Medium Turns Up In A Hit Novel

A nasty Medium poet makes a cameo in ‘Yellowface.’ Could it have been inspired by real life?

A lot of stories on Medium mention novels, but have you ever seen Medium mentioned in a novel? I’ve reviewed countless books for major print and online media, and I hadn’t until I read R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, a recent №1 New York Times bestseller.

A self-righteous poet and performance artist named Diana Qui turns up on page 156 of Kuang’s potboiler about racial tokenism and worse in book publishing. At a literary festival, Qui is on a panel with June Hayward, the anti-heroine of Yellowface, and the event is a disaster.

Hayward, who is white, has stolen a novel by a dead Chinese-American friend, Athena Liu, and it’s become a bestseller. Her book deals with Chinese laborers exploited by the British in World War I, and at the instigation of her manipulative publisher, Hayward has changed her name to the Chinese-sounding Juniper Song to make it appear more “authentic.”

Qui scents the duplicity and, on their panel about East Asian-inspired stories, challenges Hayward in a way that sinks the event. But she isn’t finished with the sticky-fingered novelist and her book, The Last Front.

As the controversy about the bestseller escalates, Hayward browses compulsively online, looking for stories about her work.

One day she sees that Qui has struck again, this time on Medium. Here’s how Yellowface describes it:

“Diana Qui has an article up on Medium titled ‘June Hayward Must Make Amends, and Here’s How.’ The twelve-item laundry list includes things like: ‘Provide public proof that she’s taken a course in racial sensitivity.’ ‘Donate the entirety of her earnings from The Last Front and Mother Witch to a charity selected by an objective committee of Asian American writers,’ and ‘Post her tax returns from the last three years to confirm how much she profiled from Athena Liu’s work.’ ”

Looking at the list, Hayward thinks:

“Who does Diana think she is?

“I can stand to be a pariah. But to bend, to throw away all my savings, and to kowtow to the Twitterati and prostrate myself before the taunting, smug crowd — I would rather die.”

That’s the only mention of Medium, and Kuang doesn’t criticize the platform directly. But the fictional Qui emerges a nasty piece of work and possible stalker in that scene and another that involves a showdown with Hayward. Does Medium need a little affirmative action in fiction?

@janiceharayda is an award-winning critic and journalist who has been a writer and editor for Glamour, the book critic for Ohio’s largest newspaper, and a vice president of the National Book Critics Circle. She has written for many major print and online media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Salon.

Here’s my full review of Yellowface: