Yellowface

by R.F. Kuang

People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing. Unfounded, vinegary, mean-spirited. But I’ve found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear.

Every time I see Tom, I wonder what it would be like to go through life with the easy contentment of a rock.

“It describes precisely that gulf between wanting others to know you, and being terrified that they might understand, at a time when we’re not sure who we are at all.

I’ve contorted the truth into such ways that I can, in fact, make peace with it.