Frankly the disparity in the treatment of Yellowface (and TOBG) vs what's-his-face is not super complicated. He is advocating for diversity of thought, they are advocating for diversity of skin color only. Also, he is calling out woke white people, who actually exist in the publishing space, they are calling out racist white people, who don't. Their "parody" is attacking imaginary people who don't exist in order to advocate for more of the same, his is attacking the real people that do exist in order to argue for a fundamental change to the system.
I good way of finding out home many copies a book has sold is to see how many reviews they got on Goodreads. The Other Black Girl did not do well and I don't thing Zakiya Dalila Harris will be getting another book deal. Yellowface is a modest hit, but it is not as popular as Babel and The Poppy War trilogy. R. F. Kuang's flame seems to have brunt too bright and too fast. I listened to some reviews of Yellowface on YouTube and they all came to the same conclusion: R. F. Kuang is extremely intelligent, highly educated and has an astonishing work ethic. She has also been isolated in silos of White dominated privilege her entire life and lacks the experience, insight and maturity to write immersive fiction. She's passionate and didactic, struggles with nuance and humility - all the usual flaws of ambitious and talented youth. She's only 27 and Harris is 31. I hope they both grow as writers and people, and are able to gift the world with good, honest writing in the future.
There's a lot of publishing of books that publishers think people should read as opposed to books people actually want to read and far too many have the tone of looking down their glasses at the reader. Hence puff pieces and Booktok/Bookstagram (where anything less than 4 stars is a spit in the face) don't match the reality of what sells.
It's true. Almost everything on Goodreads gets four stars, from Wuthering Heights to It End With Us. I think it's because Goodreads is dominated by female readers, and women hate to be too harsh.
Really enjoying reading thru ur stuff. I think whats interesting to me about TOBG is how the premise when you described it at first was genuinely interesting. A black woman’s Devil Wears Prada, you could still do a “woke” version of the story by emphasizing that it’s not right for black women to fight against eachother but it couldve been fun and funny to read two elites in an industry that is competitive but also meaningless engage in petty sabotage and maybe make up and burn it all down. You could do a moralist take on that kind of story and still win over a guy like me who’s a white working class edgelord loser with immense cultural ignorance lol
However as soon as the cream plotline got introduced in your explanation I immediately turned off. It’s this weird pulpification of novels, where they now have comic book, video game style plotlines about secret conspiracies to make people into jelly to steal the black girl magic for themselves and raise the problematic dead white authors or something. Very uninteresting. Very YA, and I love pulp I love comic books I love lowbrow fiction but I do miss premises like that of Devil Wears Prada or Monster in Law (I like romcoms) where it’s character-based, light-hearted and charming. Imagine As Good As It Gets made today: Jack Nickolson’s OCD would be caused by a magic stone that Carol needs to go into his body with a giant spaceship to destroy. Just an example, it’s a shame
I wouldnt be surprised if the next incarnation of this kind of book involves a multiverse
Thanks! Yes, there were parts of TOBG where Nella feels territorial and jealous about having a peer black woman in her environment. If the novel explored that more, the story would've been much better, but that would've made the author uncomfortable b/c the protagonist is clearly her avatar, and so many of these types of writers are mainly interested in convincing readers that their protagonists/themselves are actually good and admirable people.
Yea its also a thing of that the idea is not of these characters as people with conflicting or complimentary personalities but instead are iconographic of social ills on twitter. It’s why I think the idea of two black women competing because they hate eachother is more interesting than the idea that black women competing is inherently awful, because sometimes no matter what demographic you are youre going to get someone who gets under your skin who looks like you. Contrasting characters create nuance, plus having them both be pieces of shit is something I feel progressive writers havent gotten yet
For all its faults theres a BBC show called Jerk that did this well. I didnt find Jerk that funny, sort of like banal observations from twitter back in 2017 but made into a show (“what if a disabled guy pretended to be transable-bodied” - send tweet) but what it did great was made ALL of the characters even the minorities into pieces of shit who exploit others. Thats what people are like and people like that kind of character. If there was a black character in a show who deliberately used blackness to be an asshole to people not to prove a point but instead to just have a laugh, to get out of work or to make people who are well-meaning uncomfortable everyone even reactionary working class would love that character because we’ve all wanted to exploit the safety nets in our society. It makes us human
The Hulu adaptation of TOBG is out now. Any interest in seeing it? The trailer makes the show look better than the novel, though that's not saying much. Actually, I think the most interesting thing about the show is that its views on Youtube (for the trailer) have obviously been faked/botted. It supposedly racked up 10m+ views but can't get more than 50 audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes? lol
Thats really weird yea. I would imagine that maybe it’s a youtube ad and that could explain the high views? Or maybe there’s five million black political dorks and another five million white swear nerds who would both make up the show’s demographic lol
If the show’s good in a way that’s my thing that’ll be great and it’ll end up finding its way to me. If not i’ll end up forgetting it exists like most people do with most things. A benefit of the short and niche lifespan of modern media is culture war lightning rods like the show would be only ever get discussed for five minutes. Im not a big watcher of things tho so this’ll have to be really my sort of thing for it to find me. I also tend to take the path of least resistance so unless it’s on netflix or youtube it basically doesnt exist for me as while i do torrent it has to be one of my “things” for me to do so
But yea to avoid rambling basically while i think rewarding something bad with adaption deals is my least favorite modern invention i would definitely watch it if it ends up good and my thing. It’s only fair. But yea still dont agree with books and comics becoming test runs for movies and dislike how because theyre written to be adaptable as movies or tv - mediums where even Harry Potter is too complex to be adapted wholesale - the original thing is now unnuanced as a result
I might just use this comment as a platform to talk about media ive experienced lately but i recently read the childrens book Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and i was impressed by how much cleverer the language was and how more nuanced the philosophy was in this childrens book than many modern media. The thing with this and The Hobbit is the flowery language is the author just unfiltered, not trying to talk down to kids. I dont want to shittalk simple entertainment for kids either, Jaqueline Wilson is great for that, but it’s weird to me how now even for adults prose seems simplified and philosophical ideas basic. That book leaves open interpretation for you to disagree with its moral, which is this sort of racial tension that arises from rats becoming a kind of human and them deciding on if they should become more human by trying to develop their own society by taking up agriculture and inventing or if they should continue to live off stealing the electricity of human beings because the idea is so unattainable and to hold humans up as this standard ignores their hypocrisies. You may have to adopt some methods of monsters and abusers in order to become better than them, but at the same time life isnt fair and you may do everything right to become a clever society and still lose because humans are at the top and would stamp out a rat civillization if they find out about it
Basically I would recommend this children’s book about a rat widow because it charmed the pants off me and wouldnt recommend a book i havent read because the prose seems quite shit lol
As a young(ish) nonwhite second-generation Asian dude who once harbored thoughts of being (gasp) a professional writer, this article makes me grateful I never went down that path. Writing still has its charms, but being a writer is another thing entirely.
Also, if you are still in NYC, I would love to have the opportunity to buy you a drink some time. Your articles make me wish I had someone like you to serve as an Asian guy mentor growing up.
Bastet's tail, these humans sure do navelgaze! How much can one human self-obsess? And it's not as if they were higher beings like cats.
Although I do admit that I find the name "Shartricia" to be hilarious in a kittenish way.
Anyway, there is a long history of rock bands recording songs criticizing the recording industry, going back at least to "Working for MCA" by Lynyrd Skynyrd and probably well before that. The record companies don't care if they or their executives are parodied or insulted, as long as the music sells.
Although Norman Sheffield, Queen's former manager, did sue both the band and their label for defamation due the lyrics of Death on Two Legs. It ended in an out of court settlement.
I enjoyed your review of Yellowface. I can't say I reached the same conclusions in my Substack review (which makes sense: if one assumes i) the worst initial intent of the protag and ii) her lack of prior success as being the natural result of her lack of talent—IOW, if you've already internalized the industry's biases—the rest of the analysis has to follow a certain way).
I thought *all* the writers in Yellowface, including Athena, were portrayed as victims of a system that's set up to compromise artistic integrity at every turn.
But that does call your question: How can the industry endorse such a message? IMO, it's just that [virtually] no readers can see beyond their identity-centric prism long enough to absorb the plain message of the book. Kuang says as much in her interviews.
I good way of finding out home many copies a book has sold is to see how many reviews they got on Goodreads. The Other Black Girl did not do well and I don't thing Zakiya Dalila Harris will be getting another book deal. Yellowface is a modest hit, but it is not as popular as Babel and The Poppy War trilogy. R. F. Kuang's flame seems to have brunt too bright and too fast. I listened to some reviews of Yellowface on YouTube and they all came to the same conclusion: R. F. Kuang is extremely intelligent, highly educated and has an astonishing work ethic. She has also been isolated in silos of White dominated privilege her entire life and lacks the experience, insight and maturity to write immersive fiction. She's passionate and didactic, struggles with nuance and humility - all the usual flaws of ambitious and talented youth. She's only 27 and Harris is 31. I hope they both grow as writers and people, and are able to gift the world with good, honest writing in the future.
Frankly the disparity in the treatment of Yellowface (and TOBG) vs what's-his-face is not super complicated. He is advocating for diversity of thought, they are advocating for diversity of skin color only. Also, he is calling out woke white people, who actually exist in the publishing space, they are calling out racist white people, who don't. Their "parody" is attacking imaginary people who don't exist in order to advocate for more of the same, his is attacking the real people that do exist in order to argue for a fundamental change to the system.
I good way of finding out home many copies a book has sold is to see how many reviews they got on Goodreads. The Other Black Girl did not do well and I don't thing Zakiya Dalila Harris will be getting another book deal. Yellowface is a modest hit, but it is not as popular as Babel and The Poppy War trilogy. R. F. Kuang's flame seems to have brunt too bright and too fast. I listened to some reviews of Yellowface on YouTube and they all came to the same conclusion: R. F. Kuang is extremely intelligent, highly educated and has an astonishing work ethic. She has also been isolated in silos of White dominated privilege her entire life and lacks the experience, insight and maturity to write immersive fiction. She's passionate and didactic, struggles with nuance and humility - all the usual flaws of ambitious and talented youth. She's only 27 and Harris is 31. I hope they both grow as writers and people, and are able to gift the world with good, honest writing in the future.
I have to wonder if books like TOBG and Yellowface were written when the authors were 5-10 years, how much better they could've been.
There's a lot of publishing of books that publishers think people should read as opposed to books people actually want to read and far too many have the tone of looking down their glasses at the reader. Hence puff pieces and Booktok/Bookstagram (where anything less than 4 stars is a spit in the face) don't match the reality of what sells.
It's true. Almost everything on Goodreads gets four stars, from Wuthering Heights to It End With Us. I think it's because Goodreads is dominated by female readers, and women hate to be too harsh.
Really enjoying reading thru ur stuff. I think whats interesting to me about TOBG is how the premise when you described it at first was genuinely interesting. A black woman’s Devil Wears Prada, you could still do a “woke” version of the story by emphasizing that it’s not right for black women to fight against eachother but it couldve been fun and funny to read two elites in an industry that is competitive but also meaningless engage in petty sabotage and maybe make up and burn it all down. You could do a moralist take on that kind of story and still win over a guy like me who’s a white working class edgelord loser with immense cultural ignorance lol
However as soon as the cream plotline got introduced in your explanation I immediately turned off. It’s this weird pulpification of novels, where they now have comic book, video game style plotlines about secret conspiracies to make people into jelly to steal the black girl magic for themselves and raise the problematic dead white authors or something. Very uninteresting. Very YA, and I love pulp I love comic books I love lowbrow fiction but I do miss premises like that of Devil Wears Prada or Monster in Law (I like romcoms) where it’s character-based, light-hearted and charming. Imagine As Good As It Gets made today: Jack Nickolson’s OCD would be caused by a magic stone that Carol needs to go into his body with a giant spaceship to destroy. Just an example, it’s a shame
I wouldnt be surprised if the next incarnation of this kind of book involves a multiverse
Thanks! Yes, there were parts of TOBG where Nella feels territorial and jealous about having a peer black woman in her environment. If the novel explored that more, the story would've been much better, but that would've made the author uncomfortable b/c the protagonist is clearly her avatar, and so many of these types of writers are mainly interested in convincing readers that their protagonists/themselves are actually good and admirable people.
Yea its also a thing of that the idea is not of these characters as people with conflicting or complimentary personalities but instead are iconographic of social ills on twitter. It’s why I think the idea of two black women competing because they hate eachother is more interesting than the idea that black women competing is inherently awful, because sometimes no matter what demographic you are youre going to get someone who gets under your skin who looks like you. Contrasting characters create nuance, plus having them both be pieces of shit is something I feel progressive writers havent gotten yet
For all its faults theres a BBC show called Jerk that did this well. I didnt find Jerk that funny, sort of like banal observations from twitter back in 2017 but made into a show (“what if a disabled guy pretended to be transable-bodied” - send tweet) but what it did great was made ALL of the characters even the minorities into pieces of shit who exploit others. Thats what people are like and people like that kind of character. If there was a black character in a show who deliberately used blackness to be an asshole to people not to prove a point but instead to just have a laugh, to get out of work or to make people who are well-meaning uncomfortable everyone even reactionary working class would love that character because we’ve all wanted to exploit the safety nets in our society. It makes us human
The Hulu adaptation of TOBG is out now. Any interest in seeing it? The trailer makes the show look better than the novel, though that's not saying much. Actually, I think the most interesting thing about the show is that its views on Youtube (for the trailer) have obviously been faked/botted. It supposedly racked up 10m+ views but can't get more than 50 audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes? lol
Thats really weird yea. I would imagine that maybe it’s a youtube ad and that could explain the high views? Or maybe there’s five million black political dorks and another five million white swear nerds who would both make up the show’s demographic lol
If the show’s good in a way that’s my thing that’ll be great and it’ll end up finding its way to me. If not i’ll end up forgetting it exists like most people do with most things. A benefit of the short and niche lifespan of modern media is culture war lightning rods like the show would be only ever get discussed for five minutes. Im not a big watcher of things tho so this’ll have to be really my sort of thing for it to find me. I also tend to take the path of least resistance so unless it’s on netflix or youtube it basically doesnt exist for me as while i do torrent it has to be one of my “things” for me to do so
But yea to avoid rambling basically while i think rewarding something bad with adaption deals is my least favorite modern invention i would definitely watch it if it ends up good and my thing. It’s only fair. But yea still dont agree with books and comics becoming test runs for movies and dislike how because theyre written to be adaptable as movies or tv - mediums where even Harry Potter is too complex to be adapted wholesale - the original thing is now unnuanced as a result
I might just use this comment as a platform to talk about media ive experienced lately but i recently read the childrens book Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and i was impressed by how much cleverer the language was and how more nuanced the philosophy was in this childrens book than many modern media. The thing with this and The Hobbit is the flowery language is the author just unfiltered, not trying to talk down to kids. I dont want to shittalk simple entertainment for kids either, Jaqueline Wilson is great for that, but it’s weird to me how now even for adults prose seems simplified and philosophical ideas basic. That book leaves open interpretation for you to disagree with its moral, which is this sort of racial tension that arises from rats becoming a kind of human and them deciding on if they should become more human by trying to develop their own society by taking up agriculture and inventing or if they should continue to live off stealing the electricity of human beings because the idea is so unattainable and to hold humans up as this standard ignores their hypocrisies. You may have to adopt some methods of monsters and abusers in order to become better than them, but at the same time life isnt fair and you may do everything right to become a clever society and still lose because humans are at the top and would stamp out a rat civillization if they find out about it
Basically I would recommend this children’s book about a rat widow because it charmed the pants off me and wouldnt recommend a book i havent read because the prose seems quite shit lol
Wonderful essay. "The truth is that vindictiveness and insecurity are narrative gold!" Here, here. I'm glad I discovered your Substack.
As a young(ish) nonwhite second-generation Asian dude who once harbored thoughts of being (gasp) a professional writer, this article makes me grateful I never went down that path. Writing still has its charms, but being a writer is another thing entirely.
Also, if you are still in NYC, I would love to have the opportunity to buy you a drink some time. Your articles make me wish I had someone like you to serve as an Asian guy mentor growing up.
Email me at chrisjesulee@gmail.com!
Bastet's tail, these humans sure do navelgaze! How much can one human self-obsess? And it's not as if they were higher beings like cats.
Although I do admit that I find the name "Shartricia" to be hilarious in a kittenish way.
Anyway, there is a long history of rock bands recording songs criticizing the recording industry, going back at least to "Working for MCA" by Lynyrd Skynyrd and probably well before that. The record companies don't care if they or their executives are parodied or insulted, as long as the music sells.
Regarding "Shartricia," TOBG really had great potential to be a memorable satire. Unfortunately, the book seems to be Harris being her genuine self.
Although Norman Sheffield, Queen's former manager, did sue both the band and their label for defamation due the lyrics of Death on Two Legs. It ended in an out of court settlement.
I enjoyed your review of Yellowface. I can't say I reached the same conclusions in my Substack review (which makes sense: if one assumes i) the worst initial intent of the protag and ii) her lack of prior success as being the natural result of her lack of talent—IOW, if you've already internalized the industry's biases—the rest of the analysis has to follow a certain way).
I thought *all* the writers in Yellowface, including Athena, were portrayed as victims of a system that's set up to compromise artistic integrity at every turn.
But that does call your question: How can the industry endorse such a message? IMO, it's just that [virtually] no readers can see beyond their identity-centric prism long enough to absorb the plain message of the book. Kuang says as much in her interviews.
I good way of finding out home many copies a book has sold is to see how many reviews they got on Goodreads. The Other Black Girl did not do well and I don't thing Zakiya Dalila Harris will be getting another book deal. Yellowface is a modest hit, but it is not as popular as Babel and The Poppy War trilogy. R. F. Kuang's flame seems to have brunt too bright and too fast. I listened to some reviews of Yellowface on YouTube and they all came to the same conclusion: R. F. Kuang is extremely intelligent, highly educated and has an astonishing work ethic. She has also been isolated in silos of White dominated privilege her entire life and lacks the experience, insight and maturity to write immersive fiction. She's passionate and didactic, struggles with nuance and humility - all the usual flaws of ambitious and talented youth. She's only 27 and Harris is 31. I hope they both grow as writers and people, and are able to gift the world with good, honest writing in the future.