yellowface | r. f. kuang
Topical issues and breezy, fast-paced reading aside, this book was a surprisingly vulnerable look into the lonely rat race of the publishing world. The ups and downs of writing—or any creative process—are intimately documented: this is the best work in the world and we are lucky to do it, not least because we’d lose our minds otherwise. Of course, that comes at a price: anything you care about this much could easily kill you.
notes:
Deep down, I’ve always suspected Athena likes my company precisely because I can’t rival her. I understand her world, but I’m not a threat, and her achievements are so far out of my reach that she doesn’t feel bad squealing to my face about her wins. Don’t we all want a friend who won’t ever challenge our superiority, because they already know it’s a lost cause?
People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing. Unfounded, vinegary, mean-spirited. But I’ve found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear. Jealousy is the spike in my heart rate when I glimpse news of Athena’s success on Twitter—another book contract, awards nominations, special editions, foreign rights deals. Jealousy is constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short; is panicking that I’m not writing well enough or fast enough, that I am not, and never will be, enough. Jealousy means that even just learning that Athena’s signing a six-figure option deal with Netflix means that I’ll be derailed for days, unable to focus on my own work, mired by some shame and self-disgust every time I see one of her books in a bookstore display.
Every writer I know feels this way about someone else. Writing is such a solitary activity. You have no assurance that what you’re creating has any value, and any indication that you’re behind in the rat race sends you spiraling into the pits of despair. Keep your eyes on your own paper, they say. But that’s hard to do when everyone else’s papers are flapping constantly in your face.
There’s something desperate about it, and I don’t know what frightens me more—that she’s manipulative enough to pull off such an act, or that everything she’s saying might be true.
Meanwhile, in my bag, tossed at the floor of my bed, Athena’s manuscript sits like a hot sack of coals.
“I don’t know,” I murmur. “Honestly, Mr. Lee, I don’t know if I was the right person to tell this story.”
He clasps my hands tighter. His face is so kind, it makes me feel rotten.
“You are exactly right,” he says. “We need you. My English, it is not so good. Your generation has very good English. You can tell them our story. Make sure they remember us.” He nods, determined. “Yes. Make sure they remember us.”
He gives my hands one last squeeze and tells me something in Chinese, but of course I don’t understand a word.
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 pretenses. It should be Athena sitting here, smiling with these people, signing books and listening to the stories of her elders.
“Eat, eat!” Mr. Lee nods encouragingly at my plate. “You young people work too hard. You don’t eat enough.”
The resulting personality is astoundingly annoying, but I sympathize with these kids. They’re just like myself, ten years ago. A well-phrased barb right now could irreparably destroy their confidence. But the right words of encouragement could help them fly.
“You have to be practical, Junie. You’re young; you have assets. You’ve got to take advantage of them—”
“Okay, stop, please,” I snap. “I know you’ve never supported my writing—”
She blinks. “Of course I supported your writing.”
“No, you didn’t. You hated it. You’ve always thought it was stupid, I get it—”
“Oh, no, Junie. I know what the arts are like. Not everyone’s going to make it big.” She rubs the top of my head, the way she did when I was a child, only now it doesn’t feel remotely comforting. A gesture like this, between adult women, can only be patronizing. “And I just didn’t want to see you get hurt.”
I remember the day during our senior year that Athena received the first offer on her debut novel, when her agent called and told her on her way to barre class that she would soon have her book on shelves. She called me first. Me. She hadn’t even told her parents yet.
“Oh my God,” she’d breathed. “June. You won’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
Then she told me about the offer, and I gasped, and we both screamed back and forth at each other for a good thirty seconds.
“Holy shit, Athena,” I whispered. “It’s happening. Everything you wanted—”
“I feel like I’m standing on a cliff, and my whole life is in front of me.” I remember so clearly her breathy whisper; shocked and hopeful and vulnerable all at once. “I feel like everything is about to change.”
“It will,” I promised her. “Athena, you’re going to be a fucking star.”
And then we screamed back and forth a little more, relishing the other’s presence at the other end of the line, for it was so nice to know someone who understood this exact dream, who knew how mere words can become sentences can become a completed masterpiece, how that masterpiece can rocket you into a wholly unrecognizable world where you have everything—a world you wrote for yourself.
“She stole from me, too,” Geoff says. “Constantly.”
I’m stunned. “You’re saying that your stories—”
“No, I mean—look, it’s complicated.” His eyes dart around, like he’s afraid that someone will overhear. He takes a deep breath. “It was more like—okay, look, here’s an example. So we’d get into fights, right? Stupid stuff, like her dog allergy, or having joint finances—anyways, it felt so important at the time. And I’d yell something desperate, something vulnerable, only to find those same words published in a short story the very next month. Sometimes, when we fought, she would give me this very cool, narrow-eyed look. I knew that look, because it was the same look she got when she was drafting a scene. And I never knew if she was really there during our relationship, or if the whole thing for her was some kind of ongoing story, if she did what she did just to document my reaction. I felt like I was losing my mind.” He presses his fingers against the bridge of his nose. “Sometimes she would say things that made me upset, or ask about things I’d been through—and as time went on all I could think was that she was mining me, using me as fodder.”
“[…] And the way you spoke about the novel as if it wasn’t your own. As if it was some thing you could chop up and polish however you liked.”
“[…] I’ve been on the other side. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve been in the room when we pick our one spicy book of the season, when we decide who’s educated and articulate and attractive but marginalized enough to make good on our marketing budget. It’s sick, you know. But I supposed it’s nice to be the token. If the rules are broken, you might as well ride the diversity elevator all the way to the top. Wasn’t that your logic?”
janet change 