Current:Home > Contact-usShe wants fiction writers to step outside their experiences. Even if it's messy-LoTradeCoin
She wants fiction writers to step outside their experiences. Even if it's messy
View Date:2024-12-23 17:56:16
R.F. Kuang's novel offers a literary exploration of cultural appropriation taken to a new degree.
Who is she? R.F. Kuang is an award-winning Chinese American author, known for her best-selling fantasy novels in The Poppy War trilogy.
- Yellowface, her latest work, focuses on a writer and thief named June Hayward, who finds herself stumped with little professional success.
- Athena Liu, however, is her extremely successful, sort-of friend and peer from Yale. After Athena chokes to death on a pancake with June watching on, the fate of her unfinished manuscript, and the aspects of her identity woven in, are taken into June's hands.
What's the big deal?
- The story then follows June as she steals Athena's manuscript, and attempts to pass it off as her own, falling down a rabbit hole of intentionally misrepresenting her own racial identity.
- What follows is an exploration of identity à la Rachel Dolezal, cultural ownership, and a searing commentary on absurdities within the publishing industry.
- The book has generated plenty of buzz, with reviewers landing on all sides of the spectrum, and some predicting it to be the next Big Discourse Book.
What is she saying? Kuang spoke with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about the book, and the process behind it.
On the ouroboros of identity with an Asian author writing from the perspective of a white woman who is doing the inverse:
I think it's hilarious that all of our assumptions about who gets to do cultural appropriation, or when something counts as cultural appropriation, kind of go away when you invert who is of what identity.
And I think that a lot of our standards about cultural appropriation are language about "don't write outside of your own lane. You can only write about this experience if you've had that experience."
I don't think they make a lot of sense. I think they're actually quite limiting and harmful, and backfire more often on marginalized writers than they push forward conversations about widening opportunities. You would see Asian American writers being told that you can't write anything except about immigrant trauma or the difficulties of being Asian American in the U.S. And I think that's anathema to what fiction should be. I think fiction should be about imagining outside our own perspective, stepping into other people's shoes and empathizing with the other.
So I really don't love arguments that reduce people to their identities or set strict permissions of what you can and can't write about. And I'm playing with that argument by doing the exact thing that June is accused of, writing about an experience that isn't hers.
Want more on books? Listen to Consider This speak with Dolly Parton on her new kid's book that tackles bullying.
On writing an unlikeable character:
I love writing unlikable narrators, but the trick here is it's much more fun to follow a character that does have a sympathetic background, that does think reasonable thoughts about half the time, because then you're compelled to follow their logic to the horrible decisions they are making.
I'm also thinking a lot about a very common voice in female led psychological thrillers, because I always really love reading widely around the genre that I'm trying to make an intervention in.
And I noticed there's this voice that comes up over and over again, and it's a very nasty, condescending protagonist that you see repeated across works. And I'm thinking of the protagonist, like the main character of Gone Girl, the main character of The Girl in the Window. I am trying to take all those tropes and inject them all into a singular white female protagonist who is deeply unlikable and try to crack the code of what makes her so interesting to listen to regardless.
So, what now?
- Yellowface officially released this week. Let the online discourse begin.
Learn More:
- Book review: 'Yellowface' takes white privilege to a sinister level
- In 'Quietly Hostile,' Samantha Irby trains a cynical eye inwar
- Victor LaValle's novel 'Lone Women' is infused with dread and horror — and more
- Books We Love: Tales From Around The World
veryGood! (5)
Related
- 'Full House' star Dave Coulier diagnosed with stage 3 cancer
- Republican attorneys general issue warning letter to Target about Pride merchandise
- Middle America’s Low-Hanging Carbon: The Search for Greenhouse Gas Cuts from the Grid, Agriculture and Transportation
- Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor Make Rare Red Carpet Appearance With 21-Year-Old Daughter Ella
- California teen pleads guilty in Florida to making hundreds of ‘swatting’ calls across the US
- No New Natural Gas: Michigan Utility Charts a Course Free of Fossil Fuels
- Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter mark 77th wedding anniversary
- A Key Nomination for Biden’s Climate Agenda Advances to the Full Senate
- Suspect in deadly 2023 Atlanta shooting is deemed not competent to stand trial
- Trade War Fears Ripple Through Wind Energy Industry’s Supply Chain
Ranking
- Get Your Home Holiday-Ready & Decluttered With These Storage Solutions Starting at $14
- Every Time We Applauded North West's Sass
- From Twitter chaos to TikTok bans to the metaverse, social media had a rocky 2022
- Fiancée speaks out after ex-boyfriend shoots and kills her husband-to-be: My whole world was taken away
- My Chemical Romance will perform 'The Black Parade' in full during 2025 tour: See dates
- Tom Holland Makes Rare Comment About His “Sacred” Relationship With Zendaya
- 6 killed in small plane crash in Southern California
- Sam Bankman-Fried to be released on $250 million bail into parents' custody
Recommendation
-
Teachers in 3 Massachusetts communities continue strike over pay, paid parental leave
-
The Senate’s Two-Track Approach Reveals Little Bipartisanship, and a Fragile Democratic Consensus on Climate
-
Q&A: A Sustainable Transportation Advocate Explains Why Bikes and Buses, Not Cars, Should Be the Norm
-
A Chick-fil-A location is fined for giving workers meals instead of money
-
When does Spirit Christmas open? What to know about Spirit Halloween’s new holiday venture
-
Louisiana’s Governor Vetoes Bill That Would Have Imposed Harsh Penalties for Trespassing on Industrial Land
-
Video: Access to Nature and Outdoor Recreation are Critical, Underappreciated Environmental Justice Issues
-
Union wins made big news this year. Here are 5 reasons why it's not the full story