Yellowface by R.F Kuang
“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 when the real one hurts too much. To stop writing would kill me.Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”-R.F Kuang, Yellowface.
Think of the most chaotic and psychotic character in a novel you know.
No, it’s not them.
I present to you June Hayward, aka Juniper/Junie Song, a struggling white writer who stole her Asian American friend’s manuscript and passed it off as her own. That’s not even half as sinister or enraging as the story gets. She, dear readers, takes the cake.
Yellowface by R.F Kuang, a Chinese-American writer, is a satirical novel about racism, white privilege and the cut-throat publishing world. June Hayward/Junie Song’s debut novel has flopped and she is barely getting by. When her friend, acclaimed novelist Athena Liu dies from a choking accident, June/Juniper steals Athena’s manuscript. After all, who “who wants a story about basic white girls?” is the way June/Juniper sees it. The more appealing story is what’s in Athena’s manuscript, which is about Chinese workers in the British Army during World War II. In her racism-infused narcissism, the protagonist refuses to see anything wrong with what she’s done, even arguing at one point that Athena wasn’t the best person to tell the story anyway, because she’s Korean.
Anyway, the novel becomes a best-seller, shooting June/Junie into stardom, the kind that she had envied Athena for. But several issues come up. First, the original manuscript isn’t June/Junie’s, so she has a hard time talking about it properly during the book tour. She’s also definitely not Asian. She tweaks her name from June Hayward to Juniper (her full name) Song (her middle name given to her by mum during her hippie days). She edits her author profile photo to give herself a little tan. All of this is to make her identity as racially ambiguous as possible. I mean, someone named Juniper Song could be Asian American.
The problem is that June/Junie is not as good of a writer as Athena, so of course she can’t keep producing the same quality of work-which her publishers demands if she is to stay relevant and keep making them money. People in the publishing industry who see through her farce are dismissed, and Junie/June plays the victim all the way to the end in a chaotic spiral. I can’t tell you how many times I felt like throwing the book across the room, but also carried on just to see how June/Junie was going to end up, because what in the Rachel Dolezal?
Despite the outrageousness of the protagonist, the book examines many important complex themes including cultural appropriation and who deserves to tell a story. The only downsides where that I found the protagonist’s narcissism exhausting. After a while, I was thinking ,“okay, I get it, what else?” But I think the power of the book’s plot lies in its’ slow burn in exposing June/Junie in the story. Yellowface is definitely worth a read! Just keep in mind you might want to or scream or pull your hair out because of how much the protagonist gets away with.
Check out Yellowface from your local library or buy from an independent bookstore.