July 2023 book club book! I’m excited to discuss this one with my book club.

June has been jealous of Athena since college. Athena was the first to get a book deal and has been an instant success, while June always comes up short. So when Athena dies in an accident, June steals Athena’s unpublished manuscript about Chinese laborers during Wold War I, makes some edits, and publishes it as her own under the racially ambiguous name Juniper Song. The book is an instant best-seller, but June’s success is threatened when she is accused of stealing Athena’s work. As June fights to protect her literary reputation, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. 

This book was super thought provoking as it explored themes of racism, diversity, and cultural appropriation. Should authors not write stories about people of different ethnic groups? Should authors never write about cultural or racial experiences that they have not personally experienced? I don’t have an answer but the book really raises some good points on both sides. (And I was reminded of similar conversations taking place regarding other books, specifically American Dirt.) June’s character was delusional but so well written, and Kuang did a really good job of creating an entire person, rounding her out, and letting us inside her head. This was a really well-written and sharp book that I will be thinking about for a while!

A quote I loved: “Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, it’s opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.”