How new fictions are exploring Yellowfacing

By Ella King

When I read Rebecca Kuang’s Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling satire, Yellowface, I gave up picking my jaw up off the floor. I just left it there until I finished the book. As a British-Asian author, Yellowface thrilled, challenged and depressed me. When I was finished it left me with a single thought: what am I supposed to do with this?

The novel opens with June Hayward – a white author with a stalled literary career – toasting to her frenemy, Athena Liu, and their Netflix deal. Athena has everything June doesn’t: a multi-book deal straight out of university; a history of award nominations; three published novels; and now a TV show.

Flinging back drinks, June wonders “what it’s like to be you?” She soon finds out. After celebratory cocktails morph into whiskey night caps at Athena’s minimalist, bougie-sleek apartment, Athena dies. As ambulance sirens blare, June seizes the literary success she’s been green-eyeing by seizing Athena’s latest manuscript.

What follows is a Talented Mr Ripley-esque descent into June’s literary moral corruption.

How new fictions are exploring Yellowfacing

By Ella King