Source of book: Audiobook from the library
This is one of two modern novels I ended up reading at roughly the same time that featured struggling writers and the publishing industry as subjects. The other is I Might Be In Trouble by Daniel Aleman. Stay tuned for that review.
The books are, however, quite different in where they go with the basic idea. In the case of Yellowface, the book is a dark and biting satire of the publishing industry and also of the Twitterverse and the vicious online bullying that is its calling card.
I have mixed feelings about this book, although I should say that I enjoyed it and think it is a worthy read. On the one hand, it is often highly effective, a perceptive satire of online culture. It also is good at skewering both Right Wing outrage culture, with its knee-jerk defense of white people against “wokeness,” and also the kind of Left Wing “token diversity” culture that ends up patronizing minorities and quibbling over ideological purity. To this extent, the book is compelling.
The flaws of the book, in my view, can be summed up as a tendency to lecture and dwell on certain issues long past when they stopped being interesting. The worst example is pages and pages of quotes from Twitter, when one would have been sufficient to make the point. Maybe younger readers have a higher tolerance for this, but I found it tedious. Likewise, there are passages that end up being preachy, rather than informative. They felt like a lecture, not a story. In my opinion, better editing would have reduced the book by about one-third, and made it a better read.
There are also some stylistic decisions that I am ambivalent about, but I won’t call them flaws. For example, there is a basic implausibility about a lot of the events of the book. They are over the top to the point that they seem unrealistic in what seems to be intended to be a realistic book. (Unlike I Might Be In Trouble, which is intended to be ludicrous and unrealistic.)
The other stylistic choice that I am unsure about is just how deeply cynical the book is. And I mean, from start to finish. And especially the ending, which is so cynical as fuck that, wow. The humor is really dark, and because of the cynicism, there really are no likeable characters in the book. The protagonist is occasionally sympathetic, but….not really.
I kind of feel like this book was a giant “fuck you” to the entire publishing industry, by an author who had had enough success to get this book greenlighted. (And it actually sold pretty well too, so in the cynical way this book looks at publishing, it’s all good…)
Despite these issues, the book is hard to put down, and, when it is on, it is really good satire.
The basic premise is this: white woman June Hayward is an author whose first book has failed to sell. Her friend and former classmate, Athena Liu, is a huge success, writing best seller after best seller.
Since June’s character is a totally unreliable narrator (in addition to being, essentially, the main villain of the story), it is difficult to be sure of the exact nature of this friendship. From June’s point of view, it is casual, driven as much by jealousy as compatibility. They are “frenemies,” so to speak. But reading between the lines, it is likely that Athena saw the friendship as closer than June did. There is also the hint of some sexual history, but a mere hint that will possibly be exploited for cynical purposes in the future beyond the end of the story.
In any case, while celebrating Athena’s latest success, the two of them end up back at Athena’s apartment, a bit drunk. In a shocking turn of events, an impromptu pancake eating competition leads to Athena choking to death despite June’s attempts to save her.
June is clearly traumatized. But also, she steals the unfinished draft of Athena’s next novel, a fictionalization of the use of Chinese laborers on the European front during World War One. The book is mostly an outline, with some passages written, but much left incomplete.
In order to distract herself from her writer's block, June finishes the novel, adding significant content of her own. Without really thinking things through, she submits the book as her own work, and it ends up becoming a huge smash.
But there are some who suspect that maybe the book was plagiarized, and much Twitter drama ensues. June’s attempts to keep the secret leads, as things often do, to disaster. Or better, disaster after disaster after disaster. But, because publishing thrives on controversy, all this ironically leads to greater success for the book and June’s career.
I won’t spoil it further than that.
One of the fascinating things about this book is that it is the rare book that is completely free of romance and romantic relationships. I didn’t get to mentioning that in my post about Ace, but one of the discussions in that book was the way that a great many works of fiction have romance of some sort as a key part of the plot.
Not so in this one. In fact, the only part of the plot that even involves a romantic relationship at all is the fact that Athena had an ex-boyfriend, and he plays a key role in the events of the book, and also in understanding the complexity of who Athena was.
As the book eventually reveals, far from being a paragon of virtue, Athena herself steals stories. Not in the sense of stealing from writers, but stealing from lives. One of her early successful short stories, for example, is drawn from June’s rape in college, and takes June’s literal words and uses them. Ex-boyfriend Jeffrey later explains that he often felt like his fights with Athena were being carefully choreographed by her so she could use the dialogue in her writing.
So, definitely not a “romance is the center of this story” situation at all.
I would say that in fact some of the best writing in the book is about the Athena problem, and the question generally of how authors borrow or steal ideas from the lives of others. Henry James, by the way, was a master of this (although those he stole from generally didn’t express resentment, for whatever that is worth.) What are the ethical issues in telling stories? And all writing is laced with these questions, because it is impossible to tell a story that does not involve other people. In order to feel real, the characters have to be human, and not all facsimiles of the author.
I also did find the publishing industry politics to be fascinating. I have zero personal experience here, so I cannot vouch for how accurate it is. I can confirm that the author herself has said that she personally heard many of the lines in the book, such as the one about any publisher only needing one Asian writer, not more. And the complaint that one successful minority writer sucks up all the oxygen so that others cannot even get a chance.
I can confirm that Twitter, even before the Elongated Muskmelon bought it and turned it into his personal political propaganda machine, was, to borrow from Star Wars, a “wretched hive of scum and villainy.” This is the main reason I have never had a Twitter account, and never will. (That, and I loathe the character limit. Hence why I blog. I like space to talk…)
As for more global questions, I think the question about how and why books sell, or do not sell, is interesting. How much is marketing? How much is social buzz? Do the merits of the book matter? What makes a book resonate with readers? How many times can the same basic story be told before it wears thin?
Those are never answered by the book - the point is to satirize the whole issue.
Also, there are questions of who is allowed to tell a story. Can a white writer tell a fictional story about Asian characters? How about black characters? And if not, where and how do we draw the line? Can a black author write about white characters? Can a man write about a woman?
These are not easy questions, because they are inseparable from history. White males have dominated Western literature for centuries, in significant part because women were discouraged from writing and often lacked access to publishers. Even now, certain stories are considered “chick lit” and relegated to genre fiction, while stories seen as “masculine” are considered literary.
And likewise, since minority authors struggled for centuries to have their stories told, it just “feels” wrong to have yet another white guy - or white woman - tell their stories. Is it cultural appropriation? Or is the issue limiting white guys to only writing the same white-centric stories over again? As our society becomes more and more global and multicultural, stories will have to become less and less segregated in order to be realistic. Or, they will end up all being “historical fiction” about some imagined past. Which does seem to happen a lot these days.
So I guess, for myself, I am more of the “yes, and” camp. I think that white authors need to write stories that contain more diversity of humans. And I also think that readers should read broadly, and by that I do not just mean diversely, although that is part of it. Definitely read books by authors of all ethnicities and genders. Don’t let worthy books be overlooked just because the author “sounds foreign.” But also, don’t just go for the bestsellers. Find the gems that may not make it on celebrity book lists. (I recommend NPR and Lithub for thoughtful choices.)
Yellowface is one of those worthy reads that will provoke thought, and is definitely a bit different than the average story. It is also fun in that the villain - or at least one of them - is the one telling the story.
The audiobook was narrated by Helen Laser, and was good. In an interview, Laser said that she greatly enjoyed playing a villain, and one who is delusional and increasingly unhinged. It shows in the loving attention to detail in speaking in June’s voice.
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You can check out an interview with the author here, for more about her own intention with the book. And another one here.
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