A tale of stolen (cultural) identity

Athena Liu has it all; fame, fortune, beauty. She’s a bestselling author, a once in a Generation phenomenon with an eye for a good story and a talent for giving it depth and meaning beyond the average writer, Athena Liu is a rising star. June Hayward, a one-and-done worn-out author now a teacher, also happens to be Athena’s friend, envious of her former university dorm buddy’s success.

Until Athena tragically dies, and June takes her last manuscript and passes it off as her own. Now June is the superstar, but the circumstances that led to her rise will also bring about her downfall. The question for June is, how far will she go to stay in the spotlight?

The story captures you from the minute you enter that first page. It’s a novel which reeks of that which many of us can relate to – envy. Envy of someone’s fame and fortune, envy of how easy the lives of the wealthy and the affluent seem compared to our own. Envy of those who appear to have more talent than ourselves.

Yes, envy is there. But so are colonialism and whitewashing. The post-truth conspiracy BS that’s taken over most of Reddit and formed the majority of the lower and middle-class voters of far-right politics. Yellowface is more than a story about cultural theft, more than a collapse into the depths of one’s worst nature. It’s a story about how easy it becomes to create a narrative where we exist as the victim of our crimes, and June Hayward has more than a few breakdowns with crocodile tears. I hate that I actually feel they are real, though.

Kuang has truly done an amazing job putting herself into the shoes of June, a character whose downfall feels weighted with real gravity, pulling her down into doing worse and worse acts. It may start off with her stealing her dead friend’s manuscript, but then to go on and turn that into a piece of literature which removes the original intent and whitewashes the entire thing with Eurocentric themes feels all too real to our own history.

The thing is, whilst I did feel initial dislike for June, I frustratingly came to have sympathy for the character. Her struggles and the abuse she receives all hit me as the reader, and I soon found myself rooting for June to redeem herself. This feels intentionally done by Kuang, whose protagonist embodies the idea of victors writing the history.

It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for June, even whilst we’re aware of the controversy of her actions – from stealing the story, to passing it off as hers, to every other despicable act. The audience is encouraged to feel as though June is not the bad guy but the hero of this story.

It’s an interesting turn from her previous novel, Babel, especially since this is a far shorter and more direct novel. Whilst Babel covers a three-year period in depth and detail, “Yellowface” spans two years in a book that’s three hundred pages. The pace of the novel feels faster, perhaps because this feels like a story that has a rush to it.

June herself is swept into the world of minor celebrity-dom, and in no small part does it feel as though at every point she compares her success to her dead friend’s. It’s in these moments, these little introspections, that Kuang’s message becomes clear – despite all of June’s preconceived notions regarding race and diversity giving Athena an edge in the industry, Athena had years of hard work before she established herself. June is taken in almost immediately, and the treatment she receives is entirely different.

Yellowface, at its core, whilst being a single-character narrative, is a story about voices. The power of one’s own voice in our society is determined, still by large, through how we look or where our people hailed from. June’s perception of ease for those with more diverse backgrounds is a stark reminder that the power of the right to convince the world of a lie that they say is truth is more than effective – it is infecting.

At the end of the day, whether June is a hero or a villain doesn’t matter – the only real victors of the whole book are the publishers, because at the end of the day, does it really matter who tells the story? What matters most is whether or not it’s profitable.

A clever and well-paced dissection of the West’s obsession with cultural stories as defined by them, Yellowfacewill be the book of a generation and will likely go on to be studied by academics, Goodreads reviewers, and students aged sixteen and upward.

9 out of 10.