If you trust Booktok, Yellowface by R. F. Kuang is an absolute must read. But should it be on your reading list? (Spoiler: Yes, it should!) Find out what it’s all about:
Yellowface Summary
Athena Liu is a literary star, celebrating one huge success after another – until she dies in a sudden and tragic accident. Her friend June Hayward, a young author herself, has much less to show for her years of writing – until she steals Athena’s unpublished manuscript the night the night of her death. She “finishes” the manuscript and publishes it under the name Juniper Song. It becomes an immediate success, but Athena’s ghost will not rest until the world knows the truth. How far will June go to convince the world and herself that she deserves this success?
Themes
Yellowface addresses cultural appropriation and exploitation as well as racism. By stealing Athena’s manuscript, June steals a story that is not hers to tell and profit from. She steals a story from a marginalized group, consciously puts herself in a light that displays her as Asian-American and takes credit for what is not hers – all while enjoying white privilege and discriminating Chinese and Asian-Americans. She does not reflect on her actions; her white fragility leads her to justify any accusations with racist excuses.
The book also asks questions about ownership of a story, who gets to tell whose stories and where does theft begin. Dark sides of the publishing industry, such as fake diversity, racism and loneliness, are addressed, too, as well as the power of social media in matters social justice.
Yellowface Review
Yellowface is not a light read: it raises a lot of heard questions and confronts the reader with matters of racism and cultural appropriation. At the same time, it is almost impossible to put down.
The prose is crisp and, when it refers to writing and literature, beautiful and poetic. At the same time, brutal metaphors portraying guilt, jealousy and hate cut straight to the core.
The story being told from June’s POV repeatedly tries to fool the reader into believing that her actions are not all that bad after all. She is both the protagonist and the villain of the story.
June constantly uses white victimhood to justify her actions. Trying to flag every narrative of racism, unconscious bias and white fragility that she employs could be a whole task of itself – and should be. Many times, I pondered over Kuang’s paragraphs to reflect exactly how June tries to twist and turn reality into a lie of her own liking.
It also raised many questions that need further thought and discussion, such as:
- Who gets to tell whose stories?
- To whom does a story belong? To those who lived it, to those told it or both? How does that judgement change when it is a story of suffering, abuse and/or discrimination?
I absolutely love how Kuang shone light on those topics while also keeping me glued to the pages. Moreover, I just love a book about books: literature, writing and publishing. It made me reflect on my own moral compass.
IMO: an abolsute must-read!
By the way: White authors posing as POC is neither a recent occurence nor one of the past. In her video “was Yellowface a prophecy? a brief history of literary asian-fishing”, Catherine Anne Chiang dives into multiple occasions, both far in the past and acutely recent, where white authors prentended to be of Asian descent. A must-watch!
My favourite quote from Yellowface
Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world […].
