Spoiler alert: If you don’t want to know anything ahead of time, wait and read this later. I won’t tell everything, but I do mention some things. Continue at your own risk.
When you read R.F. Kuang’s disturbingly funny novel about publishing and literary theft, prepare to be unsettled. If you are a reader, you will catch a glimpse behind the curtain. If you are a writer or aspire to be a published author, you may see yourself in this book somewhere.
It’s horrifying.
It’s also clever and witty and sharp and entertaining.
The cover itself is perfect, a bright yellow dust jacket. I also laughed out loud when I realized the back cover blurbs were written, sincerely or ironically, in the same “crit-speak” that the book sends-up to such delightful, cringy effect [1].
As delightful as the outer skin of the book is, it’s the insides that really matter. With Yellowface, Kuang took an X-ACTO ® knife to the literary/publishing-world, dissected it, put the bloody parts on display, and dared us to look. Everyone says it’s a satire.
It’s also so true it made my teeth ache.
Literary Theft, Publishing Shenanigans, and Cultural Appropriation
In Yellowface, the main character, June Song Hayward, is a young, white, female author with one middling book published to little fanfare. Her friend, Athena Liu, is a young, Asian, female author who has achieved early fame and success. When Athena dies a weird, food-related death, June steals Athena’s rough manuscript, rewrites it, and passes it off as her own under the pen name Juniper Song. She makes a ton of money and becomes famous, but the guilt eats at her and, of course, the truth eventually comes out.
I felt horrified four pages in when I realized what I was in for. I hate the word “triggering” [see 1], but, yes, I reacted viscerally to the story from the get-go. As someone who has been writing and thinking about publication for thirty years and who finally got a debut novel out from a small press last year (my novel, FINAL DRAFT: An Olivia Lively Mystery is about a literary theft, no less), this story gave me the willies.
I also felt oddly gratified seeing certain industry practices brought out of the shadows. We authors swim most of the time in self-loathing and despair. We are told over and over we just aren’t good enough or aren’t doing the right things. “If you don’t succeed, it’s your own fault. Try harder next time. Write 20 books. Get a better book cover. Take this course. Buy these ads. Be more active on social media. No guarantees, of course.” And the biggest, shruggiest lie of all. “The readers decide.”
Think about that the next time you see the same book reviewed in every publication and on every Book Tok and Bookstagram and Goodreads account on the very same days. When that book shoots to the top of the best-seller lists out of nowhere. When everyone is talking about this one author at the same time. How did that happen? Magic? No. It’s just launch week for the literary flavor of the month, and the book is placed so you see it everywhere you turn. The PR machine is grinding away to create the latest success.
It’s just business. Nothing personal. Take it all with a grain of salt.
And as bad publishing looks in Kuang’s book, there’s worse: Main character and writer, Juniper Song Hayward.
Obviously, cultural appropriation is the major theme in the book, and June Hayward may be the most self-deluded and conniving anti-heroine on bookshelves right now. She’s a literary thief passing herself off as Asian to get ahead. Not only does she lie, cheat, and steal, she convinces herself it’s okay.
Being in her head is like walking toward a cliff with your neck twisted on backwards.
Now, literary theft isn’t always cultural appropriation (you can certainly have one without the other), but passing yourself off with a vaguely Asian-sounding nom de plume most certainly qualifies! When June Hayward becomes Juniper Song, swiping a rough manuscript, polishing it, and claiming it as 100% hers, let’s be clear. That’s both literary theft and cultural appropriation.
In a less deft writer’s hands, this story would be a simple one of sin, suffer, and repent, but here we get so much more to think about, forcing us to ask . . .
Who Owns Story?
Kuang adds unexpected layers of complexity to her story and characters, and those layers lead to some interesting questions, including:
Would Juniper’s book have been championed, celebrated, or even noticed if she’d published as “basic white girl” June Hayward?
Who owns a story, anyway? Can we write about cultures not our own? If so, who gets to and who doesn’t?
Can we claim ownership of our own experiences or are they up for artistic grabs?
These questions bring to mind others you may have contemplated in years and decades past. If something is “ripped from the headlines” is that literary theft? What if it’s ripped from someone’s diary? Or ripped from your own cultural history? Or non-fiction research?
If it’s fan fiction with the names and genre changed? If it’s an age-old story retold? A fairy tale set in modern times? A character removed from the 1800s and plopped into a modern rom-com. Or zombie mash-up.
Where are the lines? Who gets to draw them?
These questions arise time and again in the literary world. Yellowface gives us the opportunity to ask and consider them anew.
I encourage everyone to read Kuang’s novel for themselves and analyze the appropriation portrayed in the book, who’s doing it to whom, and how it propels the plot forward. It’s a roller-coaster of a ride. A roller-coaster combined with a Tilt-A-Whirl. The pressure just about flattens you to the wall in some places.
But you’ll enjoy it. You might even scream a little.
Next Up: Part Two where I delve deeper into June’s character and other monsters.
[1] Can we remove the words “situate” and “interrogate” and “complicit” and “centering” and their like from regular bookish conversations and put them back in their pretentious, self-congratulatory, higher-education, literary criticism, academic/intellectual ivory towers, please? Let’s just talk like readers with each other.
Another Book About Literary Thievery!
In my debut women’s mystery, P.I. Olivia Lively is asked to investigate a potential literary theft at a prestigious liberal arts college in Portland, Maine when an MFA student accuses his mentor of stealing his manuscript and passing it off as his own.