Yellowface

Actually,” I tell my shampoo bottle, “just because Chinese people were being discriminated against doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be racist as well. And actually, it’s well documented that the Chinese laborers did not get along with Arabs and Moroccans—according to one of my sources, the Chinese would call them ‘black devils.’ Interethnic conflicts are a thing, you know.”

I’m Chinese American, and when I read The Last Front, I thought . . . I mean, I found a lot of deeply painful histories. And I wanted to ask you, why do you think it’s okay for a white author—I mean, an author who isn’t Chinese—to write, and profit from, this kind of story? Why do you think you’re the right person to tell it?”

THE MORE POPULAR A BOOK becomes, the more popular it becomes to hate on said book, which is why revulsion for Rupi Kaur’s poetry has become a millennial personality trait.

Athena Liu needs to get over her own yellow fever.”

Perhaps the core idea of this novel wasn’t mine, but I’m the one who rescued it, who freed the diamond from the rough.

And fuck it, I’ll just say it: taking Athena’s manuscript felt like reparations, payback for the things that Athena took from me.

we owe nothing to the dead.

I’m living Athena’s life.

I am the reason why she died.

I can’t help but feel that there is some greater, karmic reason why my writing flow has returned. This feels like redemption. No—like absolution. For if I can write this thing on my own, if I can turn this whole horrible mess into a beautiful story, then . . . well, it won’t change what I’ve done. But it will assign artistic value to it all. It will be a way of revealing the truth without saying it. And beyond anything else, it will entertain. It will stay in readers’ thoughts forever, like a catchy tune or a beautiful woman’s face. This story will become eternal. Athena will be a part of that.

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