BOOK REVIEW: “Yellowface” by Rebecca F. Kuang

A Subtle Tale of Envy, Appropriation and the Conundrums of Creativity.

Rebecca F. Kuang’s Yellowface is a multi-layered story. At the most basic level, it is a tale of professional rivalry, envy and literary theft. Two aspiring writers, friends from university, both go on to realise their dreams of publication, but as one’s career takes off, the other’s stalls. While Athena Liu scoops up awards, seven-figure book deals and Netflix series adaptations, June Hayward sees her debut languish, her publishers and agent lose interest, and her inspiration dry up.

But all this changes one fateful night when, back at Athena’s apartment after a boozy night celebrating yet another of her successes, the two friends agree to an ill-advised pancake-eating contest. June watches in helpless horror as Athena begins to choke and, her efforts to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre ineffectual, dies in front of her. It is only after the medics have left with her friend’s body and she is back home that June realises she has walked away with Athena’s last, unpublished manuscript.

Narrated by June, the story has the inevitability of a slow motion car crash, one that we all know – June herself included – cannot end well. The stolen book is a rough draft, and in places only notes, and at first June convinces herself that it is merely a playful experiment – to fill in the gaps, to tidy up the rushed phrasing, to flesh out this or that character – almost as an homage to her dead friend, the completion of her last unfulfilled wish. But very soon she has a full book, and before she knows it, with the whoosh of an email, so has her agent – who loves it. And once beyond that point, she finds the lure of the success that has so far eluded her too enticing to resist. And she claims it as her own.

The rest of the story makes for predictably uncomfortable, though very enjoyable reading, as June attempts to cover her tracks and foil the literary sleuths and online haters who find her choice of subject matter both implausible and offensive. As June Hayward restyles herself Juniper Song (a non-Chinese but conveniently Asian-sounding middle name, bestowed in her mother’s hippie phase), commentators begin to pose awkward questions. How could WASPish white girl June Hayward have suddenly acquired such a sudden passion for an obscure aspect of Chinese history – Athena’s territory, and the subject of the stolen manuscript – and what does she think entitles her to tell the story of a culture she was not born into?

Yellowface, as the title makes clear, is therefore also an exploration of cultural appropriation, a metaphor for the way that white media co-opts the stories, identities and values of other cultures to spice up their own creative output, adding exotic flavour to their books and films with white-friendly stereotypes that reinforce the Western narrative. And this is all nicely handled with Kuang’s sharp satirical eye – the flame wars and Twitter pile-ons, spilling over into Instagram and Facebook, into the blogosophere, spreading like a virus through the comments sections and news sites.

But it is here that we begin to see that there is more to Kuang’s take on all this than a straight-forward smackdown of cultural colonialism. As the heat of suspicion ramps up, other online commentators begin to round on Athena too, whom they see as having milked the historical misery of her people for commercial gain. In fact, Kuang seems to suggest, isn’t all writing a form of appropriation? Athena is gradually revealed as a literary magpie, guilty of her own thefts, as the words and experiences of her friends and acquaintances find themselves appearing, slightly tweaked, in her novels and short stories. Don’t all writers take from other cultures, times, people? Without borrowing from others, or “appropriating” their imagined internal experiences, most novels would be very boring autobiographies. And ultimately, isn’t all art a form of theft?

Ah, but we must also be careful here, for these are the justifications of the narrator – as untrustworthy as they come – through whose voice Kuang has skilfully garnered our sympathies and has us rooting for the villain. Isn’t she?

But if the reader can at times admit a certain ambivalence regarding the protagonist, there is one undeniable bad guy in Yellowface: the publishing industry itself. Or at least, some of its more despicable tendencies. Despite all the controversies that build up around June, her publisher is loathe to ditch her while the book is still selling so well – and of course, what better advertising is there than a scandal? They are also keen for her to give the illusionary impression that she has Asian roots, and encourage her to make changes to the book to make it more palatable to a Western audience – which the fame-hungry June is more than happy to go along with. But their loyalty is paper thin, for as soon as the profits drop, they are just as willing to give voice to June’s detrators and promote the other side of the story, too. At bottom, their commitment to diversity – or to any ethical values – is revealed as stragegic: it’s all about the money. That said – at the risk of sounding like a bolshy Marxist student – isn’t the real enemy here capitalism itself, and the colonial looting that continues to fuel it?

However, it is a stength of the book that it is not preachy, and while the author has obvious sympathies and points she wants to make, these are craftily woven in with competing concerns and countervailing values. The result is to make us think more deeply about these questions, and to resist the sort of knee-jerk responses that generally drown out meaningful and nuanced debate in the world of blogs, tweets and posts. Wouldn’t that be nice?

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The Speculative Book Club reviews all things science-fictional, fantastical, philosophical and speculative, as well as graphic novels, books about writing, creativity, technology, and whatever else takes my fancy.