The many faces of R.F. Kuang's 'Yellowface'

Jul. 24—It seems that every other day there is another scandal spreading like wildfire across the Twitter-scape, another artist to be canceled on TikTok, another celebrity to be unfollowed on Instagram.

Rebecca F. Kuang's new novel "Yellowface" submerges its readers on the other side of that discourse and gives them a front row seat to watch in horror as protagonist Juniper Hayward makes a series of "cancelable" decisions while expertly self-justifying her subtly racist mindset.

In part, Kuang's novel is a love letter (hate letter?) to the publishing industry for its "tokenization" of diverse authors — and in the same breath, the novel leaves the reader to examine the uncomfortable truth of their own biases.

At the beginning, the novel's unreliable and white main character Juniper Hayward, or June, is just itching to escape the shadow of her frenemy Athena Liu, Asian-American literary darling whose success June attributes, almost in its entirety, to the opportunities provided to Athena because of her Asian ethnicity.

When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unseen manuscript, a story about Chinese workers in the British Army during WWI. After smoothing out the Asian names and language to make it more palatable for a white audience, she publishes it as her own under the name Juniper Song (her middle name), adds a racially ambiguous and "nicely tanned" author photo, and immediately reaps the benefits of June/Athena's virally successful book.

It's the type of success June has been chasing her entire life, and we soon learn that there is almost nothing she won't do to keep that success from slipping away — and to keep her swaying tower of lies out of the spotlight.

While "Yellowface" can read a bit predictable at times (in the sense that you can predict June will make every worst decision possible), the novel explores a handful of controversial themes through the lens of an Asian-American woman, Kuang, writing from the perspective of a white woman, June, publishing a book written by an Asian-American woman, Athena.

Are you dizzy yet? Good.

In an interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, Kuang explained that, as illustrated in "Yellowface," limiting who can write about what backfires on marginalized authors and pigeonholes them into writing about "their culture" and "their race" — because, seemingly, nobody else is allowed to.

"I think fiction should be about imagining outside our own perspective, stepping into other people's shoes and empathizing with the other," she said.

"So I really don't love arguments that reduce people to their identities or set strict permissions of what you can and can't write about. And I'm playing with that argument by doing the exact thing that June is accused of, writing about an experience that isn't hers."

Kuang also draws parallels between Athena's experiences and Kuang's own as a young Asian-American author surviving the publishing world.

June recalls Athena's disdain for other up-and-coming, young Asian authors who had sought out Athena's mentorship — something she always declined.

As Kuang describes, Athena falls prey to the narrative that "there can only be one." One Muslim author, one Asian author, one black author, all to check off the boxes and fill the diversity quotas — token diversity, if you will.

In Kuang's opinion, the way the publishing industry treats its authors creates a sense of competition, instead of community, within the pool of underrepresented creatives.

In a later interview at Seattle's Town Hall, she explains that, during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in June 2020, businesses and publishing houses alike promised to fund a litany of "diversity initiatives." They signed scores of authors from different backgrounds, found literary agents for people with economic disadvantages, and in general, built a network of promises that they didn't keep.

"Basically, these authors never heard back from them. They were ghosted."

She touches on this "performative progressivism" in "Yellowface." June sees herself as a progressive, anti-racist, liberal, yet her actions and thoughts contradict those values at their very core.

Kuang explains that it's easy to say what you believe. It's harder, and an entirely different thing on its own, to act and live in honor of those beliefs.

In short, it's harder to respect other cultures than it is to simply say that you respect them.

Perhaps most obviously, Kuang's book is a screaming example of how warped the world of the internet is. The swinging nature of public opinion on Twitter — from right to left, from love to hate, all in the matter of a minute — shows how out of touch with reality one is when the sum of an interaction, and the formation of an opinion, comes from a screen.

This is a nod to Kuang's own rise to fame.

Her first series became immensely popular on TikTok, and that virality is what helped kick off her career. "Yellowface" is her fifth novel, one that follows a portfolio of Nebula award winning, World Fantasy and Locus award finalist, fantasy brilliance.

Yet it is her first step outside of the fantasy world — and often, it shows.

On its own, "Yellowface" is a biting satire with quick and to-the-point prose. Subtlty is not the aim for Kuang. The novel is so bluntly honest that it's refreshing and occasionally anticlimactic.

In comparison to Kuang's other novels though, it's a bit of a shock. "The Poppy War" trilogy, Kuang's first set of books, is known for its careful, literary prose, something that is intentionally lacking in this new, realistic-fiction debut.

It makes sense though.

June is Kuang's first attempt at writing from a first-person point of view — and her first attempt at a truly unreliable narrator. June has a completely different tone than Kuang's previous, noncontemporary, fantasy characters have ... and June should. The voice of a fire-breathing, sword-wielding, child soldier in a fictional 19th century China should sound very different than the narration of a modern-age, Twitter-savvy, flailing author.

Despite its flaws, "Yellowface" works.

Even if Kuang's writing was dull and inexperienced (which it most certainly is not), the questions and themes that Yellowface explores would still make the novel worth a read.

Kuang throws open the curtains to the literary world and bathes all of its problems in a glaring, inescapable light.

And while Yellowface doesn't leave you with any answers to the questions it raises, it does leave you thinking.

The conversations that should follow will be worth your while.

Isabelle Parekh, of Lewis and Clark High School, is a member of The Spokesman-Review's Teen Journalism Institute, a paid high school summer internship program funded by Bank of America and Innovia Foundation. As the only paid high school newspaper internship in the nation, it is for local students between the ages of 16 and 18 who work directly with senior editors and reporters in the newsroom. All stories written by these interns can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information, please contact our newspaper's managing editor. Parekh can be reached at (509) 459-5496 or by email at isabellep@spokesman.com.

Isabelle Parekh's reporting is part of the Teen Journalism Institute, funded by Bank of America with support from the Innovia Foundation.