Summary
June has a videoconference meeting with her publicity and marketing team. Kimberly and Jessica, the two publicity agents assigned to assist June through her book’s release, suggest that June publish the book under a different name: “Juniper Song,” taking her middle name—Song—and replacing her last name, Hayward, with it. Although the publicity team doesn’t explicitly state this, June assumes that they want her to publish under the last name “Song” due to its ethnic ambiguity, since “Song” could be interpreted as a Chinese last name.
June’s editorial and publicity teams begin to focus more intensely on the potential accusations of cultural appropriation that June’s novel may receive once released due to the fact that its subject matter, which focuses on Chinese history, was (supposedly) written by June, a white woman. Daniella’s assistant, Candice Lee—a Korean-American—strongly suggests that they get a sensitivity reader: a proofreader who could read the book and mark any instances where it may appear to be culturally insensitive or appropriative. June, fearing that her book will get pulled, refuses Candice’s suggestion.
Candice doesn’t accept June’s refusal and instead sends an email to the entire team passive-aggressively encouraging them to hire a sensitivity reader. June, angry and annoyed, forwards the email to her agent, Brett, and asks him to handle Candice. A few days later, Daniella emails the team and tells them that per June’s wishes, they will not be hiring a sensitivity reader. She follows up with June and lets her know that Candice has been dismissed from the project. Although June feels a twinge of guilt, she quickly brushes it away.
In anticipation of the book’s release, June gets new author photos taken and fixes up her social media. Modeling her social media after Athena’s, she begins to retweet and post about Asian American culture and political events in China. June’s publicity team begins to run advertisements for the book and sends out advance review copies. Two months before the book’s release date, amid a slew of five-star reviews, June notices a single one-star review on the book reviewing site Goodreads from a user named Candice Lee. June, enraged and upset, immediately lets Daniella know about the review and hopes that Daniella fires Candice.
The Last Front’s release day arrives. June attends a launch event her team set up in Washington D.C. As she prepares, she recalls the failure of her first novel, Over the Sycamore, and marvels at how different this release feels—unlike her first novel, The Last Front has already received rave reviews, publicity, and attention, and June wonders if the key to publishing success really is just the movements behind the scenes that hype a certain novel up into being perceived as the “it” book of the moment even before its release.
The Waterfront, the venue for the launch party, is packed. June reads an excerpt and answers questions for a Q&A session. In the middle of answering a question, June sees Athena in the front row. June is shaken; after finishing the session, she makes small talk with a few readers while desperately searching for Athena, who appears to have vanished. June leaves the event in a rush and tries to calm down.
The novel hits The New York Times bestseller list. After learning the news, June wants to call someone so they can share in her excitement, but realizes that the only person she would have called who would have understood the significance of this achievement was Athena. June tweets about the list instead.
June relishes in her newfound fame and success. All of a sudden, she finds herself at the center of the publishing world’s attention. At a book convention, June spends time with Daniella and two other successful authors, Marnie and Heidi. Marnie applauds June for highlighting the Chinese Labour Corps and the “unsung” heroes of history.
June receives her first royalties from the novel’s sales. Although at first she expresses a desire to be cautious with her money, her spending habits drastically change as she pays off her student loans, begins to buy expensive clothing, jewelry, and groceries, and allows herself more and more luxury purchases. June also makes an effort to donate her money to various charity programs that help writers of color, mentioning how Athena never helped other underrepresented writers and instead would only complain about them. June also finds herself swept up in reading reviews of the novel, despite her friends’ advice to avoid reviews at all costs. Several reviews attack June for her racism or simplification of historical events, claiming that she is overly sympathetic toward white characters. Provoked by the reviews and an in-person confrontation with a young woman who questioned June on her authority to write a novel about Chinese history at a publicity event in Cambridge, in her own personal narration, June wonders who has the right to write about suffering. She recalls how Athena herself appeared fascinated by suffering in a perverse manner. June asks herself whether Athena, who never lived in China, didn’t speak Chinese, and benefited greatly from her parent’s financial success by attending a series of private schools and universities, had any more right to write about Chinese history and suffering than June.
Shortly after the Cambridge incident, June is invited to an event at the Chinese American Social Club, where she is asked to host a meeting. The woman who invited her, Susan, picks June up at the subway station to drive her to the event and on the drive over, is surprised when June reveals that she has no Asian heritage. The conversation leaves June feeling awkward; later, during the Q&A at the club, June grows even more uncomfortable as she realizes that all the members mistakenly believe her to be Chinese American. Afterward, at dinner with the members, she meets a man who was originally part of the Chinese Labour Corps. For a moment, June feels guilt about her position as a white woman telling Mr. Lee’s story, even going so far as to admit to him that she’s not sure if she was the “right person” to tell the Chinese Labour Corps’ story. It’s the first time that June feels ashamed of having published the novel.
Analysis
One of the themes that surface over the course of the novel is June’s relationship with social media, which becomes an outlet for her to project an image of herself as a progressive, liberal author concerned with social justice. The plasticity of social media—June’s ability to post whatever she wants, especially given her access to Athena’s own public profiles on a variety of platforms—allows June to reshape her external image into one that more closely aligns with what she, and others, would expect the author of a novel like The Last Front to be.
Although June never goes so far as to explicitly label herself Asian American, both her careful curation of her social media, and her publicity team’s decision to publish under June’s middle name, Song, are attempts to blur June’s ethnicity in order to avoid possible accusations being made against June for cultural appropriation. June never lies about her race, but she does recognize that the book’s focus on Chinese history means she could be criticized for writing about a history that is not her “own” to claim or explore through fiction.
June’s identity and the subject of her novel raise a pressing question that Yellowface explores: who has the “right” to write about certain histories, events, and identities? As June herself notes, Athena had little close connection to Chinese life itself, as she grew up mainly in wealthy areas of the United States. Athena didn’t speak Chinese—a fact that June uses to excuse her own lack of Chinese language when she feels twinges of guilt about having written a novel that focuses on Chinese history and culture.
June’s reliance on referencing Athena’s own relationship to her heritage and drawing out the potential gaps in Athena’s ability to “claim” this heritage as her own becomes a convenient way for June to avoid considering the complex and potentially exploitative way she benefited from Athena’s manuscript. June excuses her actions by comparing herself—a white woman with no real relation to Chinese culture—to Athena, who June perceives as having exploited the suffering of the Chinese Labour Corps for her own manuscript. June flattens Athena into something that resembles herself, ignoring the underlying complexity that governs an individual’s relationship towards their identity, no matter how distant that relationship may appear from the side. June characterizes all writers as “vultures” profiting off of suffering. Following this logic, June settles on the belief that all writers can write about whatever suffering they choose, since writing itself is, to an extent, an exploitative process.
As events like the Chinese American Social Club’s reading and Q&A highlight, many Chinese Americans who appreciate June’s novel feel that it highlights a part of their history that is overlooked, and praise June for giving this history a voice. However, implicit within their praise is the assumption that June has a personal connection to this history; the ambiguous pen name, Song, leads many to believe that June is motivated by her own identity and background. While June manages to push away feelings of guilt or shame about her decision to profit off of Athena’s manuscript for several months, meeting an actual survivor of the Chinese Labour Corps at the Chinese American Social Club’s event finally forces June into feeling ashamed for having written about a history that isn’t her own.
