Yellowface

In Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang,  unsuccessful writer Juniper Hayward ends up with the only copy of an almost-finished manuscript of her much more successful writer friend, Athena Liu, and this propels a tense and observant thriller about talent, identity and stereotypes. I absolutely loved the whole idea of a stolen manuscript propelling a thriller in The Plot and Who Is Maud Dixon? (I also liked that aspect of Kill All Your Darlings and The Writing Retreat, even if I didn’t 100% love those novels.) 

Just like in Kill All Your Darlings, there’s only one offline copy of this draft in existence, and June has it. This isn’t as forced as it sounds, I absolutely bought that hipster literary darling Athena Liu would use only a vintage typewriter and keep all her handwritten notes in moleskin journals. June is smarter than most of these other manuscript-thieves, though, and she does a significant amount of research and rewriting to Athena’s story about Chinese laborers, before passing it off as her own. This is both a literal rewriting of the actual manuscript, in making some of the white characters more sympathetic and erasing some of the “confusing” Chinese aspects, and a rewriting in June’s head, translating the stolen manuscript into something she wrote herself, just kinda inspired by her lost friend. 

June is often very hard to like,  although I found her original motivation as a jealous friend and an unsuccessful creative very believable. You know I always love a twisted friendship thriller, and June’s frustrations watching someone who was once her peer go on to creative and professional success felt like a compelling, relatable opening hook. After that, June is juvenile and self-centered, almost explicitly refusing to learn and grow in this book. (Even through the end!) There are intriguing references to Liu family secrets and Athena’s secret backstory, but because June is so deeply uninterested in any other people, we never see what that is.   Overall, there aren’t a lot of people to root for in this one, basically everyone is unpleasant, and the theme of racial stereotyping appears again, and again, and again. The publishers who want to remake June into Juniper Song, or internet commenters trying to be the first to scream how they never liked Juniper Song, or Athena and her own shady writing practices, or June’s family saying now that she’s done her little writing thing, she should get a real job.  

I have to admit that I don’t really follow publishing news and only really hear about events in publishing when there’s a Big Internet Controversy,  but if the publishing  part of Yellowface is half as realistic as the parts about internet pile-ons, then OMG. I loved the twists of the book’s preparation, promotion, reaction, internet re-reaction, new work, rumors, re-re-reaction, etc. etc.  Every part felt both surprising (Trumpers buying and promoting the book as free speech?!?) and also realistic.

At one point, June is asked, very uncomfortably, about why she think she’s the person to tell this story about Chinese laborers. There’s a lot of tension from this scene — writers are inspired by all different things! ONLY writing from personal experience means a memoir, not a novel!  June is expressing an extremely reasonable position here, while she also literally stole her book about Chinese history and Chinese people from a Chinese writer. 

In Yellowface, I wanted to keep reading — it’s a page-turner! — but I also didn’t want to keep reading because I knew it was all headed for disastrous, cringey unmasking. You know she’s not going to get away with it, and there’s an almost Greek-tragedy-hubris in June refusing a sensitivity reader, in setting up an AAPI mentorship, etc., so the whole  book is sort of wondering exactly how the theft will be revealed.