The most immediate comparison that comes to mind with R. F. Kuang’s novel Yellowface is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Poe’s twisted short story features a protagonist that we shouldn’t be able to understand, given that he feels compelled to commit a heinous act. But for as disturbed as this man is, his reasoning is laid bare so acutely that you can easily connect with the mounting paranoia and anxiety he experiences, which keeps ratcheting up across his tortured internal monologue.
This short story’s ending, though powerful, is almost a relief; not just morally, but in that we no longer have to keep experiencing these rising waves of panic. This is similar to how I felt after finishing Yellowface, a book that manages to be both tense and easy to absorb. Just like with The Tell-Tale Heart, we aren’t dealing with an altogether likable protagonist — in fact, she’s extraordinarily unlikable a lot of the time — but Kuang’s efforts to make us see her perspective mean that it’s impossible not to understand her rationalisations.
And protagonist June has many rationalisations for her terrible behaviour, which begins after an acquaintance of hers, the successful novelist Athena Liu, chokes to death right in front of her. June, who has envied Athena for years for achieving the kind of writing career that she can only aspire to have, steals a manuscript of Athena’s most recent novel from the dead woman’s apartment. Realising that this unpublished book could be the answer to all of her prayers, June re-works Athena’s draft into a more cohesive, publishable work of art and pretends it is hers, launching her into critical acclaim and commercial success.
The greatest strength of Kuang’s prose is how effortlessly she portrays June’s mindset. On the one hand, she’s a painfully unlikable character, whose endless explanations for her behaviour are intensely annoying to listen to. But what’s even more impressive is how easy it is to fall under June’s spell. This isn’t a conscious decision on this protagonist’s part to endear us to her, as she is uncomfortably honest (and oblivious) in her reflections as she attempts to achieve literary stardom.
It takes an enormous amount of confidence and faith in one’s readers to assume that they will be able to recognise this character’s ignorance while still being able to humanise her. June is an extraordinarily gifted thinker in the everyday sense, where she can easily use whatever life throws her way to justify her actions and, if anything, make herself out to be the victim.
The way she sees it, she couldn’t have plagiarised Athena’s work, because she was the one who made the necessary changes to publish it and ensure that it would see the light of day. And she shouldn’t be lambasted online in vicious ways, with such critiques often unfairly coming down to her race, even though on some level she has to understand how stupefying it is to think this given all that she’s done. June has an unbelievable ability to psychologically envelop who Athena was as a writer and what she contributed to the literary world.
Very quickly she jumps from defending her role as an editor to despising her critics online for trying to accuse her or plagiarising her own novel, never acknowledging that even in her private thoughts she has begun to refer to herself as the author of this text. This isn’t her only ploy at victimhood, with class, gender and race often being integrated into this narrative — and June’s rationalisations — in fascinating ways. Despite despising the constant identity politics she’s forced to wade through with these plagiarism and cultural appropriation accusations, this protagonist has no issue using her existence as a woman to shield herself from criticism.
But what’s remarkable about Yellowface is that Kuang is able to illustrate just how endlessly toxic and limiting social media can be when it comes to these identity markers, while still recognising that these issues of identity are vitally important in literature and the arts. Yellowface does a brilliant job of recognising this while also exposing the tiresome cynicism and binary approach that hateful people online exhibit towards nuanced subjects. In general it would be fair to say that this novel is deeply online-oriented, so those unaware of how certain toxic circles on social media operate won’t be able to get the full experience of Kuang’s anxiety-fuelled writing.
There is some validity to June’s claims about how women are unfairly fixated on and criticised, but it’s absurd to watch her use this to internally ward off valid criticism. Much of the vitriol this character suffers through is deeply unfair and inhuman, just not often for the same reasons she thinks it is. Almost always, this act of plagiarism is denounced solely because it’s an instance of a white person copying the work of a person of colour.
While reading this book I was often reminded of John Boyne’s The Echo Chamber, a dark comedy about the pitfalls of social media and cancel culture. Here, as in that novel, one can almost viscerally feel the frustrations of its author, who is very transparently using this book to vent about hate they’ve received on social media platforms. I’ve come across quite a bit of pushback online towards Yellowface, with many seeing it as far too unsubtle for their tastes. While I enjoyed The Echo Chamber, I think this criticism applies far more to Boyne’s novel, which is aggressively (and purposefully) heavy-handed in its critique of the waves of hate emanating from social media.
In contrast, Kuang’s novel is far messier — and thus more accurate — in its assessment of these issues. While I would certainly hesitate to call it subtle, it meaningfully engages with its ideas and the people propagating them instead of turning the entire experience into a farcical one. Although much of Yellowface might not seem very complex on its surface, it is a giant achievement to say so much about these topics while only showing us June’s perspective.
Since June is unable to understand the perspectives of many of those around her, it’s no small feat for Kuang to make it abundantly obvious when this protagonist’s ideas have merit, and when they are fodder to be laughed at. Aside from the many micro-aggressions she engages in (where she ranges from harmless comments to infuriating ones), June dismisses Athena’s experiences as a person of colour by explaining that her privileged upbringing means she couldn’t possibly have been underprivileged in other areas. This, coming from the same person who will use the only aspect of her identity that puts her at a disadvantage — being a woman — as a barrier for criticism. Refusing to see any nuance here, June isn’t that dissimilar to the online trolls ruining her life.
She has also made herself primed to seek out validation from strangers online, since there are large holes in her identity that can only be temporarily alleviated through others’ attention. This desperation to be loved makes it easy to pity June despite her flaws, especially given a revelation about how Athena did something to her that reflects June’s act of plagiarism. Here the book temporarily moves past its discussion of race in the writing and publishing world to discuss the innate selfishness of writing, and the cruelty behind stealing someone else’s story.
This is a book that I think would greatly appeal to people who write in their spare time or who aspire to be writers, even if it makes for a rather uncomfortable read in its dissection of this subject. Yellowface is a deeply cynical exploration of writing, where June’s dreams of success are realised through her stealing the work of a dead woman, and where her guilt is mostly tied to her fear of being caught out rather than feeling genuinely sorry for Athena.
The instinct of a writer is to give their latest story their full attention, so this takes that idea to its logical endpoint in a number of really interesting and gripping ways. Yellowface might be incredibly readable, where even as a terribly slow reader I felt compelled to tear through it, but it doesn’t let its accessibility cancel out what it wants to say.
Though the novel’s portrayal of an unlikeable — yet believable — protagonist is quite nuanced, Athena is difficult to imagine as a real person. This is partly intended given that June views her less as a friend and more an ideal of literary success, but still, the deceased author’s attitude and lifestyle feel more like the work of fanfiction than a serious attempt to portray a real person.
While Athena Liu did exist as a concept to others, and maybe also to herself, the book leans into this portrayal in very surface-level ways, where it feels like she’s a Tumblr-obsessed teen’s projection of an author. I also didn’t love how this book ends, where it suddenly races to the finish line with careless abandon. Aside from not connecting with its final 20 pages as much as I did during the rest of the narrative, it’s strange to see June’s micro-aggressions suddenly possessing more of an edge.
Just like with Athena’s characterisation, there’s a justifiable reason for this in the narrative, since this protagonist is spiralling under the weight of concealing what she’s done. That said, what was interesting about June’s comments on Asian people around her was how some of these passing remarks were actually quite innocuous, but become uncomfortable when you consider who is making them, while others were more explicit as micro-aggressions.
Given this, it’s a misstep for the book to remove this nuance even as it nears the finish line. This is where Kuang drops subtlety entirely, taking this immensely readable novel in a direction that stops feeling like it has any basis in reality. There’s a quick burst of momentum that’s quite fun, but by the end of the novel there’s no feeling of either immense relief or heightened anxiety. Unlike Poe’s short story, this novel fails to stick the landing with its ending, and doesn’t allow for any interesting social commentary or discussion to spring forth from it.
Luckily, the rest of Yellowface is a hilarious, anxiety-inducing experience — as well as a disquieting yet oddly endearing satire — with an unlikable protagonist that is well worth trying to understand.
