Power Relations and White Privilege Found in R.F. Kuang's Yellowface

Rifqi, Muhammad Racel (2025) Power Relations and White Privilege Found in R.F. Kuang's Yellowface. S1 thesis, Universitas Andalas.

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Abstract

This study examines the power relation and white privilege that facilitates the protagonist, June Hayward’s cultural appropriation in R.F Kuang’s novel Yellowface (2023). The aim of this research is to investigate how a white authors such as June were able to appropriate and profit from minority stories through the systemic privilege that exist in publishing institutions. Through the use of qualitative method and literary criticism along with Foucault’s theory of power and post-structuralist theory, the researcher’s findings show that June was provided credibility, protection and access to institutional backing from her publisher, allowing her appropriation to succeed. On further analysis, the researcher found several strategies that made this possible: editorial adjustment that changes and softens the manuscript, carefully crafted public image that builds a convincing authoritative persona, and June’s performative allyship. The research concludes that systemic privilege in contemporary publishing that exists in Yellowface enables June’s cultural appropriation, and permits white authors to claim and profit from minority stories, while performative allyship serves as a way to sustain and disguise the underlying structures of privilege while maintaining the illusion of inclusion

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