Yellowface

“But then I just kept going. I couldn’t stop. They say that editing a bad draft is far easier than composing on a blank page, and that’s true–I feel so confident in my writing just then. I keep finding turns of phrases that suit the text far better than Athena’s throwaway descriptions. I spot where pacing sags, and I mercilessly cut out the meandering filler. I draw out the plot’s through line like a clear, powerful note. I tidy up; I trim and decorate; I make the text sing.”

Despite believing that The Last Front is a phenomenal draft upon first read, June frames herself as the text’s savior and exerts ownership over it by making significant edits. June consistently makes her theft of Athena’s work a personal journey in her own writing. Casting herself as the true author who makes The Last Front “sing” allows June to justify her plagiarism.

“There’s one part, for instance, where a poor French family wrongly accuses a group of Chinese laborers of stealing a hundred francs from their house. The laborers, determined to make a good impression of their race and nation, collect two hundred francs among them and gift it to the family even though it’s clear they are innocent. Athena’s draft only made a brief mention of the wrongful accusation, but my version turns it into a heartwarming illustration of Chinese virtue and honesty.”

June is later accused of racism in The Last Front, and this early example shows how June frequently alters the text in ways that center white characters and take agency away from the Chinese laborers. In this instance, she takes a moment dripping with prejudice and turns it into a scene in which the Chinese laborers go out of their way to resolve the issue despite doing no wrong. June sees this as an opportunity to make this a novel for everyone, but what it really does is make the moment more palatable for white audiences.

“During golden hour I come off as nicely tanned, which makes me look sort of racially ambiguous. My eyes are cast demurely to the side, my mind full of profound and cryptic thoughts. I look like someone who could write a book about Chinese laborers in World War I and do it justice. I look like a Juniper Song.”

Throughout the novel, June is consistently criticized for publishing a book about marginalized people while she is white. In an attempt to distract people from this, her publishing team rebrands her as Juniper Song and takes a racially ambiguous author photo. June tries her best to present as an Asian American woman without actually saying so. Her perception of what will help her to pass is telling of her own prejudices, Otherness as Commodity, and White Privilege in Publishing.

“Good. Hot vindication coils in my gut. Candice deserves it–putting the sensitivity read kerfuffle aside, what kind of psychopath would fuck around with an author’s feelings like this? Shouldn’t she know how stressful and terrifying it is to launch a book? I bask for a moment, imagining what kind of chaos I’ve sown over at Eden’s office this morning. And though I would never say this out loud about a fellow woman–the industry is tough enough as it is–I hope I got that bitch fired.”

June uses her white privilege to ruin Candice’s life for suggesting that they hire a sensitivity reader. June’s self-absorption turns Candice’s suggestion into a personal attack that she views as wildly unprofessional. She retaliates and secretly hopes that Candice Lee is punished for the suggestion, forsaking any kind of allyship she pretends to have with other women in the publishing industry.

“Maybe it was Highlander Syndrome–I’ve read about that before, the way members of marginalized groups feel threatened if someone else like them starts finding success. I’ve experienced that, too–every time I see a publishing announcement about a young girl hitting it big with her debut, I want to claw my eyes out. Maybe she was terrified someone was going to replace or surpass her.”

Yellowface frequently discusses the toxicity of the publishing industry, and this instance is an example of how that toxicity manifests in individual authors. The obsession with one’s own success, contingent on the lack of success of others, drives authors to hold intense jealousy. The notion that there can only be so many successful authors drives many to hate those that they perceive as taking up their space. This relates to the theme of Otherness as Commodity, as publishers will cite an existing marginalized voice in their catalog to reject someone from a similar background.

“It’s clear Athena was trying to point out all the racism the laborers suffered from people fighting on their own side. But there was already so much of that throughout the book. It was starting to feel heavy-handed, repetitive. Why not include a scene that showed the potential for interracial love, instead? Can’t we all get behind decrying antimiscegenation?”

Once again, June fundamentally changes the message and purpose of The Last Front to assuage white guilt while claiming it is to make the novel more readable. Athena Liu wrote a historically accurate narrative, but June believes that it features too much racism. She eliminates the racism in favor of scenes that portray white characters more sympathetically, an irresponsible rewriting of history. By resituating the white character’s actions in a more sympathetic light, she is erasing the actual story of the Chinese laborers.

“For the first time since I submitted the manuscript, I feel a deep wash of shame. This isn’t my history, my heritage. This isn’t my community. I am an outsider, basking in their love under false pretenses. It should be Athena sitting here, smiling with these people, signing books and listening to the stories of her elders.”

In one of the few moments that June truly feels guilty for her actions, she recognizes the significance of Athena being the one to tell this story. She recognizes herself as a fraud and that even though she can profit off of the project, there is something missing without Athena. Athena could have made genuine connections with the people at the event and grown from the experience.

“They call The Last Front a “white savior story.” They don’t like that I’ve shown valor and bravery by white soldiers and missionaries; they think it centers the white experience. (But those men did exist. One missionary, Robert Haden, drowned trying to save a Chinese man when the steamship Athos was torpedoed by German submarines. Doesn’t his death matter, too?).”

June’s bewilderment at the pushback over her inclusion of white experiences shows her complete misunderstanding of The Last Front’s purpose. To her, the novel is a marketable product from which she can profit rather than an account of a frequently ignored history. She takes a novel meant to be centered on the Chinese Labour Corps and shifts the focus to the white characters, erasing their bigotry and making them the characters with agency, therefore making The Last Front a white savior story.

“The Eden’s Angels are right. As I take in Diana’s face–her flat angry eyes; the bits of yolk dribbling from her thin-lipped mouth–I can’t believe I ever let this small, petty person with her cringey, tryhard art bring me down. She’s jealous. They’re all just jealous; that’s where this vitriol is coming from. And maybe I’ve taken some hits, but I will not let deranged, vicious internet celebrity wannabes like Diana destroy my career.”

June’s racism bursts through in this scene, in which she dehumanizes Diana Qiu to feel better about herself. She uses the justification of not letting anyone destroy her career, but with no real defense (having stolen Athena’s manuscript), June attacks Diana’s physical features with Eden’s Angels. The focus on her eyes is a textbook example of how racism reduces people solely to their physical qualities.

“Then the second wave of the shitstorm starts, this time with Athena at the center. Most of the accounts that participate so clearly do not care about the truth. They’re here for the entertainment. These people love to have a target, and they’ll tear apart anything you put in front of them.”

The public of Yellowface is constantly on the lookout for Scandal as Entertainment. Not only are the details entertaining to them, but they relish the joy of tearing someone else apart, moralizing against them to raise themselves above them. It happens to June frequently, but it also happens to Athena as people posthumously examine her politics. June’s point in this excerpt is that people care more about the scandal than the truth of the matter, as speculation and argument are what people love to engage with.

“I once saw a video of a hunter who shot a lion between the eyes right as it sprang. I wonder if the hunter felt like I do now: breathless, victorious, just this side of safe. I wonder if he, too, looked at his victim and marveled at all that power, that potential, wasted.”

June has this thought after succinctly removing Geoffrey Carlino as a threat to her success. While framing herself as the victorious party, she still perceives both of them to be powerful, though only one of them can survive. In this sense, June captures her view of the publishing industry as a never-ending competition in which one’s own success is built on the failures of others.

“You enjoy this delightful waterfall of attention when your book is the latest breakout success. You dominate the cultural conversation. You possess the literary equivalent of the hot hand. Everyone wants to interview you. Everyone wants you to blurb their book, or host their launch event. Everything you say matters. If you utter a hot take about the writing process, about other books, or even about life itself, people take your word as gospel. If you recommend a book on social media, people actually drive out that day to go buy it.”

June becomes obsessed with the power she wields at the height of The Last Front’s success. She wants everyone to hear what she has to say. Her greatest anxiety becomes being forgotten and not having sway in the public arena. That, more than anything, drives her to continuously commit to her lies and even attack Candice at the novel’s conclusion.

“In the face of it all, I’ve never once cracked, never admitted the theft to anyone. By now, I mostly believe the lie myself–that it was my efforts that made The Last Front the success that it was, that when it comes down to it, it is my book. I’ve contorted the truth into such ways that I can, in fact, make peace with it.”

June convinces herself that The Last Front is her novel, and the work she did to publish it means it belongs to her. She makes peace with the fact that she stole the novel from her friend’s corpse. Her constant contortion of the truth to reframe her situation into something that she can accept feeds into her role as an unreliable narrator.

“A popular Fox News cohost encourages all of his millions of viewers to support me so that Eden doesn’t drop me from their list, which has created a strange situation in which thousands of Trump voters are buying a book about mistreated Chinese laborers.”

This excerpt exemplifies how otherness is commodified in publishing. Throughout the novel, The Last Front is treated more as a product than a story of unrecognized Chinese labor, and at one point, its sales boom because conservatives buy it to support June, whom they believe is a victim of cancel culture. The actual meaning and purpose of the book are lost as the scandal surrounding June intensifies. The book was published because Eden thought its story would be marketable, and yet June becomes the protagonist in the novel’s real-world story, overshadowing the work Athena did to bring the story of the Chinese Labour Corps to life.

“I’m a bit apprehensive because I saw on Reddit that DC’s Chinatown has the highest crime rates in the city, and when I get out of the metro station, the whole place does carry a menacing air of neglect. I walk with my hands shoved into my pockets, fingers tightly wrapped around my phone and wallet. I wish I’d brought pepper spray.”

In this excerpt, June is acting on her preconceived notions of what Chinatown will be like. Throughout the novel, she portrays herself as an expert and ally because of The Last Front, but she consistently commits microaggressions and expresses racist beliefs, like believing that she may be robbed in Chinatown or being surprised whenever a Chinese character speaks without an accent. It is difficult to reconcile how she views herself with how she actually operates.

“I can find some good narrative potential here, if I pay attention. Maybe this is the heartwarming story of a Chinatown restaurant going out of business, until the owner’s daughter quits her soulless corporate job to turn the family business around with the help of the community, social media, and a magic, talking dragon. Maybe I can give my bitchy waitress a sympathetic backstory and a personality makeover. Or maybe not. The more I think about it, the more this sounds like the plots of Ratatouille and Mulan combined.”

Throughout Yellowface, June prides herself on her creativity surrounding topics of Chinese and Chinese American history, and yet when it comes time to write something completely original without Athena’s help, she can come up with nothing original. Instead, she goes out into the world to find real-life narratives, yet walks into a Chinese restaurant and immediately starts making assumptions, many of which are stereotypical. Whether she likes it or not, she cannot write in Athena’s absence. Her continued reliance on Chinese stories also shows her enduring belief in Otherness as Commodity; she is determined to keep writing about experiences she knows nothing about.

“Perhaps that’s the price of professional success: isolation from jealous peers. Perhaps, once writing becomes a matter of individual advancement, it’s impossible to share with anyone else.”

One of the themes of Yellowface is the joy authors lose as they become more embroiled in the publishing industry. At various points, June remembers the joy she would get from writing and sharing her work with others. Now, however, she has become successful but finds only anxiety and jealousy. She is isolated and has no one with whom to share her work or joy.

“Readers inflict their own expectations, not just on the story, but on your politics, your philosophy, your stance on all things ethical. You, not your writing, become the product–your looks, your wit, your quippy clapbacks and factional alignments with online beefs that no one in the real world gives a shit about.”

Yellowface makes a point of asking whether an artist can truly be separated from the work they create. In today’s world, authors are evaluated based on more than just the strength of their writing and must also present a marketable image, engage with hot topics, and stay out of scandals. For a novel to succeed, it not only needs a strong plot, precise diction, and an eye-catching cover but an entertaining and exciting author. June relishes this part of being a famous author, though it quickly becomes an obsession when she falls out of the public’s favor.

“I can’t help but feel that there is some greater, karmic reason why my writing flow has returned. This feels like redemption. No–like absolution. For if I can write this thing on my own, if I can turn this whole horrible mess into a beautiful story, then…well, it won’t change what I’ve done. But it will assign artistic value to it all. It will be a way of revealing the truth without saying it. And beyond anything else, it will entertain. It will stay in readers’ thoughts forever, like a catchy tune or a beautiful woman’s face. This story will become eternal. Athena will be a part of that.”

For much of the novel, June is concerned with keeping her secret and pleasing her audience. She believes that she has found a middle ground with her semi-autobiographical account of her theft. It will immortalize her, a top priority in her mind, but it will also maintain relevance for readers, entertaining them and keeping them speculating on what has actually occurred. June has learned that the most essential aspect of any project’s success is its ability to entertain.

“Maybe I’ve been too harsh. Maybe Geoffrey Carlino isn’t such an asshole. Maybe he was just young, and insecure, and caught up in a relationship he wasn’t ready for. Maybe Athena really did hurt him quite badly, and maybe we all judged him too quickly because he was a wealthy, cishet white guy and Athena was Athena.”

White privilege in publishing is a major theme of Yellowface, and in June’s final confrontation with Geoffrey, it is apparent how deep its roots go. June, who knows for a fact who Geoffrey is and what beliefs he possesses, is ready to discount the severity of his racism and blame his behavior on Athena. She ties his fall to his identity as a cishet white guy, which fits into her own narrative explaining her own lack of success with her debut and the attacks on her since the revelation of her plagiarism.

“The cultural constructions are clear: so many Chinese ghosts are hungry, angry, voiceless women. In taking Athena’s legacy, I’ve added one to their ranks.”

June briefly understands what she has done to Athena by stealing The Last Front. She has taken her agency and her voice, using her words as her own and effectively erasing Athena’s mark on the novel. By fundamentally changing The Last Front, she muddies Athena’s legacy and is subsequently haunted by her voice.

“This scene composition is so fucking dramatic. The streetlamp glows behind her, casting her shadow across the steps and across me. It feels like we’re in some gothic film. Now the villain’s reveal at the climax; now the hero’s righteous monologue before I’m cast, screaming into hell.”

June cannot help but frame her confrontation with Candice as a literary scene and, in doing so, presents her own version of the story that is at odds with what has actually happened. June stole Athena’s work after her death and profited from it, lying to the world and burying Athena’s legacy. Even so, she identifies herself as the hero and Candice as the villain despite Candice working to uncover June’s misdeeds. June has committed fraud, and yet she remains the victim throughout the novel.

“Ever since The Last Front came out, I have been victim to people like Candice and Diana and Adele: people who think that, just because they’re “oppressed” and “marginalized,” they can do or say whatever they want. That the world should put them on a pedestal and shower them with opportunities. That reverse racism is okay. That they can bully, harass, and humiliate people like me, just because I’m white, just because that counts as punching up, because in this day and age, women like me are the last acceptable target. Racism is bad, but you can still send death threats to Karens.”

June cannot reconcile the fact that the criticism she has received is valid due to her plagiarism and the presence of her own bias in The Last Front. She immediately assumes the victim role in every interaction she has, reducing every critic to their racial identity. She believes that she is being criticized because of her critics’ agendas rather than acknowledging that they are criticizing her for her wrongdoings.