R.F. Kuang is such a sharp and intelligent writer. Yellowface is satirical, enraging, oddly comical(?) and completely unforgettable. I may not have insider knowledge of the publishing industry, but her portrayal of internet culture is so realistic and the protagonist, Juniper, is just so scary.

In the acknowledgments, Kuang writes that "Yellowface is, in large part, a horror story about loneliness in a fiercely competitive industry," and I love that the novel forces us to ask ourselves: what can loneliness and perceived inadequacy do to a person, and how does race impact and inform the decisions they make as a result of that loneliness?

When we are introduced to Athena—the ghost that haunt's Juniper's life and all of her work—she's described as a larger-than-life literary prodigy so talented that she is practically untouchable. We learn everything we know about her from other people, but Juniper, Geoff, and even Athena's mother, Patricia, all feel distant from her:

"Athena so rarely opened herself up to me. Reading her work wasn't like knowing her thoughts, but it was at least a part of herself she'd decided to let me see."

She's a profoundly lonely figure. A lauded literary celebrity whose acclaim has rendered her untouchable to her fans, and a woman distant and unknowable to those closest to her. She is far from perfect, as many characters in the book point out—but there is a clear difference between the way Athena copes with loneliness and the way our white main character does.

"Do you know how much shit Athena got from this industry? [...] They treated her like a museum object. That was her marketing point. Being a Chinese tragedy. She leaned into it, too. She knew the rules. She fucking milked it for all it was worth."

She's the model minority, the tragedy, the museum piece. An object of study both on and off the page. She isn't afforded the luxury of imperfections, of insecurity, and thus all of the moments in which she displays vulnerability are read as disingenuous and self-serving by Juniper. She doesn't get to be loudly, openly lonely; she has to be grateful for everything she has no matter the cost, she has to 'milk' her own tragedies and the tragedies of others in order to be successful.

Juniper, by contrast, is a white woman of seemingly mediocre talent who also feels lonely—but also deeply, disgustingly entitled. She tries to pretend that she isn't. She justifies her disgusting actions by reasoning that Athena wasn't as perfect as she was made out to be, that The Last Front deserved to be seen as a whole work rather than a draft, that Juniper is a good writer who hasn't had her big break because she doesn't have the so-called advantage of being diverse and tragic.

"But it's true, isn't it? Athena had it made. You people—I mean, diverse people—you're all they want."

She can't accept the fact of her own mediocrity, so she makes it an issue of race. She is one of the all-too common class of white liberals who really only care about equity as it applies to them in particular:

Obviously I'm not a Trumper—I voted for Biden! But if these people are hurling money at me, is it so wrong of me to accept? Should we not celebrate scamming cash from racist rednecks whenever we get the chance?

Her moral backbone is toothpick-thin, but her ego is insanely overinflated. Juniper can't stand Athena for working the system to her advantage, but has no problem using every weapon in her arsenal to take down the opposition when it finally comes time for her to answer for her awful behavior. She refuses to do the hard thing and look inward to improve herself as both a writer and a person because it's much easier to blame the world around her for her problems: cancel culture, tokenism, diversity politics, family drama, anything else is to blame for her lack of success as a writer. She's not like her boring, cookie-cutter family; she's different, special, and she shouldn't ever have to work or introspect because it's everyone else's fault that her first book flopped.

Juniper is absolutely insufferable. There are lots of passages that feel hard to read because she's just so ridiculously entitled, and for me that's what a lot of this boils down to: the ways that race inform our perceptions of loneliness. Juniper feels entitled to success despite doing nothing particularly remarkable and sees herself as a sympathetic loner because of it. Her sense of identity is so fragile and defined by others that she'll do anything (up to and including contemplating murder) and align herself with anyone (the right-wing commentators who've picked her as their hero of the month, for example) for a shred of recognition.

I am innocent. My only sin is loving literature too much, and refusing to let Athena's very prenatal work go to waste.