In a review for The New York Times Benjamin Percy writes: "In this way, The Yellow Birds joins the conversation with books like Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony," Brian Turner's Phantom Noise and Tim O'Brien's classic, The Things They Carried — and wakes the readers of 'the spoiled cities of America' to a reality most would rather not face. Percy quotes the novel, writing: "Here we are, fretting over our Netflix queues while halfway around the world people are being blown to bits. And though we might slap a yellow ribbon magnet to our truck's tailgate, though we might shake a soldier's hand in the airport, we ignore the fact that in America an average of 18 veterans are said to commit suicide every day. What a shame, we say, and then move on quickly to whatever other agonies and entertainments occupy the headlines."[10]
Michiko Kakutani included it as one of her 10 favorite books of 2012 and called it: "a deeply affecting book that conveys the horrors of combat with harrowing poetry. At once a freshly imagined bildungsroman and a metaphysical parable about the loss of innocence and the uses of memory."[11]
The novel won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award,.[12] Juror Joyce Carol Oates praised its capacity to depict a minority culture in the United States, that of military service. The National Book Award citation describes The Yellow Birds as: "Poetic, precise, and moving, The Yellow Birds is a work of fiercest principle, honoring loss while at the same time indicting the pieties of war...An urgent, vital, beautiful novel that reminds us through its scrupulous honesty how rarely its anguished truths are told."[13]
