Yellowface: The Good and the Not-So-Good

 

Yellowface (2023)

By R. F. Kuang

Harper Collins, 323 pages

★★★

 

 

 Given that Babel is one of my favorite novels of recent memory, the next novel by R. F. Kuang had to be a letdown. That happened with Yellowface, though not for the reasons I anticipated.

 

There is still much to recommend, so let's start with that. First, it blows the lid off the viciousness of the publication business, especially agents, editors, marketers, legal teams, and social media trolls who can make or break a book. Yellowface details how the previously mentioned invent more than the writers. In other words, not all the fiction is on the page.

 

Is a writer’s life glamorous? Kuang presents it as a lonely profession of toil, rejection, self-doubt, turf protection, endless rewrites, negotiation, and for the chosen few, ephemeral success. The book that gets published is seldom the one that the author set out to write; it is shaped by market-driven publication teams that claim mystic knowledge of what readers want, what's unique, and what's too outré. As is often the case, they want books to conform to the world they helped create.

 

Yellowface also makes us contemplate the definition of plagiarism, as well as who has the right to tell a particular kind of story and who was guilty of cultural appropriation. Enter jealousy, the cancel culture and just plain nasty troublemakers.

 

And its heart are two 27-year-old writers, Athena Liu and June Song Hayward. Athena had a book deal before she even graduated from college. She is hailed as a generational voice in Asian American literature, is attractive, owns classy digs in Georgetown, and has money galore. What she lacks is friendship. She is a self-absorbed loner with cloaked contempt for critics, readers, and publishers. For some reason, Athena occasionally wants a girls’ night out with Hayward. June doesn't really like Athena much, but she appreciates her talent and her complimentary remarks about June's writing.

 

Secretly June envies Athena's success, as her own writing has garnered decent reviews but not much gain. One soiree at Athena’s apartment ends with a bout of laughter in which Athena chokes, June's attempts at the Heimlich maneuver fail, and by the time ET's arrive, Athena is dead. On impulse, June lifts a completed manuscript from Athena's desk and spirits it away.

 

It's not quite what you think. June is shocked that Athena considered it finished. There are a few golden sentences and there is possibility in the story of Chinese conscripted labor in World War II, but it’s a boring, rambling mess filled with asides and dense detours few readers would wish to navigate. June painstakingly does her own research, creates characters, imposes narrative coherence, and completely rewrites it until all that's left is the general idea.

 

Whose book is it? June shops as her own, has a spat with one publisher, and lands another who promises it will be the year's literary sensation. But if you think June did surgery, the publishers have much more in mind, including adding romance and heroic white characters. They also decide to put the name of Juniper Song on the cover because it sounds faintly Asian. June never pretended to be Asian, but she's cowed into going along with dropping her surname. (Her middle name Song is merely a melodic  family name.) Her publisher assures her all will be fine.

 

The book is indeed a big hit, but her photo leads trolls to question where a white chick gets off donning yellowface to write about Asians. The publisher doesn't care as long as the sales roll in, but social media explodes when proprietary trolls insist that nobody who isn't Asian could write such a book. They drop the charge that she stole it from her dead friend. Did she? As the sharks circle, things get very complicated.

 

Yellowface shifts from conscience-wrestling to a thriller and it's not a smooth transition. Kuang is a skilled storyteller but–and it’s big but–the tale she tells is very analogous to Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot (2021). The externals are different, but the manner of reworking a dead author’s ideas are quite similar. To be clear, I’m not suggesting the P-word, as Korelitz didn't exactly invent the scenario. However, The Plot is more consistent in tone and the psychology of its protagonist. I was, however, disappointed that Kuang published her book so soon after Korelitz’s novel appeared.

 

Rob Weir