Yellowface

Oooh this book had a pretty controversial debut didn't it, the reviews kinda look a little like Fallujah circa. 2004. Having read the book, I can't say I am surprised, this was a tough read to get through. This is one of those books where different people will find different sections to be intolerable, but suffice to say the subject is heavy. Personally, I found myself hating this book early on, but the further I got into it the more the project as a whole started to make sense. I really enjoyed this book by the end, but having perused the reviews I can see that there is some truth to the negative reactions.

This is a book about the publishing process first and foremost; it also directly deals with the issues of plagiarism and race. This book centers on June Hayward, a struggling white author who happens to be present when her more successful friend and colleague Athena Liu chokes and dies in an accident. June winds up stealing Athena's manuscript about Chinese laborers in the First World War. After some serious revision, June publishes The Last Front under the nom de plume of Juniper Song to immediate critical acclaim. But the good times don't last, people begin to notice the similarities between her work and Athena's, debates around race and cultural appropriation dominate the narrative around her book and ultimately accusations of plagiarism are hurled June's way.

All it really took for me to read this were the keywords “R.F. Kuang” and “Unreliable Narrator”, I'm just a mark for books like this. I think that this might be one of the best First Person Present-tense stories that I've gotten to read. This is a tough style to pull off, but god-damn if Babel wasn't a fluke, THIS LADY CAN WRITE. This is even more impressive to me because the character of June isn't really a self insert for Kuang, but her character was incredibly complete and well-defined. All I can say towards the writing quality in this book is that it's masterful, this is a prestige, a magic-trick that I completely bought into.

Despite the abundant quality, the first third of this book was incredibly difficult for me to read, I just kept finding myself getting irrationally upset with the text and with the character of June. The feeling of abject revulsion I felt with every action June took to cover up her crime, with every justification she presented for her actions and mentality, was honestly too much. I found that I had to break this read up into little chunks to bleed off the anger and focus on the text, but this was tough. If you also hate “everyday racism” and plagiarism, this will probably also get under your skin. That said, I'm glad I powered through because it all pays off in a very Cronenberg-Lets watch this car crash in slo-mo type of way.

I think that even if you took away the narrative elements and stripped this down to an essay concerning race/POC in the publishing industry, it would still be a strong, poignant, and valuable read. Valuable is the key word here, I never expected to read the industry equivalent of a naval broadside: Kuang hits every single issue, every single side, and I can respect the message that much more for its indiscriminate truth. I hate that non-white authors get pigeonholed into writing “diverse works” almost as much as I hate that white authors get flak for telling stories outside their cultural lanes, and it seems like I'm in Kuang's boat here.

There was one criticism that I read in the warzon- I mean the review section- that I agree with in spades. RFK's voice bleeds through the veneer of June; there is a pretty clear distinction between character and author that's established fairly early on, but the more the book dives into the pressure of publishing and the (frankly disgusting) racial aspect ascribed to historical/cultural works, the more I felt RFK's voice take control of the narrative. That's not all bad, her voice has quite a lot to say on the subject, and I'm glad that the whole “They already have an Asian Writer. They can't put out two minority stories in the same season,” discussion concerning the broken diversity elevator made it into the book. And her voice goes a long way to rehabilitating June's character, adding a healthy dose of nuance after an opening that toes the line between social discourse and reverse race baiting. But even with these clear benefits, blurring the line between June and Rebecca makes digesting this content a little messy, on some level it's all the author's words but what are we to ascribe to RFk's life experience and what is pure fiction. If I can boil my issue down, it would be that it would have been so much more impressive if June was just June and RFK found a different, less central character to deliver her opinion.

Closing thoughts: This is a really good book, it's got some flaws, and maybe the ending is a touch bleak for something that was already pretty heavy. I think as a total package this has some literary importance, and even if the content isn't to everyone's liking RFK is saying something that everyone should hear. It blows me away that people read this thing and then still published all of these trash reviews as if to prove RFK right.