LUCY KENNEDY: AUGUST BOOK REVIEW

Yellowface – Rebecca. F. Kuang

“I’ve laboured for years to learn my craft. 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.”

June Hayward is a flailing author who really, really wants to be published. Athena Liu is an international bestseller and a literary superstar. The two form a stilted friendship that mainly consists of Athena squealing over new book deals whilst June sits in agonising, guilt-riddled jealousy… until Athena passes away in a tragic, unforeseen accident. This leaves June alone with the unfinished manuscript of Athena’s newest sure-to-be bestseller, and a choice. She takes it.

After finishing the novel and publishing it under her own name, June tries to stay afloat amid questioning interviewers, intense feelings of guilt and rising evidence against her. This book raises questions about cultural ownership, the exploitation of minorities and the nature of the current publishing climate. It explores cancel culture, the vicious takedowns of twitter mobs, and the newfound influence the internet has on the publishing world.

June Hayward is a character who twists the narrative in her favour. At times, her skillful convincing and subtle persuasion had me thinking that what she did was not that bad, but then I would take a step back and think, “Hang on – she stole her friend's work! She published it under her own name!

She did something terrible!” Kuang’s crippling descriptions of June’s extreme guilt almost make you feel sorry for her. That is until you remember that she got herself into this terrible and complicated situation by an act of plagiarism. June is an incredibly interesting character, at times pitifully pathetic and at others manipulative and glib.

I have been anticipating this book’s release and obsessively checking bookstores for it for quite a while now, so when I saw it I immediately grabbed it and I recommend that you do too. It’s a fast paced page turner that kept me hooked throughout. Definitely worth the read.

@lucykennedyreviews

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Choosing The Higher Ground

Last weekend at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Auckland, my daughter and I joined the (very long) queue to the female toilet at half time. Having stood patiently in line for around fifteen minutes, we were stunned when two young women arrived and began a buoyant conversation with the woman in front of us who was clearly a friend. It soon became obvious that they were using this connection to jump the queue.

Appalled at this unfairness, my daughter eventually called them on it. She pointed out to them that many people behind us had been waiting a long time and it wasn’t right for them to wheedle their way in.

Rather than own her actions before leaving, one of the women patted her friend on the shoulder and smiled knowingly playing victim and said, “Oh well, what goes around comes around eh?” as if the culprit in the situation was my daughter. She and I were shocked at this complete untruth and wrongful blaming.

On returning to our seats, to our discomfort we found these two women were sitting right behind us. Ignoring them, we focused on the game. Then, out of the blue, one of the women touched my daughter gently on the shoulder and smiled, saying, “I want to apologise. You were right. We shouldn’t have done that.”

It was a wonderful moment of truth, which quickly turned into a moment of shared triumph as this young woman chose to let go delusion and instead made a stand for honesty, courage and integrity. My daughter’s relief was palpable. Suddenly all was forgiven in an explosion of laughter, chatter, positivity and connection.

This tiny situation exemplifies something important currently. How often do we see this dynamic of deluded blaming playing out in our society? At all levels we see it on display in myriads of ways in myriads of situations: in politics, in culture, in ideological groups, in families and in individual actions. You could almost say it is the disease of the times.

As David Hawkins points out in his book, 'Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender', we are free to hold on to negativity as long as we want. There is no law that says we must give it up. We are free agents. We can choose to hate someone if we want. We can choose to blame them, or to blame our circumstances, but being more conscious and so realising that we are freely choosing this attitude puts us in a higher state of consciousness, closer to more legitimate power and mastery. It makes a huge difference to our self-concept when we realise that 'I won’t do something' gives us a very different feeling than 'I’m a victim and I can’t'.

All blaming and playing victim does is weaken us and keep us small. It keeps us enmeshed in lies and deceit and places us at the mercy of those who would seek to capitalise on our weakness, to our detriment.

How much better it is to take responsibility for our choices and to help each other be strong and straight.

Sarah Newton-Palmer, Executive and Life Coach

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