Mai H.'s Reviews > Yellowface

What does colonialism do to a person? As a non-white person growing up in the States, and disliking it, what made me so interested in the UK as a child? Even now? And even more importantly, as a Vietnamese American, what made me so interested in France? And more so in recent years, China and Japan? It's a hard introspective look, to be sure.

This book takes BABEL and continues to flip the script. June Hayward, a white American woman struggling to become an author, is frenemies with Athena Liu, publishing darling. June continues to state time and time again that Athena is only famous because she is a minority. How many times have we heard this?

June is with Athena when she chokes to death. It is implied she had something to do with her death. June is a very unreliable narrator. Do with that what you will. Anyway, Athena has a manuscript that she has begun. June steals, edits, and publishes it. June's new publishers think her name is too white (because she is white), and rebrand her Juniper Song. Ambiguous. As ambiguous as Scarlett Johansson's Japanese-ness. And Emma Stone's Vietnamese-ness.

June is asked to speak on panels, go to book clubs, and mentor student writers. When the aforementioned people learn she is not Chinese, heads begin to roll. June does not take this in stride. She thinks she is entitled to write Chinese stories, because she "did research."

Do we remember the AMERICAN DIRT debacle? I do. I won't touch that book with a ten foot pole. It's not a matter of who can tell what stories. (Well, it is, but no matter.) It's that a white woman received a seven figure advance telling the trauma stories of a marginalized group that will never see a cent of that. Where are the stories from actual undocumented immigrants? No one in any famous book club will ever read those.