Book Report: Yellowface

25. R. F. Kuang, Yellowface (2023) (11/29/23)

My sister-in-law mentioned this book in reference to "the publishing industry." But it also treats the issue of appropriation, which concerns my long-simmering project having to do, in part, with the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. 

Mainly, though, it's something of a horror story: a 20-something (white) writer, celebrating a (Chinese American) friend's writing success, watches as the friend chokes to death—then she steals the friend's just-finished manuscript, which focuses on Chinese labor in WWI, and rewrites ("polishes") it to make it her own. So she thinks. Until a ghost (or two) waft into the picture. 

It is an unreliable narrator story as well—the writer, June, is constantly explaining and justifying herself. (Well, of course: she committed a sin!) The strongest thread (the ghost and horror elements being rather bland) lies in the indictment of the publishing industry, and the sheer (self-)destructiveness of social media, no matter what the cause. 

Kuang, all of 26, is an American fantasy novelist, author of a trilogy—The Poppy War (2018), The Dragon Republic (2019), and The Burning God (2020)—and a stand-alone, Babel; or, The Necessity of Violence (2022), so presumably she understands the way the publishing industry works pretty darn well. "I hate the feeling of being read just because somebody's trying to tick off a diversity check box," she says. It's a satire, and yet.

Here's June/Junie/Juniper near the beginning:

I've never lied. That's important. I never pretended to be Chinese, or made up life experiences that I didn't have. It's not fraud, what we're doing. We're just suggesting the right credentials, so that readers take me and my story seriously, so that nobody refuses to pick up my work because of some outdated preconceptions about who can write what. And if anyone makes assumptions, or connects the dots the wrong way, doesn't that say far more about them than me?