Yellowface: Book Review and Discussion

I just finished reading Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang. I am familiar with Kuang through her Poppy War trilogy, which I have reviews of for each entry. I will link them below. The short of it was that I thought the Poppy War series was alright overall. The second entry was my favorite, with the first being fairly good, and the final one finding itself in a neutral position (a lot of negatives, a lot of positives, and an overall balance as they cancelled each other out). While I enjoyed the grimdark world that was created for the reader, there was also some messy dialogue, New Adult elements in the first entry, and heavy-handed moralizing that I found eyeball rolling.

Kuang and I do not share the same political persuasion, if only because I am not hard left wing and I am generally anti-woke. And when I learned that she had another book out (aside from Babel), I wanted to at least try it out, especially when I read the premise for the story.

A white girl steals a manuscript from her Asian best friend and sells it as her own story. Yellowface is meant to touch upon cultural appropriation and questions like whether people can write about other races' histories. These are definitely issues that the Woke crowd are captured by, so I naturally wanted to look into the issues.

So, what did I think of it?

No Spoilers

Expectations

I'll admit that I was quite biased when I went into this novel. As I have mentioned before, I am not of the same political persuasion as Kuang, and just from the premise of the book, I knew that I would probably have problems with it. I immediately got the impression that the book would be some heavy-handed excoriation of cultural appropriation, but with plagiarism thrown in. I thought this would muddy the waters and engage with the issue in a completely dishonest way. I confess that I only read it because I wanted to comment on the issues and talk about how I thought plagiarism and cultural appropriation were separate topics.

I have always considered opposition to cultural appropriation to be one of the most profoundly idiotic notions ever conceived. It comes from my general pragmatic approach to life, and an associated rejection of sacralizing culture for its own sake. Further, cultural identity is a social construct, not specific to any group of people. Nothing inherently belongs to any person. And this overlooks other obvious objections, like collective ownership. Our mathematical language is Arabic, and Roman Numerals were thrown out in favor of them. Why not? Imagine doing calculus with Roman Numerals. Gunpowder comes from China. We should also throw out the US Standard of Measurement, in favor of the Metric System. Clearly, one system is better than the other.

Cultural exchange is both inevitable and desirable. And some transmissions will inevitably be insulting as people take things on as their own, especially as they are changed and wind up being stereotypical. But that's just part of life.

I guess the usual response is that I don't understand what it feels like to be appropriated from, but that means nothing to me. It's just telling me that I'm not biased.

Either way, I expected to hate this novel.

I got the book and sat down one late morning at around 11:00. I finished the book at 9:00 that same day. I read the whole thing in ten hours, all in one sitting, which is something that I haven't done in so long. My attention span usually restricts me to hour long spurts. At the very least, I was engaged.

And I was completely wrong. This novel was much more nuanced than her other books, with the authorial voice only coming through in one minor respect. And the writing is much tighter and more well-crafted than her other books as well. Further, the focus of the book was not even necessarily on cultural appropriation, let alone a dishonest discussion of that issue alongside plagiarism; the issue was absolutely touched upon, but Kuang's authorial voice did not come through strong enough for me to know exactly what her position was.

The Plot and Character

This was a very fast paced thriller, something crafted somewhat similarly to The Dragon Republic, where the reader watches a slow-motion trainwreck unfold. And I absolutely loved it. There is something so viscerally satisfying about these kinds of stories. What could be better than a horror story about humanity's worst nature? A tragedy about humanity's flaws, especially one's that we see around ourselves every day, and perhaps even in ourselves.

I found that the story was surprisingly fast paced, especially for a story that takes place over the course of several years. Kuang's ability to cover these expansive periods of time, while also creating a sense of non-stop drama and tension, was something that I found incredibly impressive.

And the portrayal of all the internet drama was executed well. It was too familiar, and I'll admit that a certain nasty side came roaring up within me at times. Another reminder for why I will always stay away from social media and Twitter especially.

The plot is driven entirely by character, and it centers wholly around the perspective of June, the character who plagiarizes her dead friend.

She is an incredibly unlikeable character, someone who does awful things throughout (hell, the whole premise of the story is the key action), and I can't stop thinking about her. It's very rare for "unlikable" characters to truly get under my skin and actually make me hate them. I think the one exception might be BoJack Horseman, but even his willful refusal to better himself was bearable. June is not the exception.

June is very much the opposite of me. Even if I weren't outraged by something like plagiarism, it's not really something that would appeal to me, anyway. I have too many ideas in my mind, and the notion of taking someone else's idea is frustrating and would ironically give me writer's block. June is the opposite. She is also bitter and resentful, someone who has no real connection with anyone around her, even as she has some relationships that are more meaningful than she seems to realize. She is not someone I would want to have in my life.

But as with many stories, I can find an appeal in the humanity of it all. Partly, you understand why she is the way she is, and the surrounding context only makes the whole thing even more understandable. And maybe there is some relatability in a vaguer sense, knowing how my worst qualities can be brought out in some contexts; even if my flaws are very different than hers.

Themes

The story was not necessarily a deep dive into cultural appropriation, but it did touch upon it. It also touched upon plagiarism, but this was part of a more general discussion of self-interest and resentment. There were also some ideas thrown around about stealing ideas and the sensitivity of using other people's experiences to write and sell books.

And finally, the most profound theme in the story was the toxicity of the internet and public discourse, and how it brings out the worse in basically everyone. All this bad behavior is basically an endless cycle of nastiness. No one is the good guy, no one learns their lesson (with maybe one exception?), and you never get the sense that there is anyone that you can really get behind.

One of the ideas I found to be interesting is this notion that you can steal ideas from people's real lives, and that this can be treated as similar to plagiarism. For the sake of spoilers, I won't share the details, but there is one character who hears people share intimate details about their personal lives, especially details that are traumatizing, and she then uses them in her fiction almost verbatim. There is one shockingly exploitative example that was shared later in the story that really does change your perception of that character.

But this notion is then expanded to the question of historical events and whether it is okay to write fiction about those events. If it is wrong to use someone's personal story about being abused (not a spoiler, just an example) to write your fiction, then is it wrong to write fiction about a historical event, recounting people's suffering? Kuang's characters frame this as stealing, suggesting that the person needs to give consent before the ideas are taken and used, but how does it apply to historical events? The irony is that people are generally okay with this happening to historical events, and even take for granted that it is a good thing, though the notion of getting all the relevant parties to consent borders on impossibility. Kuang never mentions true crime, but that also crossed my mind.

Kuang seemed to be heavy-handed in her messaging at the beginning. I came into the story expecting a kind of ad-hom argument, where she would just funnel all the arguments she doesn't like into this awful person to dismiss them out of hand. But this was not a fair expectation of me. While you get the sense that this might be the case in the beginning—as the main character was making the occasional argument that was well-put, yet under damning circumstances—you begin to realize that there was no pattern. People made good arguments and bad ones, and they were all driven by nastiness and were in varied damning circumstances, something that undercut everyone on all sides.

I have Babel on the TBR, and I'll probably swing around to it sooner or later, if only because I think her writing has gotten better in every respect.

Right Wing Nazi Fascist Republican Trumpists

But while I am on the topic of Kuang's approach to the messaging of her book, there is one serious exception that makes me wonder if I am giving her too much credit. The portrayal of right-wing political commentators is peripheral. This book is mostly focused on the left wing and the problems that the left-wing outrage mob has.

But it seems that this is less so because of self-reflection in the political context as a whole, but because Kuang doesn't really see the right wing as something worth engaging with at all. The right wing are referred to by everything that I mentioned in the subtitle of this section: Right wing, Nazi, fascist, republican, and Trumpist. Even "Alt-right free-speech proponents." Hahaha. And this is as if all these terms are interchangeable. And any context in which the right wing does come up is as if the main character is making a deal with the devil. Remember when Walter White started using Nazis as his hitmen in Breaking Bad? Yeah, it's like that, lol.

Kuang does write from a perspective, so maybe there is a benefit of the doubt, but the overall coverage of the right wing gives the impression that this is the authorial voice. That along with the fact that I know enough woke left wingers to understand just how pervasive this kind of stereotyping and otherizing of right wingers is.

At one point in the book, the main character talks about going on a podcast with a host who starts ranting about the overpoliticization of contemporary genre fiction. And the main character wonders if he might be a "Nazi." Lol. As if this even implies you are right wing, let alone a centrist. A lot of anti-woke people are center left. How is this characterization by Kuang any different from right wingers calling welfare state supporters communists?

The main character also starts selling her book about racism toward the Chinese to a largely Trump supporting audience. This is presented as an irony brought on by tribalism, but the idea is as I mentioned: a deal with the devil. Bigotry is obviously much more complex than this, as people compartmentalize. Perhaps no group understands bigotry better in the US than African Americans, but they had a stunning amount of support for Trump's Muslim ban. And if you think J.K. Rowling is a bigot, then there is yet another example of compartmentalization.

Additionally, most Republicans vote for that party because of economics. But in the minds of many left wingers, they must vote for the party because they agree with every stupid thing Trump has ever said, even if those same lefties vote for candidates like Biden, who they actively hate. Voting for the lesser of two evils? Only when they do it.

What makes this all the more baffling is that this book is a scathing critique of the left wing. Kuang does not hold back on this. There is a part where an Asian character is attacked as a race traitor by haters because she is dating a white guy. Beyond this (actual) alt-right-tier bigotry, people use hateful slurs and misogynistic attacks, and they are all just nasty left-wingers at the end of the day.

The evil "alt-right" is dismissed in a random aside for their hypocrisy on due process, but the left is never dismissed because of the hypocritical, rabid, racist, sexist, hateful tendencies that are shown in spades throughout the book. Without due process, many on the left destroy reputations without reason, and inflict mental health issues on people wantonly, but how dare you sell anti-racist books to republicans!

Remember the incredibly telling woke meme mocking centrists? "All people are equal" on one side, and "Kill all black people" on the other side. And then the centrist saying, "Both sides are equally bad." That meme is the perfect encapsulation of this book's engagement with the right wing. Lol.

While the book is about the toxicity of the left, Yellowface is fundamentally incapable of engaging with anything remotely related to the right wing, as they are only the devils on the periphery, the Nazis that Walter White gets in the bed with at his worst moments.

This isn't as sharp a criticism as it might seem. As I mentioned, the right is rather peripheral in the book. The book is not about the right wing. As such, it did not really affect my enjoyment.

Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. I think I will give it an 8/10.

Video: https://youtu.be/FagMwC9ITW8

The Poppy War: https://leehuntswriting.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-poppy-war-review.html

The Dragon Republic: https://leehuntswriting.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-dragon-republic-book-review.html

The Burning God: https://leehuntswriting.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-burning-god-book-review.html