Yellowface,
by Rebecca F. Kuang.
With the exception of the author, only those in the Publishing
industry are fully aware of the enormous amount of effort that is expended to
produce a novel , let alone a best-seller:
the eventual reader – the Mark – is blissfully ignorant of the fact that
so many have laboured for so long to bring life to a story that will absorb and
enchant, that he will line up to buy – until the next Blockbuster. Rebecca Kuang
enlightens us all with her brutal, brilliant warts-and-all portrayal of the
industry and Social Media, how it can uplift and deify some writers
(particularly after they die) and completely bury others just as good: Death by Twitter.
Juniper Song Hayward is a white Yale graduate whose
mother named her child in her Hippie days.
She is friends with Athena Liu, a Chinese American who has it all: gorgeous looks, a slender model’s figure and
a writing talent that has already propelled her onto the Bestseller lists. June is a writer who has already been
published, but her autobiographical novel ‘Over the Sycamore’ sank without
trace months after publication; now
she’s inclined to think that Athena’s looks have aided her as much as her way
with words; that luck has had a huge
amount to do with Athena’s success and, even though it’s hard to admit, perhaps
Junie is just gut-churningly jealous.
Not of Athena’s writing! No, June
has enough confidence in her talent to know how good she is, she just hadn’t had
the luck.
Until one night a horrible, freak accident occurs at
Athena’s apartment resulting in Athena’s death, and June becomes the custodian
of her friend’s last rough manuscript, a potentially brilliant story of Chinese
indentured labourers sent to France by Britain during the First World War.
No-one knows of this work except June, and after a huge amount of work
transcribing and rewriting, June presents the work as her own to her agent.
With predictable results. The Publishing
world is taken by storm, she is the new Flavour of the Month, and she is on the
Bestseller lists at last.
Until AthenaLiu’sGhost pops up casting aspersions on
Twitter, and bona fide Asian writers want to know how a white woman could trick
everyone with her name – Juniper Song – then write of Chinese history with such
convincing authority. June has reached
the summit, now it’s all downhill.
Rebecca Kuang takes no prisoners in her portrayal of
Yellowface racism in the publishing industry:
‘Sorry, we won’t publish that because the author’s Asian and we already
have an Asian writer’ and with regard to Athena and her supposed success, they
only wanted books from her on an Asian theme.
She was their token Asian author.
Well, Kuang has turned the tables on them, writing as a white woman
trying to plagiarise her Asian friend’s work.
This story is as much an exposé of racism in the publishing industry as it is in
society. To our shame. FOUR STARS.
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