Are these the signs of a bestseller in the making? I wonder. They must be. Why doesn鈥檛 anyone tell I wonder what June would say about this review.
Are these the signs of a bestseller in the making? I wonder. They must be. Why doesn鈥檛 anyone tell you, right off the bat, how important your book is to the publisher? Before Over the Sycamore came out, I worked my ass off doing blog interviews and podcasts, hoping that the more sweat I put into publicity, the more my publisher would reward my efforts. But now, I see, author efforts have nothing to do with a book鈥檚 success. Bestsellers are chosen. Nothing you do matters. You just get to enjoy the perks along the way.
Who gets to tell stories? Whose stories get told? Who gets on the best-seller list? The has been having its come to god moment over the past few years, what with surrounding books like American Dirt, , and .
I've been a reviewer for fun for somwhere around a decade at this point, and I've been on the sidelines of, and occasionally party to some of the smaller controversies that have played out here, on 欧宝娱乐. And boy, have I learnt a lot. I get it, I know the publishing industry is absolutely brutal. Some books make it, and some just don't. Some authors become literary darlings, and others fade into obscurity. A lot of the time, it isn't about effort, or skill, or talent. It's about circumstances, luck, and telling the right story at the right time. June is right about that. What she's very wrong about though, is that more often than not, the "right" stories are told by white, predominantly cis-, male authors. By that argument, you may say, well, Anu, then isn't June right, that women, even white women, have it hard? Yeah, but also no. White women may have it harder than white men, but it is obviously nothing compared to what authors of colour experience. It's why "own voices" and the stories thus told by these voices are so important.
So of course Athena gets every good thing, because that鈥檚 how this industry works. Publishing picks a winner鈥攕omeone attractive enough, someone cool and young and, oh, we鈥檙e all thinking it, let鈥檚 just say it, 鈥渄iverse鈥� enough鈥攁nd lavishes all its money and resources on them. It鈥檚 so fucking arbitrary. Or perhaps not arbitrary, but it hinges on factors that have nothing to do with the strength of one鈥檚 prose.
Yellowface is one of those books that is so much fun to read, but also tells crucial, if rather harrowing tale about what I have come to learn is the brutal, solitary world of writing and publishing. After all, Writing is such a solitary activity.
June Hayworth, aka Juniper Song is a failed writer. Her first novel tanked, and her only friend, Athena Liu is the voice of the generation. So, when Athena dies in a freak accident, June decides to take Athena's latest manuscript, the one no one has heard about, and publish it as her own. She makes edits, rewrites whole chapters, and changes her nom-de-plume to Juniper Song--exotic, and ethnically ambiguous for a name if there ever was one. And lo and behold, this latest book becomes a bestseller, and June becomes the literary darling of her dreams.
What starts off as a literary exercise for June ends up becoming her most dangerous, and to some extent best kept secret. As she finds herself wading deeper into Athena's magnum opus about a deeply sensitive topic, June throws caution to the wind, and any semblance of morality she had left out of the window. The more she makes this story "her own", the more she begins to scoff at any disapproval levelled at the book and at her, both within her own head, as well as from her critics, justifying whitewashing the novel, justifying taking advantage of a grieving mother, justifying her choice to rebrand herself and not "come out as White".
For a while, June is able to enjoy her newfound fame. She gets new, professionally taken author headshots. Her editor actually knows her name, and importantly, listens to her and respects her. She ends up making what I like to call fuck-you money. She becomes a literary darling. She makes friends with famous authors. She's part of the zeitgeist. She is the zeitgeist.
Obviously, she isn't without her denigrators. Straight off the bat, some people, especially Asians and Asian Americans are suspicious about the timing of the book, its content, and her relationship with Athena. When asked to consult with sensitivity readers, to ensure that her book isn't offensive to the Chinese, June refuses, and vehemently at that. When the editorial assistant who recommended that she get a sensitivity reader leaves a rather scathing 1 star review of her book on 欧宝娱乐 (meta, isn't it?), June goes as far as to get the assistant fired.
The juxtaposition of June's internal monologue, her slow descent into madness almost, with the sheer brutality of the publishing world and the toxicity of social media gives the book an almost gothic horror vibe. The lonely, wronged author high up in her ivory tower fobbing off her evil detractors.
The reason Yellowface works is because Kuang is very adept at toeing the line between the satirical and the serious. Where June could have been a caricature, she's a well-fleshed out character. Her backstory, her complicated relationships with her family, her fizzled out ambitions, the stories she wrote as a teenager, even her relationship with Athena add dimension to what would have been an otherwise very one-dimensional character. None of this actually makes June likeable, or even someone I can sympathise with, but it does make you uncomfortably question whether you yourself are capable of doing something like this if pushed too far. In a way, June sees her actions as justified, because Athena did a bad thing first.
For someone who only appears in the first chapter of the entire book, Athena's larger-than-life personality, her actions, and her fame loom over the story like a ghost stuck, unable to move on. Of course, it isn't possible to tell June's story without Athena's. But the reason that this works is because Athena has dimensions too. A prodigy of the publishing world she may be, but Athena had a dirty habit too, one that potentially made her into the star that she was.
Yellowface works because it exists entirely in the grey spaces within the black and white of our world. There's no hero, nor a villain. There's nobody to root for, nobody to label the boogeyman. It is truly excellent in a skin-crawling, uncomfortable sort of way. For the most part, at least. Where Kuang does a really good job of writing a poignant, darkly comical story, she fumbles the ending. It feels forced, trite, and cartoonish. She tries a little too hard to tie up loose ends, and at this, she fails. It feel anticlimactic and unnecessary. I think maybe, just maybe, the book would have worked better if she'd left the ends loose.
What more can we want as writers than such immortality? Don鈥檛 ghosts just want to be remembered?...more
I want to state for the record, that I would like George Saunders to narrate my life (on paper, not in audio).
I have a complicated relationship with RI want to state for the record, that I would like George Saunders to narrate my life (on paper, not in audio).
I have a complicated relationship with Russian literature. I love it, for sure, but I also find it tedious, more often than not. My mother, on the other hand, has a singular, almost undying love for Russian short stories. I think she's read them all, and she'll read them all again. A creative writing class, taught through the lens of understanding and appreciating Russian literature, therefore, was a little up my alley. And not surprisingly, I have a complicated relationship with this book as well. To begin with, how do I review a "review" (or a series of them, if we're being pedantic)? Because, in this book, Saunders goes through short stories by the Russian greats, and teaches us the elements of reading, understanding, and writing.
I should say, before I start, that in spite of what my rambling, expletive-laden reviews would have you believe, I actually do know how to write. I've taken some creative writing classes in my day, and I used to be a journalist. In many ways, thus, a lot of Saunders' analysis and writing was a bit of a repetition of what I've already learnt (like the process of revision - Who cares if the first draft is good? It doesn't need to be good, it just needs to be, so you can revise it.). Re-reading and revising your first draft is the single most important lesson you'll probably learn from most creative writing classes. However, there was so much of it that was not. For one, it was incredibly interesting to read Saunders' own perspectives on these oft-analysed stories. For another, he goes into detail about his own writing process, which was probably my favourite part to read.
It is also humbling and a little bit incredible to read about Saunders' reverence to the craft. When he talks about it, about the act of writing, as opposed to the art, you get the sense that he's given himself to it. And that many times, he lets it lead him to where he's meant to go, as opposed to the other way around. This was a profound lesson for me. At this exact time and space for me, now, I've been grappling with not having control over things-the tiny, mundane things, and the big, life-altering things. Perhaps that was my life lesson from this masterclass - to let the things take me where I have to go. Or perhaps, it's not really a metaphor for life at all (but look at the title). Either way, reading this book gave me a bit of hope during some really trying times, and if for no other reason than that, I highly recommend this....more
To understand why this book means to me as much as it does, it is important to do what Orwell does in the beginning of this book - go back to my childTo understand why this book means to me as much as it does, it is important to do what Orwell does in the beginning of this book - go back to my childhood. When I was eleven years old, and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had one answer: "I don't know what I want to do, but I know I'll never work in politics." Oh, how wrong I was!
A combination of having to closely follow elections because my grandfather did, and watching Aaron Sorkin shows, primarily, however, piqued my interest in said field, the field I had refused to wade in. Indeed, there are a myriad of reasons why I study politics. There are, however, exactly two reasons for why I want to write about politics, and George Orwell is one of them. The other is Stephen Kinzer.
Orwell, throughout his book emphasises on one main fact: that all writing is political. And while that has not shaped my world view or what I write, I believe that it is the cardinal rule we need to accept before we write. Even if, unlike me, you don't write about why we should redefine human trafficking or something equally depressing. General fiction, plays, even thrillers and romance novels, are political. The politics of the writer has a way of seeping into the writing, and that's only a fact of nature.
The primary reason I think everyone should read this book is because Orwell practises what he preaches. The key to good writing, he explains is to keep it simple and stick to the point, and that is what he does. Why I Write is but a hundred pages long. Whereas other books on writing, written by other authors I admire, are at least 3 times the length. Why I Write is indeed the antithesis to all the political writing we see today.
Of course, I'm going to end my review here. It would be a disservice to the man if I waxed poetic about this book, when the crux of his advice is to do exactly the opposite....more
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