June 2023

YELLOWFACE is the first book that I have read by R. F. Kuang (her first name is Rebecca). She has written award-winning fantasy titles, but this is a genre that I rarely dip into. The cover is arresting, and when it arrived at my house, I felt like those eyes were calling to me and saying, “I dare you to read me.”

For those who love books about publishing, you have a current look at the world of publishing here. We get everything from the bestselling author to the writer who fears she never will write anything great again. June Hayward is an author whose debut novel sank like a stone. She looks with envy at another author, Athena Liu, who came into the business at around the same time she did but is the one who has had great success.

Shortly after the book’s opening, Athena dies in one very freak accident, and June is the only other person there. Athena had been working on a book set during World War I about Chinese laborers and their fight on the front lines. As June leaves the room, she plucks the manuscript called The Last Front that has been typed up; conveniently there is not another copy anywhere. She plays around with it, putting “her own spin” on the story and “making it her own.”

As an author who has been branded as unsuccessful with book one, June adopts a nom de plume, Juniper Song. So June, who is white, suddenly sounds like she is Asian. You see where I am going here. The book becomes a bestseller, and there are lots of award nominations and film talk. But there are also cries of cultural appropriation. She is attacked online with vicious comments. It is enough that she is paralyzed as people who were asking “what’s next?” are now shunning her. Her publisher calls and asks something like, “Do we have anything to worry about here?” June hunkers down and tries to stay off Twitter, but each time she opens the page, she sees new attacks. And they paralyze her further. I think at some point she is not even sure she can write the word “the.”

June heads off to teach at a prestigious summer program. Students there not only uncover the comments about her, they look at her differently once they read them. She overhears them, and instead of talking about what they are reading and defending herself, she so harshly critiques the student who brought up the tweets that she is reprimanded.

Beyond the cultural issues, there is a lot of talk about the stealing of ideas here. And when I read a few things that Athena did in her past, I saw her in a different way. It surprises me that there is not more talk about the stealing of ideas in general and that the only focus seems to be on cultural appropriation.

I confess that I read YELLOWFACE more as a story of publishing, where each book is bought by a publisher with high hopes --- and they stay there until a book is found not to be what people want...or, these days, as a book that “this person should not be writing.” It would make for a great book group discussion. Oh, and yes, it IS a New York Times bestseller, which I think June would like, as much as R. F. does.