"Fierce and refreshing."— Carlos Lozada, Washington Post
Named a notable book of the year by the New York Times Book Review and the Washington Post, and one of the best books of the year by Spectator and Publishers Weekly, The Souls of Yellow Folk is the powerful debut from one of the most acclaimed essayists of his generation. Wesley Yang writes about race and sex without the polite lies that bore us all.
August 15, 2018
The debut book by an award-winning magazine writer offers his perceptive, personal view of the lives of Asian-Americans and other subjects.For this collection, National Magazine Award-winning essayist Yang, a columnist at Tablet, uses a title that nods to The Souls of Black Folk, the 1903 classic by W.E.B. Du Bois, which introduced the concept of the "double consciousness" of people of color in America. Several of the essays, which appeared in New York Magazine, the Guardian, Harper's, n+1, and other publications over the last decade or so, do focus on the experiences of Asian-Americans. "The Face of Seung-Hui Cho" is the author's visceral but insightful response to being assigned to write about the Virginia Tech mass killer, fueled by his resentment that the assignment came because he, like the shooter, is Korean-American. "Paper Tigers" is an acerbic, well-documented response to Amy Chua's bestseller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, in which Yang points out that traditional Asian approaches to education often bring astonishingly high performances by students, but those scores and grades rarely translate into success in the highest (whitest) echelons of corporations. In "Eddie Huang Against the World," the author paints a telling portrait of the rock-star chef's struggles when his memoir Fresh Off the Boat became a TV series that be believed was filled with stereotypes. The other essays, though, range across such subjects as the "pickup artist" craze, the anxieties of dating and sex in the digital age, and profiles of hacker/activist Aaron Swartz and historian Tony Judt. Three briefer and more recent essays in the final section return to the subject of racism, especially the recent resurgence of white supremacists, but they are more abstract, and less powerful, than the earlier pieces.An uneven collection of essays that ranges from fresh analyses of the lives of Asian-Americans to smart commentaries on pop-culture phenomena but doesn't cohere around a single subject or theme.
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Starred review from August 27, 2018
This incisive and provocative series of essays collects a decade’s worth of Yang’s writings on politics and cultural paradigms, investigating issues of race, masculinity, and the differences between Eastern and Western cultural values. The collection opens with a taut exploration of the motivations and meanings of Virginia Tech shooter Seng-Hui Cho, whom Yang views through a contentiously sympathetic lens as a desperate social outcast emasculated and ignored partly because of his Korean heritage. This is followed by “Paper Tigers,” originally published in New York magazine, which profiles Asian-Americans in the public eye and considers the difficulties Asians face in the corporate world as a result of being stereotyped as “a mass of stifled, repressed, abused, conformist quasi-robots.” Elsewhere, Yang profiles Eddie Huang, restaurateur and author of Fresh Off the Boat (the memoir on which the ABC sitcom, which he now vociferously denounces, was based), and traces the devolution of the “seduction community” (aka pickup artists) from a relatively innocuous group of men sharing dating tips to reality television humiliation fodder. The collection closes with two essays casting a gimlet eye on the increasingly radical definitions of racism and sexism by progressives. Yang provides piercing, prickly insight into the challenges Asian-Americans face from racial and cultural bias, with literary style.
October 1, 2018
National Magazine Award winner Yang makes a much-anticipated debut with his best essays on race and gender, its title echoing W.E.B. Du Bois's classic The Souls of Black Folk. Included here: Yang's much-discussed New York cover story "Paper Tigers," examining Asian values and the American Dream.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 1, 2018
Yang's debut collection of 13 previously published essays offers a sense of why he's becoming one of the most important commentators on race in North America. Topics range from the "bamboo ceiling" to Seung-Hui Cho's assault on Virginia Tech and microagressions of white supremacy to profiles of chef/author Eddie Huang, political scientist Francis Fukuyama, entrepreneur Aaron Swartz, and historian Tony Judt. The spotlight on race is disrupted, however, with pieces on modern life, including articles about online dating and technology that don't always relate. Yang's style mixes his personal history with explorations of race, gender, and sexuality and echoes the writing of W.E.B. Du Bois; his interest in the historical context of Asians in America mirrors Du Bois's thoughts as well. Yang is best when describing the Asian American experience, yet several writings diverge from this focus. VERDICT While the narrative is strong, the selection and organization feels haphazard. Overall, though, this work serves as an introduction to a writer of significant promise.--John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 1, 2018
Its title and focus inspired by W. E. B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk, Yang's first book gathers 13 of his essays on race and American culture published in the last 10 years. In Yang's profile of Eddie Huang, the superstar chef and writer reckons with the contradictory experience of selling the network television rights to his memoir, Fresh Off the Boat (2013). Yang also profiles Aaron Swartz, the Reddit founder who killed himself while under indictment for allegedly stealing academic articles to make them free for all, and prolific public intellectual Tony Judt as he adjusts his mind to the devastating effects of ALS on his body. Yang's piece on the internet-born, theory-based, jargon-centric pickup-artist community shocks as much as it did in 2008. Yang won a National Magazine Award for "Paper Tigers," his essay on Asian Americans' success in earning scholarships and the "Bamboo Ceiling" that nonetheless bars them from leadership positions. The essays from 2016 and 2017 concern white supremacy. Yang writes with elegance and a fearless interest in the uncommon and unsayable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)