Yellowface

June Hayward is an author in her mid twenties with a with one promising novel but a now stalled career. She happens to be the only other person present at the choking death of a college (Yale) friend and much more successful author. June is in her friend’s apartment and can’t resist pilfering her friend’s sole copy of a first draft manuscript. She revises, edits and polishes the draft, eventually claiming the work as her own and makes a great deal of money as it turns out to be an international bestseller about the chinese labour core during WWI. Juniper is white and the author of the stolen manuscript is Athena Lu, the beautiful daughter of chinese immigrant parents. From that starting point a social media battle over whether Juniper stole the novel (which can’t be proven; only suspected) erupts and consumes the rest of the plot. This satire explores themes of social media, cancel culture, cultural appropriation, and the winner-take-all publishing culture. The writing is paper-cut sharp. I listened to the author carry off at least the first hour of the book on one beautifully polished acerbic, semi-rant describing her envy of Athena’s success and Athena’s insufferable preciousness in self-serving justification of her plagiarism and, while the book can’t extend that wonderful buzz for the entire eight and a half hours, most of the book stays in that initial groove, such that I plowed through the book in two days.