Athena, like Maxine Hong Kingston, always presented the worst of Chinese history and culture to milk sympathy from her white audience. Athena was a race traitor.
Although June is paraphrasing opinions and rumors about Athena that she's reading online, it remains important that these comments are the ones she relays to the reader. June is continuously trying to affirm that her actions were justified—painting Athena as someone who is just as morally flawed, from the standpoint of publishing or identity-related writing ethics, as June herself is. June accuses Athena of pandering to a white audience, becoming a "traitor" to her Chinese ancestry by writing novels that conformed to what white audiences wanted to read.
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.
June harbors a deep, bitter sentiment against the publishing industry, and channels this bitterness into a prejudice against writers of marginalized identities. June believes that one of the only ways to "succeed" in publishing is to be, as she says it, "diverse" enough. This belief leads her to feel anger against writers like Athena, who she views as having unfairly "won" the game of identity within the publishing industry and taking away opportunities from people like her (a young white woman).
Nobody talks about the difference in how "Song" might be perceived versus Hayward. No one says explicitly that "Song" might be mistaken for a Chinese name...
June explains how her publishers do not acknowledge the manipulative motivations behind their decision to publish June's book under the last name "Song," as opposed to her real last name, "Hayward." This change is one of the most explicit examples of "yellowface"—taking on an East Asian identity—within the novel, as the last-name change is supposed to make readers associate June with East Asian identity, even though she's white.
Obviously I'm not a Trumper—I voted for Biden! But if these people are hurling money at me, is it so wrong of me to accept?
When June's book starts selling because it gains traction and popularity among alt-right crowds and conservatives, she excuses her complicity with reactionary politics by citing the fact that she voted for Biden. She is unwilling to publicly denounce these beliefs, especially because she is earning money from the sales.
Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.
At the heart of June's struggle to produce a novel lies an ironic love for writing; she cannot write anything original, and simultaneously, clings to writing as her life's goal and motivation. This quote also illuminates the irony within June's own writing career, since it is writing that eventually leads the "real world" to hurt her through online criticism and Candice's revenge.
Enter professional publishing, and suddenly writing is a matter of professional jealousies, obscure marketing budgets, and advances that don't measure up to those of your peers.
One of the running themes that Yellowface examines is the antagonistic nature of the publishing industry. All of the writers in the novel—Athena, June, Geoff, Marnie, and others—must grapple with the way their work is assessed on the basis of potential profit. The publishing industry warps writing and all of a sudden, the writer must contend with criticisms, internet presence, marketing, and the "obscure" economics that govern it all.
"And I never knew if she was really there during our relationship, or if the whole thing for her was some kind of ongoing story, if she did what she did just to document my reaction."
In this scene, Geoff explains how he felt that Athena was only listening to him or dating him in order to take his stories or experiences for her own writing—just like she did to June after June told Athena about being sexually assaulted. Athena taking Geoff and June's life experiences and incorporating them into her own work further explores who has the "right" to write what stories, a running question throughout the novel.
"You know what kind of stories people want to hear. No one cares about my stories."
June says this to the "ghost" version of Athena that is then revealed to be Candice. In this moment, June reveals without any excuses or pretenses the way in which she sees identity controlling who gets attention within the publishing ecosystem. Athena, a woman of color, writes the "kind of stories people want to hear," according to June, while June's stories—authored by a white woman—are the ones that get discarded. This belief, and June's bitterness about the perceived lack of attention she receives as a result of her ethnicity, is a central conflict within the novel.
What a bitch, I think, but then I remember that bad service is one of the hallmarks of good Chinese food, according to that one tweet.
When June goes to Washington D.C.'s Chinatown and tries to "gather" material for a new book project, the reader is able to witness her racial prejudice and racism demonstrate itself openly. As June navigates Chinatown, she releases a series of judgments about the neighborhood, calling it "gross" and the food bad, in large part due to the discomfort she feels there as a white woman. June channels her discomfort into anger towards the Chinese people around her in Chinatown, showing just how much of a pretense the act she projects to the public is when supposedly emphasizing her interest in issues faced by Asian Americans.
You enjoy this delightful waterfall of attention when your book is the latest breakout success. You dominate the cultural conversation.
For June, the fame and attention she receives following the release of The Last Front gives her the attention that she desired for the entirety of her writing career and could never achieve prior to finding Athena's manuscript. This fame becomes intoxicating and creates problems for June when she then discovers that she can't produce new, original work on her own, which pushes her to once more plagiarize drafts she found in Athena's apartment the night of Athena's death.
