper does in the book, and I was wondering how they would perceive reading her words written on the page. And I think that when you see something in black and white removed from any sort of emotional situation or, I guess, blame, some people might think, oh, I see why that could be construed as rude or racist. And so I think that can only be a good thing.

Laura 19:35

Yeah, I would basically echo what you say, and I think there is layers to it. Before we get talking too much about the plot, I think we should have a little bit of a chat about RF Kwang herself as well, because she was unbelievably, I think, 27 years old when this came out. So she was born in 1996. She's two years younger than us. And she's written four genre fantasy books before this. So we have the Poppy Wars trilogy, which she started writing when she was 19 years old. And they are hefty, like they are girthy tomes, dare I say. And she also has Babel, which came out before Yellow Face. She has an undergraduate degree in international economics with a minor in Asian studies from Georgetown University. Looking through information about her, it's like she's just collecting prestigious university associations. She has associations with Magdalene College, Cambridge, Oxford. She's currently pursuing a PhD at Yale, and I don't really know where all of this is leading, apart from saying that she's very smart.

Bridget 20:37

I was reading an interview that was published on Camilla Reed's.com, and it was titled A Chat with RF Kwang on Writing Historical Inspired Novels. The interviewer asked her, how did you find the time to write The Poppy War while studying? Which blew my mind even further. Because even though I had read that she was, you know, 19 when the first book came out and she's doing all of these degrees and whatever, I just didn't quite put two and two together that that meant she was writing whilst studying. And that is unbelievable to me because I mean I have no motivation for any kind of assignment writing, but imagine doing assignment writing, learning, studying, lectures, whatever, as well as writing and editing and doing all of that stuff. Can't imagine it.

Laura 21:19

No, I can't imagine it either. And I feel like so many people talk about writing as work and it like a sort of unpleasant work that you have to keep chipping away at. And that's always been the way that I view it, but it seems like it's just kind of chill out. Brain rot time for her. Well, she answered and she said, This is such a difficult question.

Bridget 21:38

The simple, honest answer is that I really didn't find time to write. I wrote The Poppy War when I was on a gap year between my sophomore and junior years in Beijing. I was working a full time job, but crucially, I didn't have any homework to do after I got home from work at five every day. So I had seven hours of free time every single day to draft my first novel. I'm not sure I ever would have started otherwise. The sequels were A different story. I was finishing up my senior year when I finished the first draft of the Dragon Republic and working on my master's thesis at Oxford when I turned in the burning god. That was torture. I was playing triage all the time. Either I'd fall behind on book stuff, most of the time I fell behind on book stuff, or I was barely getting papers in on time. It was exceedingly difficult, and I ended up missing out on a lot of fun stuff over the past few years because I've never not been under a book deadline. But I can't complain. I got a trilogy out before I turned 25, and that's a pretty cool accomplishment.

Laura 22:31

Pretty cool find.

Bridget 22:34

Reading that, I just thought, mmm, she's not addicted to her phone the same way that I am, because she said that she had seven hours to write every day, and I'm thinking, yeah, but what about TikTok time?

Laura 22:43

So the release of this novel was quite a jump from her previous work, and we might talk about this a little bit more later on, but I think something that people mention a lot when they're talking about this book is the question of how much of herself and how much of her experiences in the publishing industry RF Kwang is putting into Yellowface. I know we mentioned at the start of the episode that we both have this really mythical positive impression of her, despite having not read much. But somehow, even I remember when Yellowface was coming out, like before it was released, I remember seeing these things that were like searing indictment of the publishing industry, Twitter takedowns, RF Quang tells all kind of thing. And I think even the title Yellowface itself really struck a chord. Maybe we could take a minute just to talk very briefly about what is meant by the term yellow face. We're in luck because on the cover it does say yellow face noun. The practice of wearing makeup to imitate an East Asian person. This practice is generally regarded as offensive. So I think this has a long history in the film industry, in particular in Hollywood, where white actors are used to play Asian characters in a way that's really promoting or perpetuating these harmful and untruthful racial stereotypes. I guess some examples that come to mind are Mickey Rooney and Breakfast at Tiffany's as an Australian, Chris Lilly as Ricky Wong in We Can Be Heroes. So we have those really blatant examples of it, and I think, you know, finally now we've all agreed that's not okay. But I think it still persists in this more sort of insidious way. One example that I'm thinking of is Scarlett Johansson and The Ghost in the Shell, which was an adaptation of a Japanese manga, and her character was meant to be, or definitely could have been, played by a Japanese actor.

Bridget 24:29

I do remember when Emma Stone was cast in the movie Aloha. The character was meant to be a quarter Chinese and a quarter Hawaiian. So there's two cultures there that have just been completely wiped out by employing a white woman. Chris Lilly again. This is stuck in my brain. He played Jen Okazaki in Angry Boys in 2011, which doesn't feel like that long. That's a recent history. Very, very recent. Also, Ariana. I feel like as she made her uh transition from Black Iana into what do they call her? Arigato Grande. Yeah. And now she's fully committed to being her natural white woman self, I think. But so far. So far, we don't know where she's going next. But that's sort of who comes to mind when I think of Yellowface. Those are the three main people in my brain.

Laura 25:16

Yeah, so we've kind of moved away from explicit yellow face to just blanket whitewashing. Yes. Which is, I'm sure, something we'll mention later on when we talk about June and the process of her um improving Athena's novel. Speaking of June, should we have a chat about our leading lady?

Bridget 25:36

Yes. I don't think there is a book where I have disliked the main character quite so much. I honestly can't think of a time where I've disliked somebody more than I've disliked June.

Laura 25:46

I think the distinction is disliked the character but enjoyed the book because I hated Anastasia Steele. Yes. But I hated everything about that book.

Bridget 25:55

Yes. That is a good distinction to make because incredible writing, incredible plot, incredible inner monologue of an awful, awful person.

Laura 26:04

In a couple of the interviews I read or listened to with RF Kwang, she mentioned being inspired by, I guess, so-called mean girls in literature. So people like Amy Dunn in Gone Girl or The protagonist in The Woman in the Window. Sorry to that woman. I don't remember her name. Oh, I mean the girl on the train, whatever. The title is the woman. So the woman, a girl. And she's kind of mentioned this really mean, snarky internal monologue that's really prevalent in this genre and her desire to kind of borrow that and use it in this novel. I think she's done such an excellent job of that. June is really just such a miserable person. She is awful.

Bridget 26:49

The things that she was saying, I wasn't even thinking like, you can't say that. Like I wasn't up on a higher horse thinking you shouldn't be saying that because it's racist or whatever. I just thought, why would you even be thinking this?

Laura 27:00

You suck. I really was thinking, can there truly be a person like this? But at the same time thinking, yeah, I know exactly who this person is.

Bridget 27:10

I think even when she was being quote unquote nice, she was still quite evil and quite nasty with her thoughts. I'm thinking about when she first began the mentoring program. This was on page 95. So she's describing this young girl, this young novelist who has sent her an email about how much she admires her work. And this is around the time when everybody is assuming that she is Asian. None of the controversy has really come out so far. And so she describes Emmy. She says, Emmy is based out in San Francisco. So we do our first mentoring session over Zoom. She's pretty in a fresh-faced, innocent way, like a cute bunny rabbit, like a defanged Athena. And I instinctively feel an urge to sweep her under my coat and protect her. I just felt like she was so condescending because she can't be more than 10 years older than this girl. The way she talks about her, like she has this adorable habit of tucking her hair behind her ears every time she finishes a sentence. Like she's sort of perpetuating that myth of like the good little Asian girl, and she's saying all of these things. And I just think even when she's being nice, she is still being condescending and nasty. And she's so clueless with what she's saying, and she's so self-righteous. In that same Zoom call, Emmy is sort of sharing her doubts about herself and whether her book has a place in the publishing world. And June says to her, I don't think you have anything to worry about. If anything, it's easier now than ever to be Asian in this industry. Diversity is what's selling right now. Editors are hungry for marginalized voices. You'll get plenty of opportunities for being different, Emmy. I mean, a queer Asian girl, that's every checkbox on the list. They'll be slobbering all over this manuscript. Which is not only racist, like it's also just completely diminishing the works of this author and every other Asian author. She changes her mind about Emmy and doesn't think she's adorable any longer after Emmy realizes that she's white. And she says, if you don't mind me asking, are you white? My surprise must show on my face because she immediately apologizes. Sorry, I don't know if that's cool to say. I just I'm like song. That's kind of ambiguous, so I just wanted to know. I am white, I say more frostily than I'd intended. What is she insinuating? That I can't be a good mentor to her unless I'm Asian? Song is my middle name. My mother gave it to me. Okay, Emmy says and tucks her hair back behind her ears again. Um, cool. I was just asking. And I thought it was interesting that from that moment on she sees Emmy as sort of a competitor. There's not much to like about her.

Laura 29:42

No, there's not much to like about her, and she's just so volatile. Obviously, the narration of this book takes place inside her head, and I was kind of drawing comparisons between her internal monologue and that of Bridget Jones's. And there was one line, like it's kind of a throwaway line, but she says, publishing gossip, it turns out, is a lot of fun when you're speculating about other people's misfortune. And it was kind of similar to a line in Bridget Jones, something to do with Tom and like how it's more fun to be his friend when he's not doing well. I can't remember the quote exactly. I was just thinking about how those sentiments are similar, but every day June lives out her horrible self. Like it plays out in vivid colour. And I was thinking about how the reality of knowing her must be so terrible because throughout this book, she does not have one friend. No, she does not have family that she's close to, she's barely friends with Athena, and every single person she comes into contact with, she hates. I know.

Bridget 30:47

I was thinking about her relationship with her family, and even that I think gave us some clues as to how June really is in real life because she barely speaks to her mother, and when she does, I think she says they're either sitting in silence or they're screaming insults back and forth at each other. And I thought it was so funny. Like when she was in the hospital, her mother and her sister didn't know. The sister didn't really pick up on the calls, they sort of discuss her life behind her back. There doesn't seem to be any warmth coming from Juniper towards them, or vice versa. I think she would be a hard person to have in your family. The way she spoke about her niece and sort of just reduced her to just a girl that was obsessed with TikTok. And she's like, Oh, I wish she was like literary like me. Yeah. She just thinks she's so much smarter than everyone else in the world.

Laura 31:33

Yeah, it would be interesting to have maybe a bit of a better understanding of how she became the person she is because she clearly only views people as things to be leveraged. Like everybody serves her. Like when she goes to that barbecue or whatever with her sister and her sister's husband, and the whole time her internal monologue is like, Ugh, I've exhausted my two topics of conversation and oh, they're so boring and suburban. And like, you know, there's another line that I highlighted where she says, Don't we all want a friend who won't ever challenge our superiority because they already know it's a lost cause? Don't we all need someone who we can treat as a punching bag? And that's just such a deranged mentality for somebody who is evidently so mediocre to have. I guess that's one of the things that is so enjoyable about this book. The only perception that we have of June is her own. And she's clearly not a reliable narrator. And then we get to see that play out after she's co-authored. When she's getting praise for it, she's like, Yeah, that was me. Those were the edits I made. That was my finesse. I turned that around. And then when she's getting criticism, she's like, oh, that's probably that stupid section Athena wrote. Um, oh, she always does this. She's so delusional and it was so juicy to watch someone spin the narrative inside their own head like that.

Bridget 32:53

I think she did have skill in the fact that she was able to keep spinning lies for herself to believe and also for this like invisible audience to sort of justify why she did all these stupid, stupid things. I think the only time I sort of found like a resemblance of a redeeming feature or something was when she was talking about writing and what writing meant to her. And I think this is something that she probably had in common with Athena, because it seemed that Athena really loved writing as well. So on page 225, she says, I can't quit the one thing that gives meaning to my life. Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much. To stop writing would kill me. I'd never be able to walk through a bookstore without fingering the spines with longing, wondering at the lengthy editorial process that got these titles on shelves and reminiscing about my own. And I'd spend the rest of life curdling with jealousy every time someone like Emmy Chu gets a book deal. Every time I learn that some young up and comer is living the life that I should be living. I kept thinking to myself, why don't you just give up? Like you've got away with this hoax, scam, theft, whatever you want to call it. Just let it go and just move on with your life. But I think she has nothing else in her life. She doesn't have any friends, she doesn't have a relationship with her family, she doesn't have a job, which I think is probably a big part of her problem. She just sits at home and whinging all the time. She doesn't have anything else in her life, she doesn't have a single hobby. She doesn't seem to take comfort in like food or culture or like going to museums or traveling. Like she gets all this money and she goes to the dentist and she rents an apartment. And that's all she does. And I think she's just an empty shell who has formed her life around writing, but she sucks at writing too.

Laura 34:38

Yeah, I wonder if this was a cautionary tale about people who read too much freaks. Yeah, it's interesting. There are a couple of other quotes about writing and reading that are the most highlighted ones on Goodreads. So they clearly resonated with a lot of people. So I think that in itself is interesting. But what's also interesting is when you think about who sang them and what it means in the context. One of the quotes that I thought was maybe a little bit ironic was the one that said reading should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore. And I feel like potentially there are a lot of people that have highlighted that being like, Yeah. Let me read my Colleen Hoover.

Bridget 35:17

It is quite funny to imagine people with different political opinions than you and I reading this book. Or even the people that, you know, sort of tend to lean left, but you know, they think that reading isn't political and I'm just vibing, and like they have signs that will say, like, oh, if Carmel was president, I'd be at brunch, and like things like that. And I remember a lot of those things happening when Obama was in office as well. Like they were saying, Oh, like, I voted for Obama, like I'm good, I'm cool, like I'm up with the Therefore I'm faultless. Yes, yes. And she herself says this at some point. She says, I mean, I voted for Obama. I thought that sort of self-righteousness of thinking I voted for Obama, I've done my part, was evident just before the book, The Last Front, came out. And she's talking about sort of reviews that are coming out and um lists that the book is being included on, like 10 best books of the summer, the debuts we can't wait for, and weirdly 15 must-read summer beach reads. And she says, My book even gets chosen for a national book club run by a pretty white Republican woman who is mostly famous for being the daughter of a prominent Republican politician. And this gives me some moral discomfort. But then I figure that if the book club reader base is largely Republican white women, then wouldn't it be good for a novel to broaden their worldviews? I think throughout the book it is so evident that she's constantly patting herself on the back and thinking like she's done this great service to Asian people everywhere and minorities everywhere. She sets up that single scholarship, does that mentoring program, and she goes to speak at like three panel events. But she really is doing the bare minimum.

Laura 36:58

I think she's just such an interesting character because she has such a clear idea of herself as not a racist. And like there are all of those moments like you've mentioned where, you know, she's copying criticism online, but then she gets defense from like a right-wing blog or something like that. And she's kind of like, ooh, I don't want to be associated with those people, but I guess I'll take it. But the reality is that she is echoing the sentiments or like internally echoing the sentiments of those people. And I guess it's interesting to watch it play out because racism can embed itself into your subconscious. And I think Juniper thinks she's tackling racism head-on because of these outward things she's done, like voting for Obama. But the reality is that she's putting in zero effort to question her own thoughts or opinions or biases. And I wish that I'd screenshot it, but in my research somewhere I came across a thread, maybe on Reddit, or maybe it was like a comment section on a video, but basically someone was expressing surprise that June would have these opinions because she's educated. She's like read the right authors, she knows what boxes to tick on social media in order to be perceived as politically correct or like socially aware. I think the commenter was basically expressing surprise that someone so educated or someone that like outwardly seems to know the right thing to do will do the wrong thing anyway. And they were like, that's not a realistic character. And I disagree. I think that's like the most realistic character possible.

Bridget 38:29

I think that's a trap that people fall into, and it's quite a simplistic way to view, I guess, differences of opinion. I think you can't ever assume that just because somebody is well educated that they want the best for everybody in the world, because I think you need to look at world leaders. Like they've all been to the best universities, they've come from the best families, and they've been to the best schools, and I mean that's not really counting for much in their morals and the choices that they make. I think that um we need to stop thinking of the other side as dumb and uneducated because I think that leads to people underestimating people that are on the far right. I think this happened a lot in 2016, and everybody was thinking there's no way Donald Trump will be elected. Like he's an idiot. Everybody can see that he's an idiot and now he's been elected for a second time. I think we need to stop underestimating these people and treating them as though they haven't read a book because a lot of them have, and I think that's the problem, because they know the way is to manipulate and convince people that what they are doing is for the greater good.

Laura 39:30

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think manipulation is the perfect word because throughout this whole novel, that's the very thing that Juniper is doing. She's manipulating outward perceptions of herself, she's manipulating narratives, and even at the very end of the novel, when we think she can really stoop no lower, her final act is to realize that she can put a spin and she can manipulate her own downfall into an upward rise. What about Athena? How did you feel about her?

Bridget 39:56

My impression of Athena is that we don't really know her because I don't think that June really knew her at all. The difference between the way Juniper described Athena at the start of the book and towards maybe like the second third of the book, or maybe going into the last third of the book, was quite different. And I thought it was so interesting the way that she sort of revised the friendship to make it seem quite sweet and wholesome. So at the beginning, she's sort of saying that they've always been enemies, and Juniper's jealous of Athena, and Athena just thinks she's better than Juniper, and all of these things that I really feel that Juniper is obviously projecting onto Athena. But then we get to later in the book, she's decided to start writing that manuscript about telling the story and about how she's going to be the villain. Before she does that complete 180 at the end, she sort of talks about their origin stories and talks about how they ate all their meals together, they went shopping together, they took the Yale shuttle to Trader Joe's with Pepper Jack cheese and cookie butter. They were hanging out, they'd go to open mic nights. Honestly, it seemed like a lovely friendship, the way that she was describing it later in the book. And she's sort of, you know, conversing with Athena's ghost in her head and doing all of these things. And she says that she finds herself lingering on the good memories of Athena, and whereas at the start of the book it was all bad. And she says, as I transcribe all this, I wonder if our friendship had indeed been as strained as I'd perceived it. Was that jealous tension always there? Were we rivals from the start? Or had I, in the throes of my insecurity, projected it all against Athena? And I think that's the closest that she comes to like self-realization, because I think, yes, you did project it all. And that doesn't mean that Athena was perfect, but I think that we don't know Athena because we're viewing her through June's lenses and they're like misty and dirty and they've got fingerprints all over them. So all that to say, I don't really have an opinion on Athena. What do you think about her?

Laura 41:58

I love the character of Athena, or I love the concept of Athena as a character. I don't know how to say that, but what I like about her is that who she is is wholly formed through the viewpoints of other characters. So we have June's incredibly snip-snap-snip-snap kind of opinion of her. And then we have obviously all of the praise and like this perception of her as this literary darling. Something that I thought was interesting was that most of the time, or maybe even all of the time, when other sort of Asian American characters in the book are talking about her, it's not in a very positive kind of way. There's that interesting, kind of strained relationship with her mother. And honestly, I found myself a bit obsessed with her. Like I I knew without a shadow of doubt that if she were an author in the real world, I'd be like, I am obsessed with her. But maybe what I found most interesting of all was some of RF Kwang's quotes about Athena. So I read an interview with her in Interview Magazine, and it's quite a long quote, but she says, Athena is my worst nightmare. She is all the things I hope will never be true of myself. And it's because she has learned very early on in her career that she can get a lot of attention by telling a particular kind of story, which is the story of Asian pain. So she has benefited immensely from acting as a cultural broker, depicting Chinese American stories in a certain way to maximize the attention and interest she gets from it. Which means that she is also deeply suspicious of all other Asian creatives. And granted it's from June's perspective, but we do sort of see that play out in the book where she's dismissive of other Asian creatives that reach out to her. She doesn't want to act as a mentor to others. She doesn't seem to have a lot of room for somebody else's experiences or other people who look like her or could potentially offer a viewpoint similar to hers. She wants to be special.

Bridget 43:50

In that same Rolling Stone article that I mentioned before, she talked a little bit about this as well. And they asked her about Athena being a cultural broker, a translator. Type character who builds bridges of understanding between groups, and they asked how her understanding of these brokers changed as she's grown into what she is as an author. She said that as the manuscript took shape, it became obvious that the reason why she's so threatened by other Asian American writers is because she fulfills the function of that Asian American who explains Asian Americans to white people. She said over time she's gotten more and more impatient with the idea that marginalized writers exist to educate everybody about their marginalization, that black writers exist to tell people how difficult it is to be black, or that the only kind of story that I'm capable of writing is an Asian immigrant trauma story. We're not ethnographers, we're not cultural tour guides, and I'm not teaching a seminar on Chinese American history. I'm just a storyteller and I want to be read on the strength of my storytelling. When I read this, I thought a little bit about our episode of Cemetery Boys, where we talked about how we were like learning things about the Latinx culture, and I thought that maybe we were expecting the author of that book to be a sort of cultural tour guide because we were like, oh, we were learning all these things and we were seeing criticism that maybe it wasn't so accurate. And I don't know where I'm going with this, but I thought that was an interesting lens to view books like that where you're reading from diverse authors and diverse perspectives that it can just be a story without it being a learning experience for white people.

Laura 45:21

Yeah, I think that's really fair to say. And I think there's been a couple of pieces of commentary by RF Kwang around Yellow Face that have really got me thinking in a slightly different way. I listened to an NPR podcast, and on that one, she was saying a similar thing about minorities being pigeonholed into telling, like essentially trauma-porn. And you know, you have to write about the immigrant experience or the trans experience, and you can't expand beyond that and how that in itself is like dangerous and reductive because that's not the whole scope of that experience. It's just like this one familiar narrative that we want to be told over and over again for some reason. And I guess it is that thing of like we feel like we're learning or we feel like we're bettering ourselves because we're learning about something that's tough and it's grueling and it's not a fun conversation that we have every day. And we're not like those other white people who don't read these stories and not learning and yeah. And it kind it even kind of got me thinking about the Spanish love deception when we were like, why would they call it the Spanish love deception? There's no Spanish culture in here. And I don't know if we said it in the episode or if I was just thinking about it, but there was a level where I was like, well, this is probably to a degree authentic. Because I don't think Spanish people are going around every day, you know, going to the top five landmarks in Spain and like, I don't know, drinking sangria or whatever. Yes.

Bridget 46:44

Yeah, I think it's a really good reminder for us as we're reading these books to like not be treating it as um as she says cultural tour guides. I think that's really interesting.

Laura 46:55

Well, another tidbit about Athena that I thought was really interesting was how she was still quite a morally murky character as well. And I think this ties into something I've seen RF Kwang talking about in interviews as well, which is like the concept of like appropriation, like whether it's just appropriating someone's story or appropriating somebody's culture. Um, I think there's even a quote in the book, it might be from June, but it says, who has the right to write about suffering? What I'm thinking about at the moment is the point in the book where it's revealed that June was raped and she tells this story to Athena, who then turns that around and uses it in one of her short stories. In an interview I listened to with RF Kwang, she says there's no ethical explanation for that. It's just a bad thing to do. She's a bad person for doing that. And I really enjoyed that kind of grey area being added to both of their characters. I just really enjoyed that whole kind of meta element about this as well, because obviously RF Kwang is a Chinese American author writing from a perspective of a white woman appropriating a Chinese American story, which is an appropriated story about Chinese laborers in the first world war. I think again, maybe it was on that NPR podcast I listened to. But basically what she was saying was that she thinks that we should be able to tell these stories and kind of echo some of the sentiments of June in the book that like the good things about writing fiction is that we have the potential to expand our worldview and understanding of one another and empathy for one another. And she sees it as being a little bit dangerous to draw these black and white lines in the sand about who can write what and when. I didn't do any further reading, so I haven't seen her say if you know she has any suggestions about how to kind of responsibly manage that then. But I guess things like the sensitivity read that June turned down in Yellow Face would be a great place to start.

Bridget 48:49

Yeah. I'm not sure if I have much of an opinion on this simply because I don't have any skin in the game either way. I think I feel like it's not my place to have an opinion about, but I find it interesting to hear writers and people of colour their opinions on it.

Laura 49:03

Yeah, I agree. I thought it was a pretty refreshing take. Um, definitely one that is kind of contrary to what you see online a lot. Especially in line with the subject matter thought that was really interesting. I guess her sentiment is quite nicely summed up in this quote. It is the most liked quote from Yellowface. And uh, it is funny when you consider that I'm pretty sure it's June that says this. But the quote is reading lets us live in someone else's shoes. Literature builds bridges, it makes our world larger, not smaller. I feel like one of the things that most people know about Yellowface before they've read it is that there's a lot of commentary about the publishing industry in this book. And I think after a few years of exposure to authors on TikTok and seeing lots of conversations around that happen online, the commentary was more sharp than ever. In the acknowledgments, the first line is Yellowface is in large part a horror story about loneliness in a fiercely competitive industry. And I think that really shines through in the way that both June and Athena are these kind of isolated people striking out, making questionable choices, and just trying to keep their head above water. One of the criticisms that I see about this book is from people of the opinion that this is basically RF Kwan copying and pasting from her personal life and her personal experiences in the publishing industry. And I think I like I really understand how you arrive there, given the first four books she put out in the world and then the hype that surrounded this book before it came out. Even in interviews, like again in this interview in Interview Magazine, she says, I'd never really written literary fiction before. I don't think it's the kind of book I could have written as a debut novel either, because I hadn't worked in a publishing house, and it took those five years of frustration, toil, and a lot of tears in the publishing industry on the author's side to accumulate the experiences that went into it.

Bridget 50:55

She also spoke about this in the Rolling Stone article. She reiterated that she couldn't have written this as a debut writer. The line that I thought was really interesting was I couldn't have made up how ridiculous the industry is because whatever your imagination is, somehow the reality is worse. It is juicy. She also said that her agent didn't want to submit Yellowface to anybody because she was so scared that it was going to burn bridges that everybody would be annoyed and no one would work with her.

Laura 51:27

Wow. Maybe it's time for some self-reflection, guys.

Bridget 51:30

Well, she said that even though there are people like June and like all of the other awful characters in the book, there are people in the industry who are there for the love of the story and love of authors. And she said working on this manuscript felt like everybody was on demon time. Like, fine, let's lean all the way into this. Let's examine ourselves and make fun of every single thing we've done. Which I think is so good. That's a great way to write a story. I think it's a lot of self-awareness that June lacks. With writing like this, it can often only come from truth.

Laura 52:04

Yeah, and I guess hopefully exposing a problem in this way is what leads to change. I don't know if that's a very optimistic take, but we can only hope for the best. I was also thinking as well about all of the kind of commentary we saw about um social media and cancel culture and you know, mobs on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok, the kind of hive mind around that kind of thing. There's a line in the book about, you know, it just kind of seems like a book appears out of nowhere and everybody collectively somehow decides that this is the book that I should just get the quote, but it kind of cracked me up because I was like, wow, I feel like that is exactly how I treat R.F. Quang's books. And it's like what I've been trying to articulate. And yet she's written this on the page before this book was even published. Like, how is this possible?

Bridget 52:50

I think her portrayal of social media and like social media pylons was so accurate. I feel like I've read all of those comments before.

Laura 52:58

Yeah, and kind of people's wariness and trepidation around um authors who potentially have something sketchy or a little bit cancelable going on was making me laugh in a self-reflective kind of way. Ha ha ha ha. Because I do feel like before we pick up a book for a podcast or, you know, even personal reading, I'm like author's name, controversy. Yes. Um, author's name, racism. And there are definitely certain books that we will veto for the show or for our personal reading once again, because we just don't want to touch that. Is it right or wrong? I don't know. That's a question that Yellowface may seem to be asking. One of the last things that I really wanted to touch on, and again, it was something that I saw popping up as a common criticism, was all of the pop culture references that we have throughout this book. Just off the top of my head, we had mentions of like BTS, we had mentions of Florence Pugh, um, quote unquote, that girl from Crazy Rich Asians, she mentions Christopher Nolan, and all of these things that are definitely of a time and also of like a certain online generation. I thought they were very Gen X pop culture references. So I first read this in 2023, and I think even in those following years, they've aged somewhat. And this is interesting because I feel like authors and publishers really tend to steer away from stuff that would age a book like this. However, it kind of got me thinking, and I don't know if I'm reaching here, but I wondered if it was kind of trying to tie into that idea around like relevance and the cultural conversation and cancellation. Because as we see throughout the book, like all of this stuff is happening to June. June is doing all of these horrific things, and then ultimately every time it doesn't matter. And I think that's something that we see in real life. And then I found when I was reading and picking up on these pop culture references, it was kind of like, what is that? Oh, it doesn't matter. I don't care, and I'm moving on. Like it's all of these things that paint a fuller picture and give more meaning. And there's always more to the story, but it's like up to us whether we dig a little bit deeper or not.

Bridget 55:02

I didn't think too much about the pop culture references, but I did sort of think that this is painting an accurate picture of a time on the internet. And I think as you know, Twitter becomes X and it's just like a cesspool of hate, I think it will be interesting to read in a few years' time to see the differences between Twitter at the time that this book was written and whatever X will transform into in the next few years. I think it will be very interesting. I also think I just enjoy those references, and I guess ones from like probably like 2010 onwards, I enjoy those because I'm like reminiscing on the past and I'm living in my like glory days. So I think maybe I'm always gonna be excited to be reading about Tumblr and Ruby Core.

Laura 55:47

Yeah.

Bridget 55:50

A few of the criticisms I saw online were that people didn't really enjoy how the book wrapped up. So I was wondering how you felt about that. Because I think you may have alluded to that a little bit earlier.

Laura 56:01

I wish I wish I could remember where I was going with that. Yeah, I think that's probably what was giving me that feeling of uncertainty the first time I read it. And it's not so much that I found the ending unsatisfying, more so that I had questions that were unanswered. And I think typically I enjoy that in a book, but it felt a little bit maybe unintentional at points in this. You know, this book is a lot of things at once. It's like satire, literary fiction, horror, mystery, whatever thriller, I don't know what you would call it. But I felt at points, and particularly towards the end, that all of those elements were kind of combating against each other and then not quite pulling together, if that makes sense. So some things I'm thinking of are like what actually happened with Candace, though. Like, had June like lost her mind and Candace actually sounded nothing like Athena, you know, at the end when she's like, can hear Athena calling out to her? Or it was just very convenient that Candace could get into her Instagram account. There were things like a few comments that Athena's mum made, like when she said, Oh, I would never write that, or why she was so, so terrified of kind of reading Athena's notebooks. Even questions about June's past. Like I think at the very start it was sort of alluded to that she'd had some huge mental breakdown. I can draw my own conclusions and I guess they make some semblance of sense, but it wasn't wholly satisfying for me. How about you?

Bridget 57:30

I felt a tiny bit let down by the ending. I thought it was maybe a little bit weak, but I was trying to think over the last few days what kind of ending I would prefer, and I really came up with nothing. But I had the same thoughts as you. I thought, why are we spending so much time listening to the mother say these things? And also I thought the fact that she sort of resolved to write her own spin on it was a bit confusing to me because I thought that's what she was already doing. I think I would have maybe liked to see her actually get got though, because she's sort of unscathed yet again. I don't understand why there wasn't some sort of lawsuit or loss of money or reparations or anything like that, but I don't know.

Laura 58:10

Yeah, that's a good point. I think that's kind of something that's unsatisfying. From memory, the way it was written was kind of like, yeah, there was falling out and I lost some followers and I thought about killing myself, but uh, you know, we'll onwards and upwards. Yeah. Um, and it would have been nice. It would have been satisfying to see that play out, but again, like maybe that was the point.

Bridget 58:31

It seemed like she was getting ready to take her place in sort of right-wing media as like the spokeswoman against cancer culture and you know, cultural appropriation gone mad and all that sort of stuff. So I don't know, all again alluded to.

Laura 58:46

One thing I know for sure is I I don't want to read a sequel. No, I don't want a sequel. I've had enough. She's horrible.

Bridget 58:54

This is a bit of a weird book to answer the next question about because what we're talking about is favourite and least favourite characters. I know definitively what my least favourite character is, but I don't have a favourite character. Do you have a favourite character?

Laura 59:08

I mean, I guess of the two characters you could possibly choose from, Athena is my favourite character, but not really through any virtue of her own, just through the mystery of her. She intrigues me, I guess.

Bridget 59:23

I really liked how she was described as wearing jewels and um, you know, ethically sourced things and all of that sort of stuff.

Laura 59:31

Yeah, I think I said it earlier, but I just feel so strongly that if she were real, I'd be completely obsessed with her.

Bridget 59:38

Same. The way that her apartment was described, immaculate. Is your least favourite character, Juniper?

Laura 59:44

Yeah, it's gotta be.

Bridget 59:45

I don't know how it is possible for someone to dig themselves in so many holes and never learn from it. It's astounding.

Laura 59:52

Yeah, that line when she's like, yeah, I double dipped. It's like, oh, for God's sake, babe, wrap it up. I felt like shaking her. Yeah. All right, I don't think there's a lot of mystery surrounding this at this point, but Yellow Face by R.F. Quang. Bridget, do you rate it lit or shit? I rate Yellowface Lit. What about you? I rate Yellow Face Lit. Oh, what a surprise. When are we gonna read Babel? Do you think? It's made me want to read it soon.

Bridget 1:00:24

We have had a few messages asking us to read Babel.

Laura 1:00:27

Yeah, we have. And I think realizing the way that I've like sort of mythologized her has made me think, yeah, I should probably read something else by this author.

Bridget 1:00:37

Following in Juniper's footsteps, we're going to copy Athena in chapter one and say see you later. Our next bonus chapter will be about Suzanne Collins' latest offering to the Hunger Games franchise, Sunrise on the Reaping. Have your say on what we read next by keeping an eye on the link in our show notes and on our socials. Make sure you subscribe to the show. And if you want to be on the same page as us, follow us at talklit.gethit on Instagram and TikTok.