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Yellowface (2023)

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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • While Athena was clearly not murdered, with June's years-long resentment of her and desperation to have her life, and how unstable she is, you have to wonder if maybe she didn't deliberately let Athena die. Even she briefly has her doubts about her own intentions, but she brushes them away. If she did let Athena die, that also raises the question of how consciously June did this, whether she's lying to the reader deliberately or deluding herself.
    • Did Athena actually like or care for June? Despite June not being as successful as her, Athena continually invited her to hang out, and June was both the first person to read The Last Front and the first person Athena told when she sold her first book, even before she told her mother. June acknowledges a suspicion that being a non-threat in their literary world was precisely why Athena enjoyed her company. Geoff claims Athena called June a "loser," but Geoff isn't exactly a fountain of veracity. She comforted June after she was sexually assaulted... but then she used said assault as fodder for her writing. It's eventually revealed she did that kind of thing to basically everyone, which could hint that, while extremely messed up and awful, Athena's actions were Nothing Personal and don't reflect how she feels about June as a person. Even June isn't sure whether Athena actually considered her a friend or not.
    • On the flipside, June herself is very inconsistent on how close she and Athena were. She at first claims they mostly hung out because it was convenient, and that they'd drifted apart after their freshman year, but she never stopped accepting Athena's invitations, and a few times even says she loved Athena in her own, fucked-up way. And when Candice gaslights her into thinking Athena is haunting her, June seems to almost want it to be true, and when she briefly thinks Athena might actually still be alive, she really wants to see and talk to her again, suggesting that, in spite of it all, some part of June missed her. Are June's feelings towards Athena really that fickle? Is she playing up her attachment to Athena to come off as more sympathetic? Or is she downplaying how close they were to make her theft seem less awful?
    • The old man at one of June's readings whose uncle was in the Chinese labor corps seems to genuinely love The Last Front and tells June he's glad she's telling the story that so many people discarded when he was growing up. Did he think June was Asian (possibly thinking she may be biracial) and she was telling a part of her history, too? Or did he realize June was white, but thought she was acting in good faith and that she handled the subject matter well? It's heavily implied that he did think June was of Asian descent, because he talks about how he doesn't speak good English, but "her generation" (of Chinese diaspora, presumably) does.
    • Does June not clearly remember her assault because she was blackout drunk, or did her brain block it out due to trauma? Alternatively, did the guy roofie her?
    • Candice says of Athena, "We all hated that bitch." Is this because of Athena's Insufferable Genius attitude, or out of resentment that she so willingly embraced her role as publishing's token Asian and milked it for all it was worth? Is it more out of envy for her success than anything Athena actually did wrong? For that matter, who is "we"? Other Asian-American writers? People who worked with Athena in publishing?
  • Common Knowledge: Some people believe that Kuang wrote this as a Take That! against critics of her book Babel. Although Babel was released in 2022, a year before Yellowface, the manuscript for the latter was already completed by 2021, as shown by the query letter Kuang posted online.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Despite being a thoroughly unsympathetic character, June manages to have pitiable moments, such as when she describes how Athena betrayed her in college by writing about her sexual assault without her permission, or when she deals with her mother who clearly doesn't support her writing aspirations. While these moments don't make June any less despicable, they do remind us that she's still human.
    • Athena becomes one in death. It's true she was an Insufferable Genius who was self-centered and prone to Muse Abuse, but it's hard to hate her, largely because the narrative follows her last work being stolen, heavily rewritten and profited off of by someone else, who then goes out of her way to stain Athena's literary legacy and keep anyone from discovering the truth, up to and including manipulating Athena's grieving mother. Regardless of what Athena did in life, she didn't deserve to have her legacy and accomplishments tarnished like that.
    • Candice Lee exposes June for less than noble reasons; she hated Athena and doesn't care about salvaging her legacy, only about getting revenge on June for her part in getting Candice fired and in the hopes of obtaining a massive book deal. However, she's had to struggle for years in the publishing industry with very few opportunities, and also had to see it champion certain authors as 'the' writer of their respective ethnicity, without really doing anything to promote diversity in the workforce. It's easy to understand why she's thoroughly disenchanted with the whole business and wants success and wealth any possible way she can.
  • Love to Hate: June Hayward is an unambiguously terrible person, but is well-written enough to be incredibly engaging, in a "watch through your fingers, wait for the other shoe to drop, and hope this is the time she finally gets caught" kind of way.
  • Moral Event Horizon: June is awful throughout, but she officially crosses the line when she decides she's willing to murder Candice if that's what it'll take to keep her secret from getting out. The cherry on top is the ending, where she still continues to paint herself as the victim and decides to put out a memoir to rival Candice's, just so she won't lose her spotlight.
  • Older Than They Think: Whenever another white author is outed for faking their race, many people these days will joke that Yellowface is not an instruction manual. This kind of thing has been happening in real life for a reallyyyy long time, though.
  • Paranoia Fuel: For any artist, the idea that someone could steal your work and twist it for their own ends, dragging your name through the mud, wrecking the thing you worked so hard to make special, and overall spitting in the face of everything that you set out to do is bad enough. The idea of this all happening when you're dead and unable to do anything to stop it is borderline nightmarish.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • June is the only person Athena hangs out with consistently, or seems to really talk to outside of her literary obligations. Her mom obviously loves her very much, but they clearly had a somewhat fraught relationship and Athena was never able to fully open up to her. When Athena dies, June is the sole friend invited to the memorial service held by Athena's mother—June figures Athena's "real friends" went to the virtual service held for the writing community, but the implication is that, no, June was quite simply the only person who was close enough with Athena in real life for her mother to invite her. Athena was often a crappy friend, and June had a boiling resentment of her, combined with a lot of underlying racism... and yet, it really seems like June was the only friend she had.
    • Perhaps the saddest scene in the novel is a flashback to June and Athena's college days, when Athena found out she was going to be published. She called June immediately, before she even told her mother, and despite June insisting they weren't close friends by that point, she immediately answered, and when she heard the good news, literally cheered for Athena, the two gleefully screaming back and forth for a minute. June tells Athena she deserves it, and Athena expresses fear that this will all blow up in her face somehow. June reassures her, saying, in full Sincerity Mode, "You're going to be a star." It's one of the few indications we get that June and Athena really were friends at one point.
  • The Woobie: When caught reading about the controversy surrounding June, Skylar (a seventeen-year-old) is humiliated to the point of tears by her teacher.


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