Doctoral candidate and author Rebecca Kuang, more commonly known by her pen name R.F. Kuang, spoke to the News about her experience at Yale.
From "Babel" in 2022 to "Yellowface" in 2023, Rebecca Kuang GRD '27, also known as R.F. Kuang, has topped the New York Times bestsellers list during her time at Yale's graduate school.
Kuang is a renowned figure on Yale's campus, and her novels can be found on many dorm room bookshelves. Her avid fans include Isabel Matos '28, who was eager to gush to the News about the author.
"I think R.F. Kuang is literally brilliant," she raved. "I think her writing is incredible."
Kuang is pursuing a doctorate in the East Asian Languages and Literatures department and a doctoral certificate in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. A Chinese American immigrant, Kuang's academic and creative works synthesize Western literary themes with Chinese and Sinophone history.
Kuang's first novel, "The Poppy War," was published in 2018. Now, six years later, Kuang has achieved outstanding success as an author while simultaneously pursuing her academic ambitions.
"I never left academia," she said. "I've been writing at the same time as I've been a student since I was in college. I always wanted to be a professor, I love teaching. I love being in the classroom. So those have just been dual career paths that I've stuck to since I was 19."
Describing her thought process in choosing Yale, Kuang emphasized the crucial role of an advisor in a doctoral program. She raved about her advisor at Yale, professor of comparative literature Jing Tsu.
"I'm very happy I ended up where I did," she said. "Once you actually get to an institution, you find out so many more reasons why it's the perfect home for you. I'm just so thrilled to have ended up at Yale. I couldn't imagine things any other way."
Now entering her fourth year of study, she has passed her onerous qualifying exams and has entered what she describes as the most fun phase of a doctoral degree. Her current focus lies in teaching in the ER&M and English departments and composing her dissertation.
The Ethnicity Race and Migration Doctoral Certificate is a fairly new program at Yale, and Kuang will be among the first cohort of students to obtain the credential. ER&M professor Alicia Schmidt Camacho revealed that the demand for such a program grew as the department evolved from its founding in 1998. The department has worked with the graduate school to create a pathway for post-graduate students interested in its content.
Camacho expressed particular excitement about working with Kuang this semester.
"Her writing is historical in nature," said Camacho. "Her speculative fiction reinterprets and asks us to confront a lot of significant historical periods and the tense and terse relationships that were formative of imperial relations and the movement of peoples."
As part of her role as a teaching fellow for "ER&M 200: Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and Migration," Kuang will deliver a guest lecture in October on British and U.S. involvement in China and the U.S. Chinese exclusionist policies of the 19th century.
Kuang's studies extend beyond these specific subjects. She recalls a psychoanalysis course taught by professor Moira Fradinger GRD '05, which gave her new insight into how she approaches character development in her own writing.
"This constant synergy of information I'm picking up in my seminars and in the classes I teach and the questions I'm trying to answer in my books; they really go hand in hand," Kuang said. "Everything is an endless process of inquiry and discovery and being open to new influences."
Such new influences include Kuang's diverse perspectives as a seasoned world traveler. She has lived abroad in China and Taiwan, and she makes it a point to establish a deep cultural understanding of every location she visits by engaging with its literature.
Kuang describes entering a local bookshop in Portugal and discovering the poetry of Fernando Pessoa at the suggestion of her editor. She said she laments the United States' lack of awareness of international art due to a lack of production and demand for translated literature.
Kuang has dabbled in translating, although she has discovered that she much prefers producing her own writing.
"Now I have to write a dissertation, so even less time to go around," she said. "I am in search of lost time."
Despite her workaholic nature and admittedly busy schedule, Kuang sets time aside to allow herself to exist outside her work. She adores the city of New Haven, relishing meals at Tibetan Kitchen and early morning runs through the cemetery.
Most of all, Kuang is excited about the possibilities she will unlock upon obtaining her doctorate. She acknowledges the severe inequalities that elite universities like Yale and Oxford, both of which she attended, uphold. In her novel "Babel," Kuang directly addresses Oxford University's central role in the British imperial machine and its exploitation of its colonies.
Nevertheless, Kuang stresses that her education and access to resources at Yale are instrumental in her mission to diversify and revolutionize the American publishing sphere.
"Obsession of being a part of the institution and making that a part of your identity is exactly what perpetuates continuing educational inequality and the fact that these institutions really exist to set off a separate elite class that thereafter holds positions of power and finance, government and in the entertainment industries," Kuang warned.
Still, she asserted, "I would never regret my decisions to come to these places because they were eye-opening, and they also let me pursue all of these projects and learn so much, and then I'll be able to leave the institution and to do so much with that.