Such injustice – “it’s unfair”,June repeatedly whines – leads her to turn Athena’s death into an opportunity for herself. She steals the first draft of Athena’s next book,a manuscript about the mistreatment of Chinese labourers in World War I,and passes it off as her own.
Suddenly,all her creative stars align. “Breathless” at her own audacity,June reinvents herself online – that means IRL – publishing the book under a new name,Juniper Song,defending herself against the cultural appropriation invigilators by revealing that Song is her middle name. She takes her author headshot during sundown’s golden hour because it makes her look “sort of racially ambiguous”.
After four successful genre fantasy books,Rebecca F. Kuang’s fifth novel,Yellowface,is a mystery thriller that shocks,delights,and not-so-subtly weaves a scalpel through today’s commercial publishing industry. It’s a book about a woman who,through sheer confidence in her own ability to deceive,convinces herself and the world that a crime she committed was not really a crime at all.
When the Twitterati launch their attacks on June,suspecting something nefarious has occurred,she doubles down on her self-deception:“I mostly believe the lie myself – that it was my efforts that made[the book] a success. I’ve contoured the truth into such ways that I can,in fact,make peace with it.”
She cultivates an artificial “digitally perceived” identity,retweeting hot takes about bubble tea,BTS,and “some martial arts drama series”. Meanwhile,she admits she has no idea what a soup dumpling is,“but it sounds gross,” and that “Chinese food makes my stomach roil”.