레베카 F. 콰앙은 글쓰기와 학업의 균형을 맞추는 것이 어렵고 엄청난 스트레스를 준다고 인정하면서도, 둘 다 너무나 사랑해서 포기할 수 없다고 말합니다 그녀의 최신작인 "옐로우페이스(Yellowface)"는 문화적 전유, 출판계의 인종차별, 소셜 미디어 정의에 대한 어려운 질문들을 다루는 문학 스릴러입니다2. 이 소설은 죽은 친구의 미완성 원고를 훔쳐 자신의 작품으로 위장하는 한 무명 소설가의 이야기를 다루며, 문화계의 인종적 불안감에 대한 날카로운 분석을 제공합니다3. 콰앙은 또한 뉴욕 타임즈 베스트셀러 1위를 차지한 "바벨(Babel)"과 대학 시절 집필을 시작한 "파피 워(Poppy War)" 삼부작의 수상 경력이 있는 작가입니다4. 그녀는 소설가일 뿐만 아니라 마셜 장학금 수상자이며, 옥스퍼드와 케임브지에서 중국학 학위를 받았고, 현재 예일대에서 박사 과정을 밟고 있습니다5. 콰앙은 출판 업계의 중요한 목소리이자 2023년 타임 100 넥스트 리스트에 선정된 인물입니다6.
어린 나이에 많은 소설을 빨리 쓸 수 있었던 비결에 대해 콰앙은 이민자 자녀로서 영어를 배우고 독서에 빠져들었던 경험을 언급합니다7. 그녀는 중국 광저우에서 태어나 어릴 때 미국으로 이민 왔고, 달라스에서 자랐습니다8. 대학에서 국제 경제학을 전공했으나 자신에게 맞지 않음을 깨닫고 여러 번 전공을 바꾼 후 역사학에 정착했습니다9. 베이징에서 갭이어를 보내는 동안 처음으로 중국어에 유창해졌고 10101010, 조부모님과 소통하면서 가족사와 문화유산에 대해 배우게 되었습니다11. 이러한 감정과 자기 발견, 가족사의 혼합이 "파피 워"로 이어졌습니다12. "파피 워"는 그녀가 쓴 첫 소설이었고 13, 즉시 세 권의 책 계약으로 이어져 계속 소설을 쓰게 되었습니다14.
"옐로우페이스"의 주인공 준 헤이워드에 대해 콰앙은 그녀가 출판 업계의 거의 모든 사람이 한 번쯤은 느껴봤을 법한 불안감, 실망감, 슬픔과 같은 보편적이고 공감할 수 있는 감정에서 행동한다고 설명합니다15. 콰앙은 이 업계에서 작가들이 겪는 엄청난 심리적 피해에 대해 충분히 이야기하지 않는다고 지적합니다16. 즉각적인 베스트셀러가 되지 못할 때의 실망감, 비판에 대응하지 않아야 한다는 압박감, 그리고 아무도 자신의 작품에 관심이 없다는 생각은 작가들에게 큰 상처를 줍니다17. 콰앙은 자신도 커리어 초반에는 아테나보다 준에 더 가깝다고 느꼈다고 말합니다18. 그녀는 자신의 출판 여정에서 엄청난 행운을 누렸지만 19, 여러 차례 모든 것이 무너질 것이라는 두려움을 느꼈다고 고백합니다20. "파피 워" 삼부작의 어떤 책도 베스트셀러 목록에 오르지 못했고 21, 처음 몇 달 동안은 삼부작이 완전히 망했다고 생각하며 속이 좋지 않았습니다22. 콰앙은 출판 업계가 매우 불안정한 산업이며 23, 겉보기에 성공적인 사람들도 판매 부진이나 다음 작품에 대한 불안감으로 인해 완전히 공황 상태에 빠질 수 있다고 설명합니다24.
아테나에 대해 콰앙은 성공과 관심이 한 사람의 정신을 어떻게 왜곡시킬 수 있는지 탐구하기 위해 만들어진 인물이라고 말합니다25. 콰앙은 자신의 책이 잘 팔리기 시작했을 때 청중이 천천히 늘어나는 것을 지켜보며 역할에 적응할 시간이 있었고 26, "바벨"이 성공했을 때 자신을 겸손하게 해주는 든든한 지지 시스템이 있었다는 점에서 아테나보다 운이 좋았다고 생각합니다27. 반면 아테나는 대학 졸업 직후 유명인이 되었고 28, 이는 엄청난 압박감을 주어 자존감을 왜곡시키고 심지어는 자만심과 잔인함을 유발할 수 있다고 콰앙은 설명합니다29.
콰앙은 작가로서의 창작 과정이 끊임없이 변화하며, 각 소설은 자신만의 독특한 도전이라고 설명합니다30. 그녀는 "파피 워" 삼부작을 쓸 때는 SF/판타지 장르의 공예 서적을 많이 읽고 전통적인 3막 구조를 사용했지만 31, "바벨"에서는 찰스 디킨스에 더 가까운 스타일을 위해 5막 구조로 전환했습니다32. "옐로우페이스"는 소셜 미디어 소설이며, 봉쇄 기간 동안 독자들이 짧고 강렬한 심리 스릴러를 선호했던 점을 반영하여 매우 몰입감 있고 강렬한 스타일로 작성되었습니다33.
콰앙은 장르 라벨이 "꽤 어리석다"고 생각하며, 문학 소설과 SF/판타지 사이에는 명확한 구분이 없다고 말합니다34. 그녀는 사람들이 역사적으로 장르 라벨을 사용하여 여성 소설이나 너드 소설을 경멸해 왔다고 주장합니다35. 콰앙은 장르는 단순히 편리한 마케팅 라벨이자 책 판매자들이 책을 어느 서가에 놓을지 결정하는 데 도움이 되는 것이라고 강조합니다36. 그녀는 자신이 가장 많이 읽고 있는 장르의 글을 쓰려고 노력하며 37, 판타지를 선택한 것은 단순히 "정말 재미있다"는 이유 때문이라고 솔직하게 밝힙니다38.
출판 업계에 대해 콰앙은 "좋은 책을 쓰는 것이 그 책의 성공을 보장한다"는 믿음이 "가장 해로운 거짓말"이라고 말합니다39. 소설의 성공을 예측하는 가장 좋은 지표는 장르나 품질, 작가의 배경이 아니라, 그 소설에 얼마나 많은 돈이 투자되고 있는지(마케팅 및 홍보 예산, 선불금 규모)라고 주장합니다40. 그녀는 많은 초기 작가들이 트윗을 자주 올리거나, 인스타그램 캠페인을 하거나, 틱톡을 만들면 성공할 수 있다고 생각하지만 41, 몇몇 눈에 띄는 예외를 제외하고는 이러한 노력이 판매에 큰 영향을 미치지 않는다고 강조합니다42. 대신 판매를 좌우하는 것은 출판사가 책에 얼마나 투자하느냐입니다43. 콰앙은 자신도 출판사의 우선순위가 아니어서 판매가 부진했던 경험이 있으며 44, "옐로우페이스"의 성공은 대규모 마케팅 투자 덕분임을 인정합니다45.
콰앙은 북톡(BookTok)이 판매를 촉진하는 데 매우 중요하지만 46, 작가들에게는 전혀 중요하지 않다고 생각합니다47. 그녀는 작가들이 틱톡을 만드는 것이 판매에 큰 영향을 미치지 않으며 48, 오히려 독자들이 열정적으로 책에 대해 유기적으로 이야기할 때 움직임이 일어난다고 말합니다49. 그녀는 젊은 독자들이 노골적인 마케팅에 알레르기 반응을 보이며 50, 그저 흥미로운 책에 대해 이야기하고 싶어 한다고 덧붙입니다51.
출판계의 다양성 신화에 대해 콰앙은 "다양성이 팔린다"는 기묘하고 끈질긴 신화는 이민자들이 일자리를 빼앗아 간다는 신화와 비슷하다고 말합니다52. 그녀의 원고가 잘 팔리지 않는다면, 그것은 자신이 퀴어이거나 유색인종 여성이 아니기 때문이라는 생각은 어떤 경험적 증거에도 근거하지 않은 악의적인 신화입니다53. 1970년대 이후 비백인 작가들이 출판한 소설의 비율은 거의 변동이 없었으며 54, 업계는 실질적인 다양성 노력을 기울이는 대신 성공적인 소수의 작가를 내세워 "우리는 할 일을 다했다"고 주장하는 토큰주의를 행하고 있습니다55.
누가 어떤 이야기를 쓸 수 있는가에 대한 질문에 콰앙은 작가들이 원하는 어떤 주제에 대해서도 글을 쓸 수 있어야 한다고 믿습니다56. 누가 검열하고, 누가 허락하며, 무엇이 허용되고 무엇이 허용되지 않는지에 대한 권한을 부여하는 것은 위험한 영역으로 이어진다고 주장합니다57. 소설을 쓰는 행위는 바로 자신의 경험을 넘어 다른 사람의 입장에서 공감하고 생각하는 것입니다58. 콰앙은 "이 이야기를 누가 써야 하는가"라는 질문 대신 두 가지 더 나은 질문을 해야 한다고 제안합니다59. 첫째, "역사적으로 누가 이 이야기를 써서 보상받았는가, 그리고 어떤 목소리가 빠져 있는가?" 60이는 출판계가 기회와 선불금을 누구에게 주고 누구를 제외하는지에 대한 질문이며, 이는 매우 심각한 문제입니다61. 둘째, "글이 좋은가?" 62즉, 작가가 조사를 잘하고 흥미로운 주장을 하고 있는가, 아니면 지루한 옛날 스테레오타입을 되풀이하고 있는가 하는 질문입니다63. 후자라면 그 책은 별로 좋지 않은 것이고, 전자라면 작가의 배경보다는 그들이 글을 쓸 때의 의도와 방법이 중요하다고 콰앙은 말합니다64.
====
빠른 질문 코너에서 콰앙은 최근 아침에 작가 블록을 겪었지만, 자리에 앉아 올바른 문장이 떠오를 때까지 펜을 가지고 놀았다고 말합니다65. 그녀는 펜을 사지 않고 약혼자의 펜을 훔쳐 쓴다고 농담합니다66. 기차 여행에 대해 콰앙은 일주일에 최소 두 번은 기차를 타며 동부 해안의 모든 역에 익숙하다고 말합니다67. 지난주에 마음에 들지 않는 책을 놓았지만 제목은 밝히지 않겠다고 답합니다68. 그녀는 TV 쇼를 몰아보는 것을 기억하지 못하며 69, TV 쇼는 과정을 빨리 감을 수 없기 때문에 20시간을 투자해야 한다면 자신에게는 시간이 없다고 말합니다70.
===
Transcript
Search in video
at every single book event I do somebody always wants to know what's my productivity hack for balancing
schoolwork and writing fiction at the same time and I always disappoint
because there isn't one I'm a bit of a mess and I'm always missing deadlines and I'm always running behind and I feel
like I never have enough sleep and it's a tremendous amount of stress but I love
both too much to get give up one so here we
[Music] are RF Quang wrote one of my absolute
favorite novels I've read so far this year it's called yellowface it's a literary Thriller that investigates
really challenging questions about cultural appropriation racism in publishing and social media Justice I
read this novel in 2 days I absolutely could not put it down it's about a
struggling novelist who steals her dead friend's manuscript and passes it off as her own and it's the most incisive
analysis of the racial anxieties of the cultural class that I've ever read RF
kuang is also the award-winning author of Babel which was a number one New York Times bestseller and the poppy War
Trilogy which she started writing while she was in college and she's not just a novelist she's also a marshall scholar
has degrees in Chinese studies from both Oxford and Cambridge and is now getting her PhD at
Yale more importantly Quang is a vital voice in the publishing industry and
she's also one of the phenoms on the 2023 time 100 next list times annual
list that recognizes the rising leaders in health climate business Sports the
Arts and more you can check out the full list on time.com I'm Charlotte alter
senior correspondent for time and this is Person of the
week one of the first things I had to know when we spoke was how someone so young wrote so many incredible novels so
fast it's one of those classic stories where an immigrant kid in the process of
assimilating and learning English falls in love with reading and books I was
born in guango China and my family immigrated to the US when I was very
young and I grew up in Dallas Texas I was learning to become somebody who
thought of herself in English who dreamed in English could function in English so I was reading
voraciously I spent all my time at the local public library but I never had
aspirations to become a professional writer so when I went to college I
started out studying International economics and realized that I'm very bad at economics and then I switched my
major several times and then landed on history but I was able to take a gap
here in between my sophomore and Junior years during which I lived and worked in
Beijing and it was astonishing because For the first time in my life after 5:00
p.m. I didn't have any homework to do so I thought this is an immense amount of
free time it's such a gift I should spend this year a accomplishing a project that I've always wanted to do
but never had time for so my immediate thought was I'm going to learn how to code it turns out I'm not very good at
coding I thought well I'll try writing a novel instead it sounds easier than learning how to code and the reason
why writing a novel was on my mind was because this was a period when I was
learning to speak fluently in Chinese for the first time I'd lost my Chinese pretty quickly after I moved to the
state and I was able to communicate with my grandparents for the first time this was
huge for me I was learning all this family history I was learning about myself my culture my Heritage and it was
all so much all these stories and I wanted to preserve them somehow so it's
that mix of emotions and self-discovery and family history that turned into the
poppy war and then we sent it out and got an agent it and my agent sold the
book and then the next thing I knew I had a three-book deal so I didn't have any choice I had to keep writing novels
and I found that I still enjoy doing it but I realized in the telling of the
story that it seems like I became a novelist completely by accident but I think I would have ended up telling
stories one way or another so you hadn't written any novels before the poppy War it was your first novel that you ever
wrote actually when I was in fifth grade I turned in a novel called Liberty or
death which is about a freedom fighter whose best friend dies during the Boston
Massacre and he fights in the Revolutionary War to avenge him I was
really really into the history of the American Revolution when I was 10 wow well honestly I would read
that I think it's a work of art I'm really proud of it so I want to turn to
yellowface you're latest book is about two writers June Hayward and Athena louu
who are essentially frimes with two very different experiences in the publishing World Athena is Chinese American she's a
literary star she's had every opportunity that could be available to a
young writer she's got sixf figure book deals she's on all the bestsellers list
she's got a Netflix deal and her friend June who is white not so much she's
strug struggling a lot more um at the very beginning of the novel Athena dies in a tragic accident in front of June
and June steals her unfinished manuscript or recently finished manuscript and kind of edits it slightly
and then passes it off as her own and the novel follows what happens when June
essentially steals Athena's work and tries to get the success that Athena had
for herself and it's a fascinating look behind the curtain of the publishing world and I loved how it really
interrogated these issues of identity and authorship and who can tell which story and I also just thought that the
character of June was so well drawn um she is such an unlikable unreliable
narrator and her pathology is so interesting to me because she's so
entitled and she's so resentful tell me about the choice to write from this character perspective how did this
character come to you I have a lot of love and sympathy for June and as Despicable as she is and
I think you have to have that love and sympathy for all of your characters especially the villains otherwise
they're not compelling otherwise they just come off as cardboard cutouts of somebody Who's acting viciously for the
sake of being vicious but Juna is also not acting from an innate desire to hurt
and fool others she's acting from very true and I think Universal and relatable
emotions emotions that almost everybody in the publishing industry has felt at
some point certainly during the first few years of my career I felt a lot more like June than Athena what I mean by
this is that she has a tremendous amount of insecurity and disappointment and
sadness about how her publishing experience has gone I I think that in
this industry we don't talk openly enough about the tremendous psychological damage it does to you when
you don't become an instant bestseller basically when you don't have Athena's
Cinderella story and we expect writers to just have a stiff upper lip about
everything not respond to criticism pretend like we're not feeling the blows but writing a novel is something that
involves such tremendous vulnerability you pour your heart and soul out onto
pages and isolation for a long period of time and then you put it out in the worlds and sometimes what hurts more
than a bad review is the thought that nobody cares about what You' said at all and I struggled with this disappointment
and nihilism about my work for a long time I think we also need to get better
at talking about how writers process their professional jealousy and how they relate to others to be clear the writing
community that I am in now and am familiar with is much more mutually
supportive and kind and focused on solidarity rather than tearing each
other down but we are also in this unique moment where there's this writing
ecosystem that largely exists on social media where everyone is advertising their wins all the time there's a
narrative about what it takes to become a successful writer and what Milestones you're supposed to hit at what points
during your career to prove that you are going to be the next big thing so you need to sign with a hot shot literary
agent you need to sign with a big five publisher you need to get in a book subscription box or a book club you need
to hit the New York Times bestseller list there's a standard script for all of these success markers and when you
see these flying in your face being waved by writers you know it's sucks and
it hurts and it makes you feel like you're not enough and you're not writing fast enough or writing well enough and
we need to talk about how we process that now June has processed it in the worst way possible but these emotions
are not coming out of nowhere so you said earlier that you wrote the poppy war in your Gap year
while you were still a student and it was the first novel you've ever written and then it immediately translated into
this three-book deal so it seems to me like you had this amazing success at the
very start so how did you access this sense of what it's like when things aren't
working I've been tremendously Lucky in my publishing journey and I've also felt
at multiple points that everything was going to disappear under my feet and that I'd squandered the first and only
opportunity I was ever going to have so something that people don't know or
don't remember about the popular Trilogy is that not a single one of those books hit any kind of bestseller list when
they came out and for the first few months after the poy work came out I was
often sick to my stomach thinking that the trilogy had been a complete flop
that I was never going to earn out my Advance it was very common for me to
walk into bookstores thinking oh I might see my book on shells I'm really excited
only to find that they didn't even stock it which can hurt more than watching your book on shelves not moving a single
copy over weeks and weeks these things are also relative I think something that
I try to explain to debut writers is that no matter which Milestone they
think they just need to get to there's always another disappointment waiting on the other side of the bridge there's
always something else to make you insecure or make you frightened and this is not without B basis because it is a
very volatile industry and people who seem to be very successful on the
outside or who are celebrating their WIS might be completely panicked about the state of their sales or what they're
going to write about next and who they might publish with so it's an industry full of very anxious people and they
have good reason to be anxious yeah I really understand and deeply empathize with what you're talking about so you've
said in a few interviews that Athena is sort of like your worst nightmare version of yourself what did you mean by
that Athena is somebody I also have a lot of sympathy and love for but with
whom I'm trying to explore the worst things that success and attention can do to a person how
they can warp someone's psyche so I feel very lucky in comparison to Athena that
by the time my books had started doing pretty well I had had many years of slowly watching
my audience grow so I felt like I grew into the role and when Babel came out
and did as well as it did I had a very Firm support system of people who keep
me grounded and tell me when I'm wrong and who are always willing to Humble me
Athena doesn't have any of that she's not as fortunate as I've been she's so isolated she's very isolated and she
she's surrounded by people who are always blowing smoke up her ass she got a book deal right out of college she
became a celebrity overnight and I watch this happen to other young authors
sometimes and it seems that this is a very difficult process to go through to
suddenly be told you are so important everything you write is gold you have all this attention but you better do it
successfully with the next one it's a huge ount of pressure and it also warps your sense of selfworth your durability
to evaluate your own craft and in the worst cases it can make people
narcissistic and cruel to others and judgmental and even in the best of cases
where they've held on to their decency and humility it can make it debilitating
to work on a new project because now you have all these standards and
expectations more with the writer RF Quang on her creative process when we
come [Music]
back so much of yellowface is about this creative process and I'm curious what is
your creative process like I'll do anything and everything that works the
really disappointing thing about being on your sixth novel is that you realize
it never gets any easier each novel is its own unique
Challenge and I also feel like it ought to be this way I would never want
writing to start feeling easy or comfortable because that would mean I'm not pushing myself creatively so the
process has changed drastically with each novel because they're all in very different genres and they all tackle
subject matter that I haven't dared to write about before but the popular Trilogy I read a lot of craft books
about Science Fiction and Fantasy and I found the traditional threea structure
so that's how I map the outline for that story but when I transitioned to working
on Babble which is stylistically closer to Charles Dickens than contemporary
science fiction this man I had to switch to the more complicated five back structure so learning how to do that and
also learning to write IND dickes very maximalist detailed often indulgent with
the runon sentences style that was fun and I felt that I was becoming a new
person and a new writer through that process my yellow face again is as
different from the victorians as it's possible to be and that's a social media
novel and also a novel written during lockdown when nobody had an attention
span worthy of the victorians and we could only sit at least as a reader I
could only sit through very short twisty psychological thrillers anything more
complex or heavy or long was just beyond me so I was teaching myself to right and
A very gripping compulsive and also sloppy style a style that isn't trying
to be precise with every single word because nobody has the patience for that but a style that defaults to the easiest
most reductive way of explaining things because that is what attracts the most
attention when you're composing a tweet so that was also a fun way to write that
I was exploring and now I'm trying out something else so I I had some kind of
process advice but I feel like I'm learning and becoming with every new thing well I'm really glad that you
mentioned genre because like you said you've written across many different genres what are your thoughts on these
genre labels like is there one particular genre that you feel like you find your home in or are you really
trying out a new genre with every novel to see what you like best I think most authors would agree
that genre labels are pretty silly there's no hard and fast distinction
between literary fiction whatever that is and Science Fiction and Fantasy if
anything I think people historically have used genre labels to be snotty and
condescending towards fiction for women for instance or fiction for nerds you
know but it's literary fiction that doesn't have magic and doesn't have dragons that is read by proper
intellectuals and cultured people I think that's silly why for instance is Kazo ishiguro never shelved in sci-fi
fantasy and always in literary fiction when he's got plenty of magic and science fiction in his stories and it's
because people have made value judgments about what's worthy of critical a claim and what is it but everyone's just
telling stories and those stories have multiple different elements so genre exists as a convenient marketing label
and something that helps book sellers decide what shelf to put something on but that is all that genre is I think I just
write whatever I'm reading the most at the time and I think all writers do this and we ought to write in the style that
we're passionate about and interested in otherwise you're forcing something that isn't naturally going to spill out of
you and I started an epic fantasy people keep asking me you know why did you
choose fantasy what's special about fantasy that allows you to make the arguments about history that you want to
and I used to try to give all these really sophisticated articulate answers
about fantasy and speculation and fabulation acting as this refracting
prism for understanding social issues but the honest truth is just that I think fantasy is really fun so I want to
go back to talking about the publishing industry which is one of the main characters in yellow face I mean this
novel is really about as you said earlier how publishing kind of chews and spits out writers elevates some people
and ignores others so there's this idea in the book that quote publishing picks
a winner and we see how sort of the marketing machine kicks in for June when
the manuscript she stole from Athena gets picked up by a publisher and suddenly she's having this star
experience that she never had with her earlier book what has your experience with the publishing machine been like
and what did you want to show about this process I think the most harmful lie
that new writers are led to believe is that writing a good book will guarantee
the success of that book when that is so clearly not the case the single best
predictor of how a novel is going to do is not anything to do with the genre or
the quality of the novel or the background of the writer but how much money is being poured into the novel
what kind of marketing and publicity budget is it getting and what was the size of the advance because the size of
the advance is often indicative of how much the publisher is going to spend
elsewhere because now they have skin in the game and I know so many early career
novelists who think that the burden is entirely on them that if they just tweet
often enough if they run the right kind of social media campaigns on Instagram
if they make enough Tik toks my God we have to talk about Tik toks because we are going to talk about Tik Tok for sure
don't worry so many authors are being told now you have to get on Tik Tok you have to Market yourself on Tik Tok but
none of it matters right aside from a few very visible exceptions none of this
is going to move the needle on sales what's going to move the needle on sales is how much your publisher is investing
in the book and I've been on all sides of this I've had a novel come out that I
hoped was going to sell a lot of copies that really didn't because it wasn't that much of priority and then I've had
a novel that did clearly receive all of that marketing spend there was a massive
poster of the yellowface cover at London book fair and I know that the subsequent
success of the book has a lot to do with how much effort was put into making it
extremely visible I feel extremely fortunate to have re receive this and I
also know that it can go away at any moment so I'm not letting myself believe
that the success is all me it is very much the publishing machine and where it
chooses to place its bets so I definitely want to talk about Tik Tok What was your experience like on
book talk which is what they call Tik Tok about books and how important do you
think it is in the publishing industry book talk is obviously very important as
a driver of sales I think anything that gets people reading and buying books is
amazing but for authors I don't think it's important at all and I will preface
this by saying that when I went to Taiwan over the summer I couldn't log on to Tik Tok anymore so I deleted the app
and I never downloaded it when I returned and this has done wonders for my productivity but I was posting on Tik
Tok last year which I didn't do all that often but I don't think that authors
making Tik toks really impact sales in any meaningful way and I've had conversations with a few other writers
whose books are also very popular on Tik Tok they explained to me these books
went viral on Tik Tok before they even had Tik Tok accounts and also we all agreed that when our own Tik toks go
viral there is no corresponding Spike in sales because readers don't want to feel
like they're just being aggressively marketed to all the time rather it's the
organic discussion of books that readers are passionate about it's when readers are talking about authors they like
tropes they like books they think are really cool books they think are underrated books they're excited about
that's when you see some movement happen and this is just not something that
Publishers can manipulate or authors can manipulate I think it's really easy to
sense blatant marketing on that app I think young readers especially are
allergic to being sold products when really they just want to talk about
books they think are cool so one of the main ideas that you're exploring in
yellowface is this idea of diversity in publishing and you've talked before about how it's a myth that in publishing
diversity cells but clearly June believes this to be true and in yellow face we see June actually really
benefiting from allowing people to believe that she's Chinese American when actually she's white what did you want
to say about diversity in publishing with this novel there is an odd persistent myth
that diversity is all anybody wants now and it's a myth in the vein of
immigrants are are taking our jobs essentially the idea that if my manuscript is not doing well then it's
because I'm not queer or a woman of color or any one of these marginalized
subgroups that Publishers are only paying attention to these days and it's an especially vicious myth given that
it's not grounded in any empirical evidence to speak of I mean we see
surveys of what is being put out by the IND hisory year and year again and the
percentage of novels published by non-white writers has barely budged
since the 70s so there is no rational basis for believing this but the reason
why I think the myth persists is because rather than making any sustained and serious or
comprehensive effort at diversifying what kind of stories are elevated and
described as important rather there's this ongoing effort to hold up one or two tokens to prove that look we have a
very successful black author we have a very successful Asian author here's our successful gay author that means that
we've done our duty and one or two examples will stand as representation
for all the rest so I think what's going on here is both a backlash to any amount
of space that opens up for voices who who traditionally haven't had a platform
and also a pernicious tokenism that disguises any real progress yeah so I
really feel like at its core this novel is about this question of who gets to tell which stories and I'm wondering how
you think of that as somebody who clearly has such an incredible imagination and such incredible literary
Talent do you think that there should be a limit to who gets to tell which stories or do you think that writer
imaginations should be able to cross race gender class time
period I think writers should get to write about whatever they want and whether they do it well is another
question but inherent to the phrasing who gets to tell what story is who's
doing the censoring who's granting permission who is the authority on what's allowed and what's not and I
think that takes us into pretty dangerous territory and it's also silly
territory because the act of writing fiction just is thinking outside of your
lived experience and trying to empathize with another now I think the two better
questions we ought to be asking instead of the question who gets to write this story is first who has
historically been rewarded for writing this story and what voices are missing
this is is a question for the industry this is a question of who's getting opportunities who's getting advances
who's being left out and in this case we do have real instances of who's granting
permission and the people granting permission are the Publishers deciding where to allocate advances and this is
not a controversial issue we need to work on this is something that is substantiated with very dismal reports
about who's getting published now the second question is is the writing good
have they done it well have they done their research are they making interesting arguments or are they
rehashing boring old stereotypes and if the answer is the latter then the book
is just not very good and we ought to move on but if the answer is the former then I don't think it matters very much
to me what the author's background is so much as it does what their intentions were when they wrote it and how they did
it Rebecca it's been so Illuminating to talk to you about writing and about your
new book yellow face but now just before we go we want to hear a little bit more
about how some things in your daily life shape you so I'm going to ask you some light-hearted like rapid fire questions
where you just say the first thing that comes to your mind and we call this segment the last time okay when is the
last time you had writer's block I had writers block this morning
but instead of walking away and doing something else I just sat at my desk and
twiddled with my pen until the right sentence came to me when is the last
time you bought a new pen I don't buy pens I steal my fiance's
pens when is the last time you traveled by train I am on the M track at least
twice a week and I have become very familiar with all the stops on the east
coast and I'm always promised myself one day I'll do a day trip to Mystic Connecticut and eat some pizza and walk
along the harbor but that day has not arrived I've done that it's really fun
when is the last time you put down a book that you didn't like last week but
I feel it rude to reveal the title of the book and when is the last time you binge watched a television show oh I
can't remember the problem with television shows is that you can't speed up the process and if it's going to be a
20-hour commitment then that's time I don't have Rebecca thank you so much for being
here with us today this has been such an interesting conversation and again I just loved yellow face thanks so much
for having me this was so [Music]
fun RF quang's latest novel yellow face is on shelves
now thank you so much for listening to person of the week if you like what you
heard don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we'd love to
hear from you so send your tips or thoughts on our show to personof the week at time.com I'm Charlotte alter see
you next week person of the week is hosted by
Charlotte alter it's produced by Nina bisbano and India wikin our senior producer is Ursula summer our story
editor is Katie feather this episode was mixed by Aaron Dalton our theme music was composed by Billy Libby Joseph
fishmouth is our fact Checker person of the week is a co-production of time Studios and sugar 23 at time our
executive producers are Mike Beck and Sam Jacobs at trigger 23 our executive producers are Mike Mayor Michael sugar
and Liam Billingham Sasha Maas is the head of audio at time you can find us
online at time.com of the week and wherever you get your
podcasts [Music]
====
No comments:
Post a Comment