#40: it’s giving green-eyed monster.

on rebecca f. kuang's "yellowface" and the absurdity of jealousy.

Aug 25, 2024

The weather in Gambia is incredibly temperamental. One minute it is hot, so hot, that you would almost believe you are being roasted alive in an oven, and the very next, everywhere is chilly. I hate it. And I especially hate it because, for some weird reason, it is easy to catch a chill in such precarious temperatures. The weather left me with a nasty cold, so nasty that I lost my sense of smell and taste. I am still recovering from this and as a foodie it is preposterous. The whole week, my body felt like lead. It left me in a devil of a mood.

In retrospect, I am glad about all this. Coming down with a cold forced me to give my body the rest it so desperately needed. I am especially glad because I finally read Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. It was a book that I had a feeling I would like; I have watched YouTube videos of R.F. Kuang on panels and I think she is incredibly brilliant. Jack Edwards described Rebecca perfectly. She’s Beyoncé. Everything she writes turns to gold, no matter the genre. I have had such a gleeful time reading this book. Like every great story, I think about it so often that I dream about its characters when I sleep (has that ever happened to you?) I think that is because Rebecca writes so incisively about the human condition.

i took this photo months ago because i am plastic.

Yellowface follows June Hayward, a struggling writer who happens to be white. She’s plain and unassuming. Her debut novel did terribly, she is not taken seriously by her literary team; she is miserable, lonely and jaded. She’s friends with Athena Liu, an Asian-American, who is the opposite: she’s stunning, refined, and an incredibly successful author. Athena “has everything: a multi-book deal straight out of college at a major publishing house, an M.F.A. from the one writing workshop everyone’s heard of, a résumé of prestigious artist residencies, and a history of awards nominations.”1

The precise life her friend June desperately wants.

One evening, as they were hanging out together at Athena’s apartment celebrating Athena’s new TV deal, Athena chokes on a pancake and dies. June realizes that there is an unpublished manuscript of Athena’s in the apartment and steals it. She tweaks the manuscript a little and presents it to the world as her own, under a racially ambiguous name. Things of course happen.

Yellowface juggles many themes, such as the conversation of what constitutes cultural appropriation vs. cultural appreciation, online culture, jealousy, racism, and a critique of the publishing industry. What stood out to me the most however, is the descent into depravity once a person leans into the green-eyed monster.

Reading Yellowface was an exercise in fascinated horror. It’s a very intrusive read; we get to be front-row audience members to June’s twisted mind. One of June’s many faults (and boy, does she have a lot), is her latent jealousy of her friend Athena. June’s jealousy is absurd to witness, but also strangely relatable. Her jealousy is absurd to witness because jealousy itself is absurd. It is relatable because every ambitious person has felt the bitter taste of jealousy in their gut. Jealousy is absurdly human.

June, however unlikeable, is a good-enough representation of a unsatisfied, sensitive writer. To June, “Jealousy is constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short; is panicking that I’m not writing well enough or fast enough, that I am not, and never will be, enough.” I hate June, but that spoke to me. As someone who imagines herself a writer, these past few months after launching a newsletter, I have felt the nasty stab of jealousy in my chest as I compare myself to my contemporaries.

When you think about it, there is something about jealousy that is incredibly prideful and entitled. It’s this belief, deep down inside, that you deserve this thing simply because you’re you. Sometimes you believe that you deserve it even more than the person you’re envious of. June is entitled, bitter and angry. She believes she deserves Athena’s success, and that’s she’s a good enough and perhaps even a better writer than her friend. She believes that Athena’s success is because she’s not white.2 When she does write in the book, we get to see that although she’s passably good, she’s not phenomenal — her writing is cliché at best, discombobulating at worst. June Hayward is the perfect example of the disaster that ensues when you lean into your dormant jealousy. She steals another’s work, tells a story that is not her place to tell, and when confronted with the looming consequences, unravels in crazy ways.

If you have any sort of dream or ambition, the chances that you are slightly envious of another person exists. Most of the times it’s not about the person per se, but about aspiration. I don’t think that sort of jealousy is particularly bad. It can even act as motivation to do better. Even at that, I am of the opinion that there is a side to us that we should never tap into. There are emotions that we must harness, lest they grow from a spark into an all-consuming flame.

We can’t help it sometimes as humans. But jealousy a chronic joy stealer. Where you're meant to see a friend, you see competition. When someone is being grateful, you think they're being boastful. No one should be blamed or feel guilty for being jealous. We should just learn to control our it, as we should all other emotions.3

I’ve seen people complain online that Yellowface is too didactic a read for them. I see their point, but I don’t agree. I love a good “moral of the story” book. Sometimes we need them.

Spoilers: Athena is not a perfect victim. We find that she’s not a particularly nice person or a good friend, even if it is June’s way to justifying her plagiarism. I loved that the novel explored the gray area that is our humanness. I also loved that the book interrogates the absurd pile-on culture on social media , albeit heavy-handedly.

vimto malt.
long walks with my dad.
reading a physical book.
sabrina carpenter’s new album.
the conversations that holding a book opens : i entered a taxi this past week, yellowface in hand, and the driver and i ended up having a nice conversation about books, writing and the just concluded dnc. my favorite thing about the conversation is when he asked me “so when is your book coming out?” ( he didn’t even know i write!!! ahhhh) . i smiled shyly and replied “soon”. it was all so nice.
i think i’ve become really good at thrifting floral dresses. felt whimsical in this: