Sometimes a book is a bestseller from its inception, and Rebecca F Kuang’s Yellowface with its takedown of the publishing industry, racism, and cultural appropriation has all the makings of a runaway hit. And indeed it is a hit. I was not interested in reading the book until a friend – who attended Kuang’s talk during her book tour in the UK – read it and did not share the same views as other readers who were raving about the book on various social media platforms. It was time to see for myself.
Yellowface has an interesting premise. Yale-educated Chinese-American writer Athena Liu is the wonderchild of publishing. She’s beautiful (exotic looking), well-read (an Ivy League student), worldly (her parents have tech jobs and migrated legally to America), and, added to this, she signed a six-figure book deal right out of college.
Athena’s classmate and friend June Hayward is just the opposite of Athena – a white woman with flaxen hair, of middle-class background, without a single person in her family with any artistic ambitions. June admits that Athena is “fucking cool” and in the age of “diversity”, writers like Athena have a better chance at claiming the “golden ticket” to having a bestseller to their name.
Athena is so removed from reality that she has no idea if an annual salary of $35,000 for a publishing industry employee is enough to survive in New York City – after all, she writes on a Remington typewriter and takes notes in a moleskin notebook. Her extravagance is naturally infuriating to June, whose debut YA novel was published by an indifferent editor and hardly made her any money.
Who gets to tell the story?
June is envious of Athena’s literary success and she does not hesitate to admit – it’s a “vinegary” envy. Almost as if she willed it, Athena dies in a freak accident in her house when June happened to be visiting. Alone with Athena’s WIP manuscript, in a moment of impulsive haste, June bags it and walks away. Desperate to imitate Athena’s success, June begins to edit the manuscript – “I inherited a sketch with colours only added in” – at a manic speed. Athena has crafted a marvel and paired with June’s writing talent, this could be the next explosive bestseller. June realises this is the opportunity to rebrand herself, and she chooses to be “commercially and compulsively readable yet still exquisitely readable.”
Theft apart, Athena’s new book is a curious entity – it is a story of the Chinese Labour Corps fighting in World War I. It’s a niche historical subject and one that is apparently written by a white novelist in the US. Alarm bells should be going off now but Juniper Song’s – June Hayward’s rebranding includes a change of name – seasoned literary agent Brett and senior editor Daniella Howard do not seem to suspect a thing.
A junior editor insists on hiring a “Sensitivity Reader” but her concerns are quickly brushed away. Nothing stands between June and literary greatness. Her time has finally come. But she’s clever – and sensitive too, in a way. For someone who has struggled so hard to find a footing in the publishing world, the success makes her dwell on the arbitrariness of it all – “…an author’s efforts have nothing to do with it. Bestsellers are chosen.”
Despite what she says, June’s efforts cannot be dismissed. She meticulously researched the history of the CPC, filled in the blanks that Athena left behind, and made the story palatable to American readers. For what it’s worth, the book became as much hers as it was Athena’s. But it’s an impossible thing to come clean about without being risked called a thief, plagiarist, or racist.
Things start to get murkier – and confusing – hereon. It is established that June stole the manuscript, edited it, and made it into a bestseller. Her responses to questions about research and writing about Chinese history are carefully constructed and memorised. She enters the coveted club of Eden’s Angels, bestselling White women authors, who at some point have expressed approval of June telling a story that otherwise “would not have been told”.
If white authors are leeches and morally corrupt, so are writers of the diaspora. Or that’s how Kuang seems to see it – dead Athena is a saint to her readers but it turns out she’s a serial plagiariser too. Not in the same way as June but she does steal – stories and experiences of her friends, lover, and any Asian person that Athena comes across. She once wrote a short story about a Korean POW in America. It did not matter that she was Chinese, no one accused her of cultural leeching.
June and Athena are both seated comfortably on their moral high horse and are not too troubled by their amoral actions – after all, art imitates life. Kuang makes stealing a regular occurrence in publishing – I can’t say if this is true, but multiple editors’ inability to see through a writer’s plagiarism is not just far-fetched but inadvertently funny. The cracks start to show slowly.
A tiresome caricature
June aspires for the greatness of Stephen King and Neil Gaiman – movie deals, Hollywood stardom, a multimedia empire, the world – but Athena’s ghost refuses to let her be. First making an appearance as a corporeal ghost at a reading and later as an anonymous Twitter account that lets it slip that June has stolen the book, Athena makes the fire spread quickly and sets everything ablaze. Anonymous social media accounts fighting for her legacy pop up by the dozen, negative reviews flood Goodreads, and Asian-American book critics start baying for June’s blood.
As the lies tighten the noose around June’s neck, she becomes defensive and paranoid. Reluctantly standing by her side is her agent and publishing house, while the MAGA cadre stand firm in support. I can’t remember the last time an author faced such a serious lashing from online crowds and right-wingers fighting for the cause of a woman’s free speech, that too in fiction. It’s an exaggeration but not inexcusable. June says she’s not the bad guy here, she is the victim. I will allow that fiction need not always mirror the truth, but Kuang’s vicious portrayal of reviewers and white readers/authors is a caricature at best and a dangerous generalisation at worst.
By assuming the voice of a white author – June’s – Kuang may also be doing what Juniper Song has done – made profits on the back of a story that’s not her to tell. The meta-narrative is not lost on a discerning reader. But halfway through the book, I wondered what her argument at large was. Publishing industry…bad. White writers…bad. White readers…bad. Diaspora writers…bad. Reviewers…bad. Writing, as June’s mother puts it, is a “constant heartbreak”.
Kuang had a vision with Yellowface – to poke the publishing industry in its proverbial eyes and make the reader aware of how “diversity” and “authenticity” have become hollow phrases, almost death knells of the industry. It is a noble mission, but Kuang’s story of a writer’s fall from glory loses its sheen quickly. The criticism of the publishing industry is ultimately unidimensional and her takedown of every character becomes tiresome after a point.
The inability to form a coherent argument and overcrowded comments about online discourse have restricted the book’s relevance to a very short period of time. More than a studied commentary on writing schools and the publishing industry, Yellowface is a blubbering, angry rant…and you are not even sure what exactly the author is so mad about.
Yellowface, Rebecca F Kuang, The Borough Press.