A book and a monthly outburst.

Yellowface- Rebecca F. Kuang     

When you think of a light bulb, you are reminded of Edison.

That’s how it works. We associate inventions and discoveries with names. We will always think about the associated name even if we are presented with heaps of facts that say otherwise.

Whispers of ‘’Mary Ann Evans. Mary Ann Evans, Mary Ann Evans’’ are muffled by one sigh of ’'George Eliot.’’

I think it takes a while, or maybe forever, to reclaim a lost identity in the creative industry.

Edison experimented with the filament, while the bulb was someone else’s idea. Edison had a weird monopoly over the scientific industry.

And that somebody else is still somebody else in my mind unless I look them up on the internet.

Plagiarism is morbid.

This September, I read Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang. I wanted to strangle the protagonist with my bare hands. 

Unfortunately,  I empathised with her. Somebody else living your dream makes you feel like a trash can sometimes, most of the times.

I haven’t read enough about the scandals in the publishing industry, so this was fresh juice for me.

Maybe my Asian lens made me loathe June a lot.

What if my writing is reduced to a fake representation? A diversity hire?

Guilt never stops haunting.

Is monetizing your trauma ethical?

Yellowface is a very real description of what modern-day racism looks like.

June’s drink at the Hollywood meeting is called Miss Saigon. Miss Saigon is the infamous play that introduced us to the term Yellowface. I so hope that it was intentional.

Forsaking names:

The changing of names to make them sound acceptable is not an alien phenomenon for me. June Hayword renames herself as Juniper Song to make it sound Asian. I have known people who have done so in order to fit in the system. My classmate from middle school changed her name on the new school admission register after 8th grade. My father’s colleague resorted to change their surnames on their son's wedding card. Daksha, a character in Mahesh Dattani's Final Solutions is renamed as Hardika after her marriage (to make it rhyme with her husband- Hari).

Fitting in and stealing. Where do we draw a line?

PS:June went to Yale, and her sister’s name is Rory. Is that a Gilmore Girls Easter egg right there?