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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Yellowface, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Critique of the Publishing Industry
Identity, Power, and Privilege
Social Media and Cancel Culture
Ambition, Success, and Notoriety
Loss, Grief, and Guilt
Revenge and Retribution
Summary
Analysis
Narrator Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu have been friends since college, where they met in an Introduction to Short Fiction class. Now in their late 20s, they’re both writers, but their lives have diverged widely in the intervening years. Athena has published three smash hit, award-winning novels. June managed to get her single novel, a coming-of-age story about sisterhood, published, but it has remained obscure and unread. In contrast, Athena just signed a deal with Netflix.
Athena and June have a long history together, the kind that might under other circumstances suggest closeness and intimacy. The fact that the book’s narrator, June, foregrounds Athena’s success and her own (relative) failure from the start, however, suggests that jealousy is the biggest driver in this relationship.
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Themes
Although people tell June that her experience is par for the course when trying to break into the competitive literary industry, she can’t help but be jealous of Athena, who is a darling of the literary world. Although she concedes that Athena is a genuinely talented writer, June attributes most of Athena’s success down to who she is rather than what she does. Athena is beautiful, sophisticated, exotic, and—crucially—“diverse” (she’s both queer and Asian American) enough to garner the fawning attention of the publishing industry.
June is, by many measures, a success simply because she managed to get her first book published despite the odds. But she’s clearly bitter that she wasn’t a runaway success like Athena. This suggests from the very beginning of the book then that she cares more about success and fame than she does about the quality of the work she produces. Her snarky comments attributing Athena’s success not to her skill as an artist but to her AAPI identity further support this characterization.
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In truth, June is surprised that Athena still wants to spend time with her at all. Maybe, she thinks, it’s just proximity—after all, both of them landed in Washington, D.C. shortly after college (Athena was offered a teaching job at Georgetown; June’s distant cousin had a condo where June could live cheaply). In her less charitable moments, June suspects she’s Athena’s only friend in part because no one else can stand Athena, in part because Athena needs an inferior friend to worship her.
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Themes
Regardless, Athena keeps inviting June to hang out and June keeps agreeing. So now they’re imbibing overpriced drinks on a rooftop bar in celebration of Athena’s Netflix deal. During their conversation, Athena vacillates between triumph and vulnerability. June suspects that the vulnerability may be a manipulative ploy for further attention, but Athena seems genuinely worried that at some point, her luck will turn or she’ll learn that people actually hate her.
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Eventually, Athena invites June to her apartment to drink from Athena’s stash of expensive whiskey. June agrees not because she’s having fun, but because she wants to see what Athena’s luxury apartment looks like. It certainly is nice. While Athena fixes drinks, June wanders into Athena’s writing room (she was, she says, looking for the bathroom). An old-school vintage typewriter sits atop Athena’s large desk, because Athena quirkily refuses to use a computer. Next to the typewriter sits the just-completed draft of Athena’s most recent novel. It’s nearly a foot tall.
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Athena has been working on this book for two years, and no one knows anything about it because she is very cagey when writing. She refuses to let anyone, even her agents and editors, see anything until she’s finished a full draft. But now, she wanders into the room and invites June to take a look. June does, quickly skimming through a handful of pages. They are “dazzling,” and she knows the book will be a masterpiece.
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Athena wants to know what June thinks of it. June maliciously denies Athena the validation she’s clearly hoping for, but she protects her feelings a little by saying she’s too drunk to offer a real opinion. The two women return to the living room where they settle on the couch and fall into a meandering conversation. In private, June realizes, Athena is far less pretentious than she is in public. June stops feeling like she needs to impress Athena and even starts to think that she might genuinely like Athena after all. Or maybe the alcohol is clouding her judgement.
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Then, Athena and June make pancakes because they’re hungry. Athena flavors the pancakes with pandan extract, which June admits is delicious even as she considers it pretentious. Then, they have a pancake-eating contest—and Athena chokes. June tries the Heimlich to no avail. June calls 911 and struggles through giving the dispatcher directions to the apartment—it is, after all, the first time she’s been and she’s still drunk. By the time she hangs up the phone, Athena is dead.
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Ten minutes later, the EMTs arrive. They examine Athena and take June’s statement. She’s irrationally worried that they will suspect her of murder, but they treat the death matter-of-factly as an accident. At four in the morning, a police officer drives June home, where she weeps uncontrollably and then falls into a dazed sleep. Athena’s manuscript is lying in June’s bag.
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