We owe nothing to the dead. Especially when the dead are thieves and liars, too. And fuck it, I’ll just say it: taking Athena’s manuscript felt like reparations, payback for the things that Athena took from me.

Not often do I feel as uncomfortable reading as I did when I sat down to read Yellowface. Not only is the narrator of the novel a thief and a liar, but she also has the audacity to constantly justify her actions to the reader. And with painful accuracy, too. June Hayward is an expert at twisting the truth into her favour. As a reader, you are highly aware of the wrongness of it all, and yet… yet you keep reading. You can’t help but feel a certain connection to June Hayward as she exposes her deepest thoughts and fears to you. You hope she gets caught, that she gets what she deserves, and yet… a part of you almost wants her to get away with it.

I know what you’re thinking. Thief. Plagiariser. And perhaps, because all bad things must be racially motivated, Racist.

Hear me out.
It’s not as awful as it sounds.

Yellowface follows the narrative of June Hayward, a young author whose debut novel flopped. After the death of her friend (and far more successful writer) Athena, June steals Athena’s unfinished manuscript called The Last Front and publishes a revised version under her own name. What follows is a rollercoaster of events, including but not limited to June coping with criticism, denying various accusations of plagiarism, more plagiarism, and a slow descend into a web of madness and paranoia. Through June’s experiences, the novel satirically explores a side of the publishing industry that no one really talks about: one that predetermines which writers get to tell their stories and what writers are turned down on account of the publisher ‘already having a writer of colour.’ This latter point also results in more enemies for June, like Candice, who originally worked with June’s publishing team on The Last Front. Due to her bitterness over a white author ‘getting to’ write a story that ‘should’ belong to an author of Asian descent, she viciously attacks June over it.

“Who cares about Athena?” Candice barked out a laugh. “Fuck Athena. We all hated that bitch. This is for me.”

The writing style that Kuang uses in Yellowface is blunt and direct. Perhaps this is intended to help characterise the narrator, June. Kuang seems to have chosen to forgo the almost poetic prose that she employed for Babel, or the heaviness that came with the topics which are explored in The Poppy War. This newfound bluntness drives home the topics that Yellowface tackles. The bluntness of the work suits the fast pace of the novel, and it results in a wildly different reading experience compared to Kuang’s previous works. This raises the issue, however, of whether this novel should be compared to Kuang’s previous works at all. Not only is it different in style and genre, but the narrative techniques are completely different, too.

For example, June often talks directly to the reader. It almost begs the question whether Yellowface is what June imagined her pseudo-autobiography to be like, except that theory wouldn’t work because the title is what Candice said she would name her work on June’s theft of Athena’s manuscript: Yellowface. Does that mean that we need to see Yellowface not from June’s viewpoint, but Candice’s? It is often said that June is an unreliable narrator, but what if June is not the narrator at all? What if Candice put those words in her mouth as she fictively wrote Yellowface? Or Yellowface could be the final work that June starts at the end of the novel, one in which she tries to take back the narrative. It is impossible to know for sure.

This little dilemma goes to show that Yellowface can be interpreted in many ways. The ambiguous style of Yellowface rightfully sets the reader up with even more questions than the novel’s the questions about authorship and cultural appropriation would in the first place.

Ever since The Last Front came out, I have been victim to people like Candice and Diana and Adele: people who think that, just because they’re ‘oppressed’ and ‘marginalised,’ they can do or say whatever they want. That the world should put them on a pedestal and shower them with opportunities. That reverse racism is okay. That they can bully, harass, and humiliate people like me, just because I’m white, just because that counts as punching up, because in this day and age, women like me are the last acceptable target. Racism is bad, but you can still send death threats to Karens.

Because of the bluntness of the prose, sensitive issues such as racism are dealt with from an unusual angle. June sees herself both as a white saviour and as a victim. When she publishes The Last Front, she says that she does so out of a sense of obligation. June’s approach to her publication of The Last Front gives the reader a sense of the white man’s burden. June, a white person, is crucial in the process of publishing of Athena’s manuscript. Without her, Athena’s unfinished work would not be done justice. Either it would not be published at all, or it would be published in a raw, unfinished form. Neither option is acceptable to June.

Interestingly enough, June also positions herself as a victim. She is a victim of vicious people of Asian descent who are out to get her, ‘just’ because she is white, and telling a story that they deem not hers to tell. This is, of course, a very warped view on the events. It does not take away though, the sense of discomfort that is yet again evoked. How does Yellowface deal with this? As readers, we only see one side of the events. And through an unreliable narrator, at that.

For the first time since I submitted the manuscript I feel a deep wash of shame. This isn’t my history, my heritage. This isn’t my community. I am an outsider, basking in their love under false pretences. It should be Athena sitting here, smiling with these people, signing books and listening to the stories of her elders.

Kuang herself has a clear view on the question of cultural appropriation via authorship: it shouldn’t be focussed on too much. In an interview with The Guardian, she explained that discussing who has the right to tell a certain story is “the wrong question to ask.” If we were only allowed to write from our own experiences, very little would be left to write about. What does matter, however, is the way the work in question handles such topics. Remarkably, if one were to look only at Yellowface, and not Kuang’s other writings or interviews, it would be difficult to come to this conclusion.

But how did this all come about?

In Yellowface, June’s marketing team seems to want to present June as racially ambiguous, convincing her to publish under the name “Juniper Song.” Song is June’s middle name but can also pass as an Asian last name. On top of this, June chooses an author picture of herself in which she looks more tanned than she actually is. This results in not only a misleading name, but also a representation of herself that adds to the picture that her marketing team tries to paint. These efforts to present June as racially ambiguous result in the sense that June and her marketing team are of the opinion that June’s writing on Chinese history is potentially problematic. It shows that she seems to know that maybe it isn’t her place to tell a story about a heritage that is not hers, even before we observe her actively realising the wrongness of her actions. Once she does realise this, she tries to redeem herself in her own way. However, she never apologises. She never takes anything back.

Does it matter if an author’s work does not directly reflect the author’s personal views? Perhaps not. However, if Yellowface means to address these serious issues, such as racism within the publishing industry and with regard to authorship, and to provide an insightful critique of how these issues have been debated, then it still fails to reflect Kuang’s opinion on this particular matter. I think Kuang may have done this purposefully. By not answering the question about authorship inside the novel itself, Kuang allows the reader to come to their own interpretation. June is not the most sympathetic protagonist, and because of her faults the reader will likely not agree with her view that she does get to write this story. June herself seems unsure of what her own views are. She even admits, during an event with the Chinese American Social Club (quote above) that it should have been Athena sitting there instead of June, sitting amongst “her elders.”

On the whole, Yellowface successfully draws the reader into its story. Through its unreliable narrator we get to see a viewpoint that few would normally dare venture into. It shows an ugly side of people, of friendship, and of the publishing industry. It explores topics such as racism, authorship and victimhood. It shows a white person who is guilty of cultural appropriation, but also Athena, a writer of Asian descent, who is equally guilty of appropriating other people’s stories.

Yellowface is not a book for the faint of heart. If you decide to pick it up – which I do recommend – be ready for a roller coaster.