This book reminds me how much happier I am since I quit Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter a year ago. It also frightens me with the prospect of having to return to those places again for the awful task of self-promotion. Of all the twining themes in Yellowface, that's the one I was most interested in: the joy of creating for oneself vs the artist's need for an audience vs the ruthless demands of a market that cares more about social facade than art. While I've never had Junie-level aspirations to wealth and stardom, I've certainly had the conversations with family who can understand neither my loathness to have "a normal life" nor my need to leave something of myself that I think matters in some way to this world. And I have at times wondered if that need is not pathological.
I suppose that this story will be discussed, by others, primarily in terms of what it has to say about race. In my white opinion, Kuang did an excellent job keeping it delicate and complex. as complex as Athena, June, and Candice. There's critique and grace for all here, and Yellowface isn't just another discharge in the culture wars, but a conversation. It's definitely a book for now, so much so that one wonders how it will be read in the future.

I'm off to the bookstore now.