Yellowface

But I’ve prepared this answer. I’ve been preparing this answer ever sinceI started writing the book. “I think it’s very dangerous to start censoring what authors should and shouldn’t write.” I open strong, and this gets some approving murmurs from the crowd. But I still see some skeptical faces, especially from the other Asians present, soI continue. “I’d hate to live in a world where we tell people what they should and shouldn’t write based on the color of their skin. I mean, turn what you’re saying around and see how it sounds. Can a Black writer not write a novel with a white protagonist? What about everyone who has written about World War Two, and never lived through it? You can critique a work on the grounds of literary quality, and its representations of history—sure. But I see no reason whyI shouldn’t tackle this subject if I’m willing to do the work. And as you can tell by the text, I did do the work. You can look up my bibliographies. You can do the fact￾checking yourself. Meanwhile, I think writing is fundamentally an exercise in empathy. Reading lets us live in someone else’s shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller. And as for the question of profit—I mean, should every writer who writes about dark things feel guilty about it? Should creatives not be paid for their work?” Profiting from someone else’s suffering. God, what a cruel way to put it. Athena used to struggle with this, publicly, performatively. “I am ethically troubled by the fact that I can only tell this story because my parents and grandparents lived through it,” she once told Publishers Weekly. “And sometimes it does feel like I’m exploiting their pain for my profit. I try to write in a way that is honoring them. But I remain aware that I can only do this becauseI am the privileged, lucky generation. I have the indulgence to look back, to be a storyteller.” Please. I’ve always found that line to be a cop-out. There’s no need to dress it up. We are all vultures, and some of us—and I mean Athena, here— are simply better at finding the juiciest morsels of a story, at ripping through bone and gristle to the tender bleeding heart and putting all the gore on display. Of courseI feel somewhat icky when I inform a captivated audience that British officers were told they could quell disturbances by shooting those laborers responsible. It feels both thrilling and wrong to recount this, the same way racking up likes for my thread about Athena’s death felt wrong. 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. “I think this discomfort with my writing about tragedy speaks to our larger discomfort with acknowledging it happened at all,” I conclude. “And that is, unfortunately, the lot of anyone who writes a war novel. But I won’t let that stop me from telling untold histories. Someone has to do it.” Smattered applause. Not everyone agrees with me, but that’s fine—at least I haven’t gotten any boos. With questions like this, that in itself is a victory. The SJW girl looks like she wants to say more, but the bookstore staff have already passed the mic on to the next audience member, who wants to know about where and how I get my inspiration. I smile, touch my fist to my chin, and launch into another perfectly rehearsed answer. WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO WRITE ABOUT SUFFERING? I once went to a Korean War exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History with Athena, back when I was still fooling myself that we could be good friends. I’d just moved to DC after my stint with Teach for America, and I knew Athena had moved there a few months prior for her fellowship at Georgetown, so I’d reached out breezily to see what she was up to. She responded that she was working in the morning, but doing a museum visit in the afternoon, and would love if I came along. Wandering about an exhibit on the Korean War wasn’t my first choice for how to spend a Friday afternoon, but Athena wanted to hang out with me, and back then I still felt a little thrill every timeI received any shred of Athena’s attention, soI met her at the front doors at three. “I’m so glad you’re in town!” She hugged me in that light, detached way of hers, the way that made it seem like she was a supermodel who’d hugged a line of a hundred fans and now no longer knew how to put real emphasis into this action, hugging. “Shall we go in?” “Oh—yeah, sure.” That was it; no small talk, no how have you been? Just a brief hug before we walked straight into the museum’s temporary showcase of the experiences of American POWs in North Korea. I thought this was a joke at first. Oh, silly, you didn’t think I’d want to stroll a stuffy old museum instead of catching up with you, did you? Or that perhaps, hopefully, we’d spend a few minutes here while she saw whatever she wanted to see and then remove ourselves to a cool, air-conditioned bar

where we could sip fruity drinks and talk about, you know, life and publishing. But it was quickly apparent Athena wanted to linger here all afternoon. She would stand for ten minutes or longer in front of each life￾size, black-and-white cutout, whispering under her breath as she read about the subject’s life story. Then she would touch her fingers to her lips, sigh, and shake her head. OnceI even saw her wipe a tear from her eye. “Imagine,” she kept murmuring. “All those lives lost. All that suffering for a cause that they didn’t even know if they believed in, just because their government was convinced domino theory was true. My God.” And the whole thing would start again as we moved on to the next. Here we could read the last known letter from nineteen-year-old draftee Ricky Barnes, who’d asked his friend to bring his dog tags back to his mother when he caught diphtheria along the Yalu River. Athena could not stop talking. At first I thought that maybe she was incredibly sensitive, that she couldn’t hear about someone else’s suffering without experiencing it acutely as her own. Fucking saint. But as we moved through the exhibit, I noticed she was scribbling things into a Moleskine. This was all research for some writing project. “Just awful,” she whispered. “His widow was only seventeen—only a girl still. And she was pregnant already with his daughter, who would never know her father’s face.” And on and on. We inched down the exhibit while Athena examined every placard and cutout, announcing every so often what it was that made this particular story so very tragic. At last I couldn’t take the sound of her voice anymore, soI wandered off to get a closer look at the uniform displays. I couldn’t find Athena when I exited the exhibit, and for a moment I thought she’d ditched me beforeI saw her sitting on a bench next to an old man in a wheelchair, jotting things into her notebook while he talked at her boobs. “And do you remember how that felt?” she asked him. “Can you describe it for me? Everything you can remember?” Jesus Christ, I thought. She’s a vampire. 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. That museum visit was disturbing, but it didn’t surprise me.

I’d seen Athena steal before. She probably didn’t even think of it as theft. The way she described it, this process wasn’t exploitative, but something mythical and profound. “I try to make sense of the chaos,” she told the New Yorker once. “I think the way we learn about history in classrooms is so antiseptic. It makes those struggles feel so far away, like they could never happen to us, like we would never make the same decisions that the people in those textbooks did. I want to bring those bloody histories to the fore. I want to make the reader confront how close to the present those histories still are.” Elegantly put. Noble, even. When you phrase it like that, it’s not exploitation, it’s a service. But tell me, really, what more right did Athena have to tell those stories than anyone else did? She never lived in China for more than a few months at a time. She was never in a war zone. She grew up attending private schools in England paid for by her parents’ tech jobs, summered on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, and spent her adult life between New Haven, NYC, and DC. She doesn’t even speak Chinese fluently—she’s admitted in interviews that she “spoke only English at home in an attempt to better assimilate.” Athena would go on Twitter and talk about the importance of Asian American representation, about how the model minority myth was false because Asians were overrepresented at both the low and high ends of the income spectrum, how Asian women continued to be fetishized and made victims of hate crimes, and how Asians were silently suffering because they did not exist as a voting category to white American politicians. And then she’d go home to that Dupont Circle apartment and settle down to write on a thousand-dollar antique typewriter while sipping a bottle of expensive Riesling her publisher had sent her for earning out her advance. Athena never personally experienced suffering. She just got rich from it. She wrote an award-winning short story based on what she saw at that exhibit, titled “Whispers along the Yalu.” And she wasn’t even Korean.

Nine THE CAMBRIDGE EVENT SPARKS A MINOR TWITTER DISCOURSE, featuring all the usual suspects—lots of threads covering what happened with various degrees of outrage, lots of people weighing in with their own opinions, most of them using it as a chance to grandstand and show off profound thoughts that are only tangentially related to what was actually said. A couple of people agree with the question asker—I learn that she’s a sophomore at MIT named Lily Wu, and that she’s written a whole angry thread about the encounter in which she calls me, among other things, an oblivious White woman with no real ties to the community and a disingenuous, self￾interested faux ally. But more people are on my side than hers. Her replies are full of comments like Your position sounds like reverse racism to me . . . and Oh, you like censorship? Might I suggest moving back home to communist China! It’s a whole mess. I don’t comment. By now, I’ve learned that the best way to deal with negative backlash is to bunker down, silent and unscathed, until the whole thing blows over. In any case, Twitter discourse never does anything—it’s just an opportunity for firebrands to wave their flags, declare their sides, and try to brandish some IQ points before everyone gets bored and moves on. A WEEK LATER, I RECEIVE THE FOLLOWING EMAIL: Good afternoon, My name is Susan Lee, and I am the events coordinator for the Rockville chapter of the Chinese American Social Club. I recently read your novel The Last Front, and was really impressed by your grasp on this forgotten aspect of Chinese history. Many of our club members would be very curious to hear your story. We would love to host you at

one of our club meetings. We usually do a Q&A with an invited guest, followed by a buffet dinner (free of charge to you, of course). Please let me know if that would be of interest. Thank you, Susan I almost delete the email. At this point, I delete most event invitations that don’t offer honorariums unless they’re truly prestigious. Susan Lee’s tone reads as formal and stilted in a way that makes me suspicious, though I can’t quite put my finger on why. (I always briefly worry, before accepting any invitations, whether the organizers are really setting a trap to hold me hostage or kill me.) Besides, Rockville is all the way in Maryland; it’s a pain to get out to from central DC if you don’t feel like spending a hundred bucks on an Uber round trip or sitting on the red line for an hour, and it’s not a paid gig. I should have said no and saved myself the humiliation. But Lily Wu’s words echo in my mind—“disingenuous, self-interested faux ally,” “oblivious White woman with no real ties to the community.” Aside from the Asian American Writers’ Collective, which I donate to and which can’t exactly shun me, this is the first Asian organization that’s wanted to host me since the Cambridge debacle. This could be good for me. This could prove, to the Twitter conspiracy theorists, that my support for Asian Americans isn’t an act. That I wrote The Last Front because I’ve studied the history, and becauseI care about the community. Maybe I’ll even make some new friends. I imagine the optics of an Instagram post of me eating catered Chinese food, surrounded by admiring Chinese fans. I look up the Chinese American Social Club of Rockville. Their website is a dinky little single page featuring Comic Sans text against a bright red background. I scroll down past the giant header to find several badly lit photos of club functions—a buffet dinner with a local business leader, a New Year’s banquet where everyone is wearing red, a karaoke night illuminated by garish flash. From what I can tell, the club members range from middle-aged to elderly. They look harmless. Adorable, even. Oh, what the hell? I wait a respectable few hours so that I don’t come off as desperate, and then I email Susan back. Hi, Susan. I would be happy to come speak to the club. April is quite open for me. Which dates work best for you?

SUSAN LEE GREETS ME AT THE PARKING LOT OF THE SHADY GROVE metro station. I’m not so comfortable with my new wealth that I can just fling money at Ubers, so I’ve taken the red line all the way to the end, and she’s offered to drive me the rest of the way to the club. She’s a short, petite woman wearing a very crisp suit jacket. Kim Jong Un’s girlboss propagandist sister immediately comes to mind, only because I’d once seen a news photograph of her wearing a similar suit and sunglasses, but of courseI can’t mention this comparison out loud. Susan greets me with a firm handshake. “Hi, Juniper. Was the train ride okay?” “Yeah, fine.” I follow her to her blue sedan. She has to toss a few books and blankets into the back to make space for me, and the car is suffused with some cloying, herbal odor. “Sorry about the mess. Here you go—you sit up front.” Her lack of formality strikes me as rather unprofessional. I rankle a bit that Susan’s acting like she’s picking her daughter up from school instead of chauffeuring an acclaimed guest. But no, no, that’s my own bias coming through. They’re not a glitzy bookstore, I remind myself. They’re just some little social club without a big budget, and they’re doing me a favor by wanting to be associated with me. “You speak Chinese?” Susan asks as we pull onto the highway. “Huh? Oh, no—no, sorry, I don’t.” “Your mom didn’t teach you? Or your dad?” “Oh—I’m sorry.” My gut twists with dread. “You must be mistaken— neither of my parents are Chinese.” “What!” Susan’s mouth makes such a perfectly round O of shock, I would laugh if this whole thing weren’t so awkward. “But your last name is Song, so we thought maybe . . . You are Korean, then? I know some Korean Songs.” “No, sorry. Song is my middle name, actually. My last name is Hayward. Neither of my parents are, um, Asian.” I want to die. I want to open the car door and roll out onto the highway and be obliterated by oncoming traffic. “Oh.” Susan falls silent for a moment. I glance sideways at her, only to catch her sneaking a sideways glance at me. “Oh. I see.” I feel shitty about the mix-up, obviously, but also a little defensive. I’ve never pretended to be Chinese. I have noticed that people often operate in a

gray area with me where they might think I’m Chinese, but don’t want to presume or ask me to clarify. I’m not fooling anyone on purpose. I don’t have a big sign that says WHITE! stamped to my forehead, but shouldn’t the onus be on other people not to presume? Isn’t it racist, in a sense, to assume my race based on my last name? Susan and I don’t speak for the rest of the drive. I wonder what she’s thinking. Her face looks tight, but maybe it always looks that tight; maybe that’s how all middle-aged Asian ladies look. As we pull up to the church— the Chinese American Social Club of Rockville meets Thursday nights at a Presbyterian church, I guess—she asks me if I like Chinese food. “Sure,” I say. “I love it.” “Good.” She kills the engine. “Because that’s what we ordered.” Inside, metal fold-out chairs are arranged in rows before a pastor’s lectern. I’ve drawn a larger crowd than I expected; there are forty, maybe fifty people here. I thought this was just a club, not a whole congregation. A lot of them are carrying signed copies of my book. A few people wave enthusiastically when I walk through the door, and I feel stabs of guilt in my gut. “Up this way.” Susan gestures for me to follow her to the lectern. She adjusts the mic to her height, and I stand awkwardly behind her, surprised that we’re starting so abruptly. I wish someone had offered me a glass of water. “Hello, everyone,” Susan says. The mic screeches; she waits for the feedback to die out before she continues. “Tonight we have a very special guest. Our esteemed speaker has written a beautiful novel about the Chinese Labour Corps, which many of you have read, and she’s here to give us a reading and talk to us about being a writer. Please, everyone join me in welcoming Miss Juniper Song.” She claps politely. The audience follows suit. Susan steps back from the lectern and gestures for me to begin. She’s still smiling that tight, strained smile. “Well, hello.” I clear my throat. Come on, this is nothing. I’ve done a dozen bookstore talks by now; I can get through a simple club meeting. “I guess, well, I’ll start with a reading.” To my surprise, it goes just fine. The audience is tame and quiet, smiling and nodding at all the right moments. A few of them seem confused when I begin to read—they squint and tilt their heads to the side, and I can’t figure

out if they’re hard of hearing or if they can’t understand English well, soI slow way down and talk very loudly just in case. It takes me way longer to get through my excerpt as a result, which leaves only twenty minutes for the Q&A, but honestly that’s a relief. Anything to burn time. Though the questions, too, are total softballs. Actually, most of them are quite sweet; they’re the sort of questions you might receive from your mom’s friends. They ask about how I became so successful at such a young age. How did I balance my studies with my writing career? What other interesting things about Chinese laborers did I encounter in my research? One bespectacled old man asks a very blunt question about the size of my advance and my royalties rate (“I did some math and I have some thoughts on publishing’s business model, which I would like to share,” he says), which I dodge by telling him I prefer to keep those details private. Another man asks, in broken English, how I think Chinese Americans should better advocate for representation in the American political sphere. I have no idea what to say to this, soI mutter something about social media visibility, coalition with other marginalized groups, and the disappointing centrism of Andrew Yang, and hope that my rapid English confuses him enough that he thinks I’ve uttered a coherent answer. One woman, who introduces herself as Grace Zhou, tells me that her daughter Christina is in ninth grade and asks whether I have any advice for her about the college application process. “She loves to write,” she says. “But she has trouble fitting in at school, especially because there aren’t many other Chinese Americans, you know, and I was wondering if you could offer some advice for her to help her feel comfortable expressing herself.” I sneak a glance at Susan, whose mouth is now pressed so thin it could have been drawn on with a pencil. “Just tell her to be herself,” I offer weakly. “I also had a hard time in high school, but, um, I got through it by throwing myself into the things I loved. My refuge was books. When I didn’t like the world around me, I would read, and I think that’s what turned me into the writer I am today. I learned the magic of words early on. Maybe the same will be true for Christina.” All that, at least, is true. I can’t tell if Grace is happy with this answer or not, but she passes on the microphone.

At last the hour is up. I thank my audience graciously and make for the door, hoping to slip away before anyone drags me into conversation, but Susan materializes by my side just as I step away from the lectern. “I was hoping—” I begin, but Susan guides me, almost violently, toward the plastic foldout tables at the back of the room. “Come,” she says, “get some dinner while it’s hot.” Some volunteers have put out trays of the catered Chinese food, which looks so greasy under the fluorescent lights that it turns my stomach. I thought Chinese people were supposed to be snooty about cheap Chinese takeout. Or maybe it was just Athena who’d obnoxiously declared never to consume a bite of food that came delivered from places named things like “Kitchen Number One” and “Great Wall Express.” (“You know that’s not authentic,” she told me. “They just serve that shit to white people who don’t know any better.”) I use the plastic tongs to select a single vegetarian egg roll, since it’s the one thing that isn’t literally glistening with oil, but the tiny grandma at my shoulder insists I also try the kung pao chicken and the sesame noodles, soI let her pile helpings of those onto my plate whileI try not to gag. Susan guides me to a table in the corner and seats me next to an old man she introduces as Mr. James Lee. “Mr. Lee has been very excited about your talk ever since it was announced,” says Susan. “He even brought his book for you to sign. Everyone wanted to sit with you—I know Grace wants to bother you about her daughter’s college applications—but I told them no.” Mr. Lee beams at me. His face is so brown and wrinkled it has the consistency of a walnut, but his eyes are bright and friendly. He pulls a hardcover edition of The Last Front out from his bag and offers it to me with both hands. “Sign, yes?” Oh my God, I think. He’s adorable. “Should I personalize it to you?” I ask gently. He nods. I can’t tell if he can understand what I’m saying, soI glance at Susan, who also nods her permission. To Mr. Lee, I write. Was such a pleasure to meet you. Best, Juniper Song. “Mr. Lee’s uncle was one of the Chinese Labour Corps,” Susan informs me. I blink. “Oh! Really!”