#8 [2024/CBR16] Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

I'd seen Yellowface (2023) by R.F. Kuang on various lists at the end of the year, which encouraged me to pick it up. I really didn't know what to expect, but I was still surprised. I've read a number of books where plots are stolen or authors pretend to be something they're not, and this one felt nothing like them. In fact, it felt more like a horror story than a literary story. 

June Hayward is an aspiring author. She has published one book that did not gain any traction and now feels like she's barely treading water in the literary world. A classmate of hers, Athena Liu, has had a very different trajectory--she's a critical darling and bestseller. June is jealous of Athena's achievements and in her low moments thinks that Athena's ethnicity has aided her success.

Although June and Athena are not friends, they are both pretty solitary and occasionally spend time together. One night, June is over at Athena's apartment when Athena chokes on some food and suffocates to death in front of June. It is grisly, and June does what she can to save her, including calling 911. But when she leaves, June takes the only copy of Athena's just-finished manuscript with her. Athena had told her that no one else had even seen it.

June takes the manuscript without much thought or any kind of plan. First she just wants to read it. But June loves it and decides to work on it herself, eventually presenting it to her publisher as her own. The story is about Chinese soldiers in England during one of the World Wars. They faced hardship, death, and racism, and it sounded like a very interesting story. June had to make up how she--as a white woman with no previous interests in the subject--suddenly dug deep into this topic. Her publishing team embraced the whole thing. Eventually, they encouraged June to publish under the name Juniper Song (her middle name) in order to be ethnically ambiguous.

I cannot even imagine stealing a manuscript from a dead woman and trying to pass it off as my own. The shame I would feel--as well as the fear of being caught--would be overwhelming. What follows for June is a number of incredibly awkward, painful, and uncomfortable situations. First, June inserts a "white savior" scene into the book without even understanding how she's impacting the story. When Athena's mother ends up with Athena's notebooks (that contain Athena's notes and drafts of her story), June convinces Athena's mother to keep them hidden. And finally, rumblings start on the Internet that she is not the true author of her book. With that, an "Athena Liu" on Twitter begins to harass her.

At one point in the story June describes a harrowing date rape that she endured in college. She'd told Athena everything about it, and Athena was an amazing friend--consoling her and getting her help. But a month later, Athena published a short story in the school's magazine that was a thinly veiled retelling of June's date rape. When June confronted Athena about it, she didn't respond. Athena seemed to wring stories from those around her for most of her writing, and June used this to justify to herself her own stealing of Athena's work.

This book was very memorable and thought provoking, but also consistently disturbing. I was horrified by what June had done and couldn't imagine that she would get away with it. But reading the book through her perspective, I was also dreading her getting caught. It really does feel like a horror story.