Yellowface, R.F. Kuang
Having recently read “Babel,” I was expecting Yellowface to be in a similar vein, or at least in the fantasy genre, but it was something completely different (maybe why her author name is Rebecca F. Kuang on Yellowface but R.F. Kuang on her fantasy books…I see you, marketing team). After witnessing her friend’s death, June Hayward takes her unfinished manuscript and passes it off as her own, telling herself it’s okay because she was the one who technically finished it. The problem? June is white, and the book is about Chinese laborers involved in World War I. From the day she presents it as her own, June has to fight an uphill battle to not only make people believe it is her work, but also to not let the guilt, stress, and paranoia make her go crazy. Yellowface lays bare the racist side of the publishing industry and makes insightful commentary about the discussion regarding who is able to write what, all while making readers squirm and keeping them guessing as to if and when June will get caught.
Wintering, Katherine May
In the first chapter of the book, May describes the concept of wintering as “a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider” coming from periods of illness, difficulty at work, or times of grief or failure. Since I feel as though my personal wintering comes every summer, I decided to read this in August to see if she had wisdom to offer that would help me deal with the hottest time of the year, when I do not cope well at all. Through the book’s chapters, divided into the each of the winter months, May interviews people who have gone through a wintering, either literally, in the case of the Swedish, who live in harsh conditions for many months of the year, or emotionally, sharing her experiences of her husband’s illness and other personal difficulties. Having read her other book, Enchantment, which was full of passages I wanted to highlight and nuggets of wisdom I copied into my phone, I have to say, Wintering for me was lacking the introspection of Enchantment; most of it seemed to be a simple recounting of other people’s experiences without any reflection as to the greater meaning we can draw from them.