‘Yellowface’ Author R.F. Kuang Wants Change In The Publishing Industry

Rania Matar for HuffPost Rania Matar for HuffPost Culture Shifters Oct. 22, 2024 R.F. “It was 2021 and we were all chronically online all the time, because that was our only way of staying connected with one another,” Kuang says of the novel’s inception. “There’s this wonderful passage near the end, where somebody says pessimistically, ‘You’re nothing but a drop in the ocean.’ And the response is, ‘What is an ocean except for a collection of drops?’ So I think even the most momentous change is possible, but it takes a lot to get on board.” Rania Matar for HuffPost As much as “Yellowface” is a satire of the publishing industry, Kuang notes that it’s also a satire of how we as a society talk about complex issues online. Many of those conversations, she says, are “hypocritical and reductive and messy and ill-intentioned.” Even in the wake of the novel’s success, Kuang says little has changed within the industry itself. “I think the positive benefit of ‘Yellowface’ is that it’s given writers, especially newer writers, a kind of toolbox to understand conversations about them and encounters they have.” Kuang says the most encouraging thing that’s happened since the release of her fifth novel is that people come up to her at book signings and author chats and are able to commiserate over things that have happened to them.