Abstract
Abstract: In Spring 2020, the revival of the debate over race in France, triggered by the killing of George Floyd and the foregrounding of France's own victims of racialized police violence, coincided with a greater recognition of Asians' exposure to racism. As this last decade witnessed an emergence of French Asian reappropriations of the question of race, this article focuses on Grace Ly's debut novel Jeune fille modèle (2018). I draw attention to the ways narratives such as Ly's, through their focus on the French Asian descendant, their preoccupations over identification and sense of national belonging, struggle to account for the inscription of Asian presence in the longue durée history of racial/capitalist exploitation.