Yellowface

by R.F. Kuang

So of course Athena gets every good thing, because that’s how this industry works. Publishing picks a winner—someone attractive enough, someone cool and young and, oh, we’re all thinking it, let’s just say it, “diverse” enough—and lavishes all its money and resources on them.

Don’t we all want a friend who won’t ever challenge our superiority, because they already know it’s a lost cause? Don’t we all need someone we can treat as a punching bag?

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. Jealousy is the spike in my heart rate when I glimpse news of Athena’s success on Twitter—another book contract, awards nominations, special editions, foreign rights deals. Jealousy is constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short; is panicking that I’m not writing well enough or fast enough, that I am not, and never will be, enough.

Writing is such a solitary activity. You have no assurance that what you’re creating has any value, and any indication that you’re behind in the rat race sends you spiraling into the pits of despair. Keep your eyes on your own paper, they say. But that’s hard to do when everyone else’s papers are flapping constantly in your face.

“People come to a text with so many prejudices formed by what they think they know about the author,” she’s said before. “I sometimes wonder how my work would be received if I pretended to be a man, or a white woman. The text could be exactly the same, but one might be a critical bomb and the other a resounding success. Why is that?”

Some of his arguments were a little extreme—he didn’t think, for instance, that there is any moral obligation to follow wills of the deceased if there is an overriding interest in redistributing wealth elsewhere, or that there are strong moral objections to using cemetery grounds for, say, housing for the poor. The general theme of his research was under what circumstances someone counts as a moral agent that deserves consideration. I didn’t understand much of his work, but his central argument was quite compelling: we owe nothing to the dead. Especially when the dead are thieves and liars, too.

The original draft made you feel dumb, alienated at times, and frustrated with the self-righteousness of it all. It stank of all the most annoying things about Athena. The new version is a universally relatable story, a story that anyone can see themselves in.

Besides, the train has left the station—coming clean at this point would tank the book, and I couldn’t do that to Athena’s legacy.

Athena, the dead muse. And I, the grieving friend, haunted by her spirit, unable to write without invoking her voice. See, who ever said I wasn’t a good storyteller?

I can feel a panic attack oncoming—no, not oncoming, peaking; I’ve been low-key suffering an attack for the past hour, and I’m only now in an environment private enough to experience the full range of symptoms. My chest constricts. My vision fades to a pinprick.

The infusion of likes and CONGRATULATIONS responses are precisely what I need to fill the void. I sit in front of my screen, watching the numbers tick up, enjoying that little serotonin boost every time I get another flurry of notifications. At last I have to pee, which forces me to tear myself away from the screen. While I’m up, I order a box of a dozen cupcakes from Baked & Wired, one of every flavor they have on sale that day. When it arrives, I sit down on my floor with a fork and eat until it tastes good.

I write a check for the entirety of my remaining student debt, lick the envelope, and send it off to the Department of Education. No more Nelnet emails for the rest of my life, thank God. I get health insurance. I go to the dentist, and when it turns out I’ll have to fork over several thousand dollars to get all these undetected cavities drilled out, I pay the bill without blinking. I see a primary care physician, even though there’s nothing wrong with me, just for a physical, just because I can.

But that’s the fate of a storyteller. We become nodal points for the grotesque. We are the ones who say, “Look!” while everyone peeks through their eyes, unable to confront darkness in full force. We articulate what no one else can even parse. We give a name to the unthinkable.

Athena had a magpie’s eye for suffering. This skill united all her best-received works. She could see through the grime and sludge of facts and details to the part of the story that bled. She collected true narratives like seashells, polished them off, and presented them, sharp and gleaming, to horrified and entranced readers.

“It’s a translation, really. And translation across mediums is inherently unfaithful to some extent. Roland Barthes. An act of translation is an act of betrayal.”

I should have stopped looking once I’d glimpsed what I thought was the bottom of the pit of internet stupidity. But reading discourse about myself is like prodding at a sore tooth. I’m compelled to keep digging, just to see how far the rot goes.

She was mortal after all, they’re thinking. She was just like us. And in destroying her, we create an audience; we create moral authority for ourselves.

Athena’s ghost has anchored itself to me; it hovers over my shoulder, whispering in my ear every waking moment of my day.

But isn’t that what ghosts do? Howl, moan, make themselves into spectacles? That’s the whole point of a ghost, is it not? Anything to remind you that they’re still there. Anything to keep you from forgetting.

“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.

Perhaps, I thought, the enormity of what I’d shared had killed a proper friendship in the bud. There are appropriate levels to intimacy. You can’t break out “I think I was raped, but I don’t really know,” until at least three months in.

Not every girl has a rape story. But almost every girl has an “I’m not sure, I didn’t like it, but I can’t quite call it rape” story.

Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.

Perhaps that’s the price of professional success: isolation from jealous peers. Perhaps, once writing becomes a matter of individual advancement, it’s impossible to share with anyone else.

But I’ve at least made myself into a terror rather than a punch line, and for now, I’m all right with that.

What more can we want as writers than such immortality? Don’t ghosts just want to be remembered?

What’s more, Geoff is one of the few people on earth who also understands the unique pain of trying to love Athena Liu. The futility of it all. Like Echo looking at Narcissus. Like Icarus, hurtling straight at the sun, just to feel its warmth on his skin.

Worse are the dreams when she’s reanimated. She comes magically to life, but this time she’s not the same. There’s a scarlet glinting energy in her eyes, all the fury of the underworld, and vengeful delight twists her lovely face as she leaps up, arms out, reaching for my neck to return the favor.

But the living are burdened with bodies. They make shadows, footprints. I would prefer that Athena were alive and stalking me, because then she would leave traces—public spottings, narrative inconsistencies, breadcrumbs of proof. The living can’t appear and disappear at will. The living can’t haunt you at every turn. Athena’s ghost has wormed its way into my every waking moment. Only the dead can be so constantly present.

I’m trying to funnel this awfulness into something lovely. My salacious roman à clef will become a horror novel. My terror will become my readers’ terror. I will take my fugue state of delirious panic and compost it into a fertile bed of creativity—for aren’t all the best novels borne from some madness, which is borne from truth?

Perhaps, if I can capture all my fears and constrain them safely on the page, this will rob them of their power. Don’t all the ancient myths tell us that we gain control over a thing once we name it?

The truth is fluid. There is always another way to spin the story, another wrench to throw into the narrative. I have learned this now, if nothing else.