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Chapter 18
Themes
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
June does actually go to see her mother. It’s been so long since she’s been home that she must look up the address on her phone. She hasn’t had a good relationship with her mother since her father died, but she wants to spend time with someone “who doesn’t hate her on principle.” When June’s mother meets her on the porch and wraps her in a warm hug, June nearly cries with relief.
June’s isolation in the real world partly fuels her social media obsession. It’s clear that her father’s death was deeply traumatizing to her but she never really gets into the details with readers, suggesting that she has not dealt with the grief in appropriate ways. In turn, this contributes to her ongoing misery as she forsakes what could clearly otherwise be a source of comfort—her family.
Themes
Inside, June learns, much to her surprise, that her mother is finally moving back to Florida, something she’s been talking about since June’s father died. June’s mother is surprised Rory didn’t mention it. June bitterly thinks how little Rory must care; she was never as attached to the house and its memories as June was.
The degree to which June has become estranged from her mother manifests in her surprise over her mother’s move. It’s possible, this awkward moment suggests, that June isn’t the only one responsible for the distance between herself and her mother. But it’s also clear that she milks her grievances in part because they give her creative content, like the subject of Mother Witch.
Themes
June heads upstairs to her old bedroom, where she whiles away the afternoon hours poring over her middle- and high-school writing notebooks. They’re just cheap composition books, not like the fancy Moleskines that Athena favored. And the ideas within them are derivative and childlike, chaotic and unorganized. But flipping through them reminds June of how excited she always way to bring imaginary worlds into being on the page. Now, the pressure on her as an established author has taken most of the magic out of it.
Even in private and even when considering stuff that she wrote years before she even met Athena Liu, June can’t stop comparing herself to her dead friend and rival. Elsewhere in the book she talks about the possibility of being haunted by Athena’s ghost, but there’s nothing otherworldly about her obsession. The book clearly insinuates that June’s misery with Athena—like her misery with her family—originates within June herself.
Themes
Eventually, June’s mother calls her downstairs for a meal of Chinese takeout (having forgotten, June bitterly observes, that it’s Rory, not June, who likes Chinese food). Their conversation is stilted. June doesn’t feel like she and her mother have had anything in common since her dad died, and her mother got boring by settling down to the practical work necessary to raise her daughters alone. Her mother lives down to June’s expectations, quickly launching into uninvited opinions about what June should do with her life—namely, pursue a professional degree and find a stable career, liker her sister Rory. Writing, she says, isn’t the whole world. June thinks she can only say that because she, unlike June, doesn’t understand what truly drives creative people.
June’s aversion to Chinese food may bespeak a guilty conscience (the last time she ate it was at the Rockville event, after all) or it may just be another thing that testifies to her blatant (if unacknowledged) dislike of AAPI people and cultures. Pay attention to what June’s mother suggests and why. She wants her daughter to consider a more stable career because she’s concerned for her happiness. June is, in fact, deeply unhappy as a writer at the moment, and she has been imagining alternative careers in her own time. But she’s unwilling to give her mother the satisfaction of telling her what to do—or to give up the identity (promising and important young author) she’s painstakingly crafted for herself. Plus, she’s not willing to go back into obscurity without a fight.
Themes
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