Kaila Yu grew up as a Taiwanese girl in the Inland Empire and often felt uncomfortable in her skin because of Eurocentric beauty standards. She experienced insecurity about her features and desirability during childhood. The memoir-in-essays traces her upbringing in the 1990s and early 2000s, blending personal anecdotes with cultural history and critique. The book examines sexuality, race, representation, and the fetishization of Asian women. It links media portrayals and colonialism to oversexualization and objectifying stereotypes. The narrative balances vulnerability with incisive analysis and has been described as raw and lyrical.
As a young Taiwanese girl living in the Inland Empire, former singer and import model-turned-writer Kaila Yu said she often felt uncomfortable in her skin, growing up around Eurocentric beauty standards. I felt like my features weren't desirable, Yu said of her childhood. I felt very insecure about all of that. The now 46-year-old L.A.-based author explores themes of sexuality and race in her debut memoir, Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty, out everywhere books are sold.
The candid memoir-in-essays format explores Yu's upbringing in the 1990s and early 2000s, blending vulnerable stories from her life with incisive cultural critique and history, according to the synopsis. Fetishized explores Yu's complex, intimate feelings around representation and objectifying stereotypes, while looking at how the media and colonialism have played a part in the oversexualization of Asian women. Growing up, Asians were so invisible, objectification was better than nothing, Yu writes in the book, which the New York Times called raw and lyrical.
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