Yellowface

This book is controversial.

Not because it addresses an issue

that is extremely relevant to today’s literati, but because it is inextricably linked with it’s author, RF Kuang.

Many people, myself included, may feel an instinctive distrust at a work that is so closely twined with an author. After all, shouldn’t art transcend authorship, not be obscured by the an author’s fame or infamy?
Innumerable people with a lot more knowledge on the subject and patience for contemplation have pondered this question before me.
-How closely should we associate the writer with the written, and at what point will the reputation of the author precede the quality of their work?-

However, as much as we attempt to carve away the variable of authorship, we shouldn’t forget that novels are written with purpose and intent. They are exigent because of the author’s experiences, melted in the heat of an author’s emotions, cast in the mould of the author’s sociopolitical timeperiod, and then polished, to varying levels, with the author’s talent.

What would we make of the Great Gatsby, if we did not know about Fitzgerald’s (tumultuous) romantic history and the detached decadence of the Jazz age?
Would we understand Animal Farm as well if we did not know about George Orwell’s politics and the history of the Soviet Union?

To the novel-
When literary superstar Athena Liu dies before the eyes of her sorta-friend June, struggling author June Hayward also catches a glimpse of opportunity. When Hayward steals the late Liu’s unpublished manuscript, Hayward gets a taste for the success she thinks she deserved. However among the social media archives, secrets are hard to hide for long…

This is a novel about race, but it is also a novel about social media, success, loneliness and jealousy. It is a satire, and manages to be, at times, profoundly sharp.

The novel’s highlight, however, is its protagonist. June Hayward. A woman who considers herself “open-minded” and is yet unselfconsciously racist.
June Hayward’s blithely racist monologues are wryly funny, and sometimes ringingly familiar. However, Hayward is not entirely a caricature, Kuang spares her moments of insight as well, and her struggles in a brutal and often arbitrary publishing industry are understandable. As Kuang has stated, the novel is also about the lonely people

trapped in the harsh cogs of a relentless industry. That being said, Hayward justifies stealing Athena Liu’s manuscript as someone who has robbed her of her “rightful due”. She sets up the central irony of the novel when she plagiarises Liu’s work, which is, coincidentally about profiting off Chinese labour.
Kuang layers this foundation with other themes, making the book almost like puff pastry, just delicate films of irony glued together by Kuang’s slick, buttery writing style. One of my favourite parts of the novel was her depiction of trial by social media, where two wrongs do make a right, and the titles of victim and villain are handed out and snatched away with equal fervour and righteous indignation. There is an inexplicable jouissance, a cerebral pleasure, in watching the characters of the novel attempt to spin the narrative both for this omniscient jury and to soothe their own consciences. This theme was well-resolved and ends on the perfect note.

I quite enjoyed the writing style, smooth and sparing, just the right balance between austere and purple. It can be best described as glossy; it is as heavy and shiny as an old, expensive magazine cover. The writing style allows you to maintain some intellectual detachment from the characters, even as you feel the increasing tension of the novel.

The plot however starts off with a conceptually intriguing premise, but concludes abruptly with a tacky, contrived jump scare. There are the cliche tropes of being haunted by guilt and emotional spiralling, decently executed but slightly cliche nevertheless. The tension builds along familiar, but well-beloved lines. Until the ending, which is both rushed and clumsy

Overall, thoroughly interesting premise and themes, though some areas of patchy execution. Still, I promised to talk about the controversy, and it is fairly novel one we have here…

To the controversy:

Some background:

Yellowface is Chinese immigrant RF Kuang’s 5th work. She has transitioned fairly seamlessly from the gritty, grimdark Poppy War series, to high fantasy Babel, to this glossy satire. She is, undoubtedly, a protean author, however, the most basic underlying theme- examinations of race, remains in common. Still, each of her novels examines looks at the same subject matter from different angles. The Poppy War series looks at interracial dynamics and the colonisation process, Babel examines the legacy of colonialism on racial and cultural identity, while Yellowface looks at at today’s racial politics in the age of “diverse narratives” - and backlash against them.

Please Note:

Athena Liu: Wealthy Chinese-American immigrant, stellar student, Studied at Yale, shot into stardom with her debut novel
RF Kuang: Wealthy Chinese- American immigrant, stellar student, did her PhD in Yale, shot into stardom with her debut novel
A fine line between author and character indeed.
Or as one would say in goodreads jargon, author-self insert.

Author self insert : When a (novice) author makes one of their characters (the hero and protagonist) resemble (an idealised version of) themselves to the point one can say the have “inserted” themselves into the novel, usually resulting in an (insufferable) extremely infallible character.

Example: me writing about a blogger who has perfect physics-defying hair at all times, who says profound things at apt moments while staring into the distance with deep dark smouldering eyes and has an aura of mystery shrouding them, an inexplicable magnetism…

The accusation levelled against RF Kuang that I’m discussing here is one of author self insert. However, here it is not a case of lazy writing, Kuang, is far too skilled an author for that. RF Kuang’s supposed proxy is Athena Liu, who is not the hero or protagonist, but the blameless martyr of the novel. All the negative things said against her -how she did not properly credit her sources, how she misrepresented other marginalised people- are said solely by June Hayward- a narrator who is… less than reliable, to put it as mildly as possible. Furthermore, the criticism doled out to Liu, parallels some criticism received by Kuang herself.

This is the equivalent of me writing about previously mentioned blogger being criticised for using apostrophe’s incorrectly- by an illiterate- while I have in real life, received that accusation.

This whole controversy may very possibly be typical case of overreaction. However, even as I personally did not pick up on this, I however thought it was an intriguing suggestion given the very purposeful similarities between Kuang and Athena Liu. I have no verdict on this.

Bottomline:

One of the better novels of 2023, definitely worth a read, and Definitely worth discussing.