Yellowface - Entry 2
May 8, 2024 * literature, yellowface * part 8
Contents
In this second part of the book, June gets invited to various places to talk about the book she published, and begins to question whether or not Athena had more of a right to write and profit from Chinese suffering than she did, since Athena herself doesn’t speak Chinese and never lived in China, presumably as a way to deal with the guilt that she was accumulating. June still doesn’t see what she’s doing as plagiarism of cultural appropriation, and goes through various mental gymnastics to justify it.
With her newfound revenue, June starts to live more lavishly, moving into a more expensive apartment, eating takeout nearly every day, and enjoying the things that Athena always had that she desired to have. She had her photos taken professionally, and basked in the attention of various other famous authors and critical acclaim.
Analysis/Reflection
The book starts picking up pace here, quickly catapulting into June’s success and its aftermath, and how she deals with her newfound position. We see the lengths that June goes to in order to keep her secret under wraps, and how she manages to put her guilt at bay and delude herself into thinking what she did wasn’t actually plagiarism.
While June is indeed a frustrating character, some of the questions and sentiments that she raises are some that I can actually agree with. Including the question as to who has the “right” to write about certain histories or cultures. But, as I mentioned, to June a lot of this questioning is to evade the responsibility and guilt she feels for stealing Athena’s work, and how she begins to almost hallucinate, we can see the deterioration of June’s mental state throughout.
June’s pen name “Juniper Song” suggests that she’s Asian, and so many people that meet her interact with her under the premise that she is, and ask her what her experience is as a marginalized Asian author. This blatant example of “yellowface” while also exemplifying the irony of June’s issue with how marginalized writers are supposedly pushed by the industry to succeed more than white authors, reminded me of the current appropriation of many Indian traditions, clothes, and other cultural elements in the West. Specifically things like shawls and the like are rebranded to seem “less indian”, and sold under alternative names. While appreciating cultures isn’t a bad thing, Yellowface exemplifies how people can thieve from the richness of cultures and use it for their own gain.