Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang is a doozy. Before I get any further into it, let me make it abundantly clear – this is a deep dive into the book, meaning, if you haven’t read it yet I wouldn’t recommend reading this post as it will contain so many spoilers and insights into characters and major plot points.

If you’re still here, buckle up because there is much to discuss.

Let me make a disclaimer right now while I’m at it to make sure I don’t get misconstrued and so that any tone or emphasis that may come across through wording or phrasing can be understood. I am not an American. I do not know the cultural, social and political climate within America, nor do I know how multiculturalism is shaped and sheltered within work environments such as the publishing industry. I sincerely apologise for any rude or misinformed opinions that I state in this blog post. I will be bringing up several topics to discuss, such as subliminal racism, overt racism and the race for individual success within a capitalist society. These issues are not restricted to America and I know that more than anyone.

Now let’s get into it. Yellowface is full of unreliable characters whose motives are shrouded beneath layers of conformity, pleasantries, subliminal racism and personal connections. For those who are unsure what subliminal racism is, subliminal or covert racism is discrimination that is passively or subconsciously used as opposed to overt and direct racism. It is a means of discriminating against someone or a group while still having plausible deniability to deny or gaslight the victims into believing that the actions being taken are not racist or harmful towards the victim. Subliminal racism can be a result of unconscious bias where the person’s environment, upbringing, privileges and so forth, have shaped a prejudice about others which is harmful and discriminatory whether they intended for it to be or not.

The reason I bring this up is because almost every character in Yellowface displays subliminal racism – or overt racism – in some way. June is a scorned white woman desperate to get her big moment in the publishing world after her flop of a debut and her jealousy towards Athena is palpable. She grants herself the right to make racist remarks about her so-called friend because she feels like she’s owed something. She becomes so defensive about the racial sensitivity reading and almost all critics about race with regards to The Last Front or her and no matter which way she plays it, we as readers know she is partaking in covert racism and race-baiting. The problem isn’t that the book has a heavy Asian perspective and she is white – she could’ve been honest from the beginning and stated that it was a posthumous collaboration with Athena because she was shown the draft that night and thought that this research work and skeleton that Athena had made should be shown to the world. June genuinely angered me while I was reading this book which is good because I believe that’s what Rebecca Kuang wanted the readers to feel. At least I hope it was.

Athena is a warped product of a racist institution. She has been typecast as the Asian author within this company’s list of authors which is horrible in itself given there are so many voices within Asia and one token Asian author is not enough to articulate the stories that need to be shared. Athena was raised in the Western world, and she mentions that she omitted speaking Mandarin (forgive me if it is Cantonese) at home to better assimilate to American life. Athena is in a cruel position where she has been used as a publicity move by people for her “Asian-ness” while being pigeonholed into writing about China. This does not excuse the blatant stealing of other people’s stories and experiences which she profits from. Athena is two-faced just like June, displaying evident signs of talking behind people’s backs, exploiting people for personal gain, and being shallow and fake. We can also see the struggle though – the constant drinking, the restriction placed over her in regards to who she can write about, the requirements of being the perfect author to represent her community. It’s all a great big mess for two main reasons.

Social media plays a huge role in this book. These days, authors are pressured to upkeep a social media presence and persona while writing, staying trendy and relevant in between book releases so that their fanbases don’t diminish in the meantime. They’re also at the forefront of reviews and commentary on their work and often are tagged or called out publicly for things that would otherwise be better dealt with privately. As with any famous person, June sees first-hand the positives and negatives of having such success. To put it mildly, it’s disgusting how normalised hate comments and death threats are in this technology-obsessed age we’re in. There is a difference between constructive criticism and hate comments. Constructive criticism is where readers or the general public want to make the author aware of issues their work presents and plagiarism, race-baiting, the white-saviour complex, and other such topics that are brought up in this book are extremely valid examples of this. The shaming and outright bullying that are mentioned is hate – there’s nothing else to it. Often, and this isn’t specific to books or authors, I see “constructive criticism” or “observations” made about people for how they look, what they’re doing, what they’re saying or what they believe. It’s genuinely aggravating that people mask their hate and blatant ill-will like this. It is part of the reason I love and hate this book because I can hate the characters, but how they’re treated echoes real life too closely for me to hate them in those moments.

The other big mess is the bias and objectification of authors within the publishing industry. It wouldn’t surprise me if these dialogue exchanges between June and the Eden Press team were inspired by daily conversations Rebecca heard within publishing houses and through the web. Institutions are riddled with racism and discrimination on many fronts, and the publishing sector is no exception. Publishing books is all about profit and marketability – is this author distinct enough to be worth taking on? What is striking about this book? What is striking about the author? How much money can we make off them? Are people interested in hearing this person’s voice? Mediocrity doesn’t sell nearly enough to warrant a repetition of someone who managed to catch a niche a few years ago.  The industry is so subjective that people – not even just the authors, but editors and agents too – are simply parts of a machine that get replaced when they start to rust. Very little care is given to people in bigger publishing companies and when very little care is given to you as an employee – as I’m sure a lot of you have witnessed in one way or another – the worst in people tends to be brought out. Bias and prejudice are rife in these conditions and, more often than not, go unchecked, resulting in the cliques and superiority complexes as we see in the interactions June has with the Eden Press team and other editors.

Yellowface brings to light so many issues that need to be addressed publicly, especially regarding racism and the toxicity of the major publishing machines. It also brings to question the impact capitalism has on individualism and the relationships people have with one another in such competitive environments. I wouldn’t say Yellowface was a 5-star read, I think my rating is closer to 4/5 stars. I also likely wouldn’t buy the book as it’s very much a one-and-done exposé on a field where, in truth, very little is likely to be done to improve the representation and treatment of employees.