Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
Here’s why this book is very much of the moment – this is a story written in the first person by a young, talented and successful Asian American woman about a young, white American woman who appropriates and plagiarises the writing ideas of her deceased friend, a young, talented and successful Asian American writer. Meta or what!
Its zeitgeistiness isn’t all there is to this book, though. It’s an entertaining satire about the shallow, amoral nature of the publishing world as well as a perceptive insight into the invidious influence of online readers and critics on the way writers and their books are perceived and received.
June is at a difficult moment in her life. Her early promise that saw the publication of her debut novel soon after graduating dissipated quickly when the book failed to attract any buzz and few sales. Increasingly bereft of ideas and confidence, her dream of becoming a writer, a dream that has been at her core since childhood, is slipping away along with the years. Her sense of failure is twisted into grievance as she witnesses the success of other young female writers. The mixed cultural and ethnic heritage and minority status of this group seems to be a barrier that excludes her from literary relevance. And this is no more apparent than in the seemingly effortless success of her college friend Athena Liu. Friend, as Juno, realises is a little bit strong. Even before Athena’s publishing successes and establishment as a media friendly voice of the new, diverse generation, they were different people on different trajectories who simply shared a place on a college writing course. As Juno was always aware, Athena’s beauty, style and self-assurance as well as her ethnic background proclaimed a golden future.
At the start of the book, these contrasting trajectories seem well established as they drink wine together at one of their infrequent catch ups. This all happens in the first section of the book. Athena’s self-satisfaction and June’s carefully concealed bitterness and jealousy are concisely detailed by Kuang. And then, an unfortunate incident occurs; and as Athena’s body is being taken away by the emergency services, June takes away her dead friend’s draft manuscript and notes for her next novel.
Whilst the playing out of the novel from this point on seems predictable, things are not so clear cut. Yes, we see June, who changes her nom de plume to the more ambiguous Juno, achieve the sort of literary success she had always dreamed about with Athena’s book. And yes, she then has to cope with the fear of being revealed as a plagiarist which is always in the background undermining this success. Without giving anything away that you wouldn’t anticipate, June has to cope with revelations that threaten her credibility. What might seem to be a familiar route from hubris to shameful exposure does, however, take us down many surprising and uncomfortable byways.
Whilst Athena is, even by June’s reckoning, a talented writer, June is clearly a skilled wordsmith herself. She is also, of course, an unreliable narrator but it does appear that she has put in time and effort to craft the story purloined from Athena’s apartment – how much is Athena and how much is June is, however, left nebulous.
The story about Chinese workers in Europe during the First World War is an alternative narrative about forgotten, marginalised voices. It not only sells well but gets June on the lucrative and well-paid media and book tour circuit. Here, she has to handle the questions about cultural appropriation and who has the right to tell stories. This is fascinating and it is easy to begin rooting somewhat for June as she mounts a thoughtful defence of writers having freedom if it is allied to responsibility and sensitivity.
Alongside this, though, is what seems to be heartfelt exposure of the publishing world. Literary merit gets the publishing houses interested but the marketability of the writer, predominantly, and then the theme of the book are the key ingredients. June gains a public profile and financial security but she is treated like a piece of meat, albeit her literary handlers spout faux concern for her. Without giving too much away, her publisher has less concern about the authenticity of her writing and more about profile, publicity and sales. As various, vicious attacks occur towards June, her publisher veers between bulldog defence against the trolls and hands-off indifference to their writer. And what Kuang does well is to make you sometimes forget, or at least sometimes park, June’s initial literary transgression as one becomes transfixed by the venality and hypocrisy of this world.
I really enjoyed this book. Central to this is June’s personal, self-inflicted tragedy that has the classic qualities of such a psychological journey. As she doubles down on her initial deception, her paranoia becomes manifest. She now has something to lose. However, she is also a writer with the empathy and sensitivity to analyse her story as if a character in a novel. I repeat, she did not seem to me the least sympathetic character in this book even though she was the catalyst for the online storm that begins to obsess her.
The book also provides a nuanced, non-didactic consideration of contemporary debates about the stories we want to tell, who we think has a right to tell them and what we seem to increasingly and, probably, unreasonably expect of creative people. It’s a consistently engaging modern morality tale. The only problem - there was little or no decency on display in the literary world Kuang presents to us.