"Yellow" is set in the fictional California coastal town of Rosarita Bay, whose inhabitants face not only fears of being ethnically "yellow" but also the universal terrors of love, failure, and abandonment.
As the Los Angeles Times noted in its profile of the author, few writers have mined the [genre of ethnic literature] as shrewdly or transcended its limits quite so stunningly as Don Lee. Harking back to the timeless concerns of Chekhov: fate, chance, the mystery of the human heart (Stuart Dybek), these interconnected stories are utterly contemporary, ...but grounded in the depth of beautiful prose and intriguing storylines (Asian Week). They paint a novelistic portrait of the fictional town of Rosarita Bay, California, and a diverse cast of complex and moving characters. Nothing short of wonderful...surprising and wild with life (Robert Boswell), Yellow proves that wondering about whether you're a real American is as American as a big bowl of kimchi (New York Times Book Review)