Yellowface
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Yellowface 〰️
What a wild ride! There were so many good quotes in this book that I agree with.
Though June was a dick most of the time, I still wanted her to succeed. I desperately wanted her to succeed even more with something wholly her own, with no "inspiration" from Athena. She was close to that with her sorta memoir, but then it seems like she never finished it, which is a shame. It would allow her to come clean about everything, all while telling an original and engaging story.
I'm not sure about the ending, however. She says all the things that can happen with her new book, but we don't know for sure if it will even see the light of day.
That said, this book contains a lot of excellent, thought-provoking questions! Should people be able to write people who are not of the same culture and race and tell a story that is not their own lived experience? (Provided it's not plagiarized). June makes an excellent argument about that, though I sadly forgot which page it was on to quote it, but I totally agree with her. Yes, I'm a white woman myself, but that doesn't mean I can't write people of colour (which I have in my novel, SOUTH). If I wrote a story entirely of white people because I'm white, then I'd also get called out for lack of diversity. So, as you can see, this book poses lots of questions in regard to the writing world, in who can write what and why. It's an excellent book for discussion.
Back to the story of Yellowface, yes, June made it her own story, but the idea and the skeleton of the story were Athena's and therein lies the ethical debate. She took the story, a very rough first draft, edited the hell out of it, added to her writing, completely made it her own and used Athena as her biggest inspiration. But it wasn't entirely her work, and thus, she should have credited Athena as a co-author or something. What she did was wrong, but maybe also not. It toes the line of right and wrong (more on the wrong side).
As a writer myself, I love reading about the publishing industry. I feel like this book had great insights into what it's like to be one of the authors who made it big, because not every published author gets a six-figure book deal with potential movie rights and earns out their advance. This book indeed shows the hardships of being an author in general, and I respect that.
I love all the work Kuang put into making this book. It deserves all the recognition it received, and I highly recommend it. Probably an excellent book for some book club debates, too.
