--- title: American Fiction description: R.F. Kuang asks: What do we talk about when we’re finished catering to—or making fun of—the white gaze? canonical: https://time.com/collections/time100-voices/6463460/rf-kuang-american-fiction/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-12-15T22:17:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-05T07:46:28.062Z article:section: Collection Item og:title: The Trouble With Race Satires Like 'American Fiction' og:description: The author of "Yellowface" on og:url: https://time.com/collections/time100-voices/6463460/rf-kuang-american-fiction/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt76bb8d59e34b98b0/698a433247ca3866813bb6c2/MCDAMFI_MG003.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: The Trouble With Race Satires Like 'American Fiction' og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Trouble With Race Satires Like 'American Fiction' twitter:description: The author of "Yellowface" on twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt76bb8d59e34b98b0/698a433247ca3866813bb6c2/MCDAMFI_MG003.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Dec 15, 2023 # The Trouble With Race Satires Like _American Fiction_ > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by R.F. Kuang  Jeffrey Wright stars in 'American Fiction.' Jeffrey Wright stars in 'American Fiction.' MGM/Everett Collection The trouble with satires about white people is that you’re always left with the question of _what next_. Mocking racism is all great fun at first, and I felt a cringing pleasure watching Cord Jefferson’s [_American Fiction_](https://time.com/6520620/iamerican-fiction-review-jeffrey-wright/) depict encounters that every non-white writer has experienced. It’s all true. I’ve been in meetings listening to how we might promote my work during AAPI heritage month. I’ve uttered lukewarm, unoriginal statements on [anti-Asian racism](https://time.com/6051948/educating-white-people-anti-asian-racism/) and watched emotional white people burst into applause. I’ve been invited to join panels and committees so that the organizers could deflect accusations of bias or exclusion. I’ve had conversations with nervous white publishing professionals who weren’t sure if “yellowface” was a slur, if they could say it out loud, and if they could print it on the cover of a book. But there always comes a moment when you run out of juice; when the laughter turns to sighs, and all the jokes start to ring hollow. The sheer volume of anecdotes isn’t funny anymore, it’s exhausting. True, it can be helpful to sit with [stereotypes](https://time.com/5859206/anti-asian-racism-america/)—they always illuminate more about the believer’s fantasies and paranoias than anything about the subjects—but sometimes the root of racism just isn’t that deep. Sometimes people are just stupid, ignorant, selfish, and annoying, and there’s nothing more to say. It’s bizarre to watch white audiences giggle at their own self-flagellation, anyhow. They’re only laughing because they feel immune—because deep down, they’re confident _they_ would never behave so terribly. _They_ would never pretend to be Asian on the internet, as June Hayward does in [_Yellowface_](https://time.com/collection/must-read-books-2023/6332507/yellowface/). _They_ would never protest a Black professor writing the N-word on a classroom whiteboard, as Monk Ellison’s (Jeffrey Wright) student does in _American Fiction_. The greatest frustration with a race satire is that it turns all the focus back onto white people. _Yellowface_ opens a lot of questions about cultural appropriation within the [publishing industry](https://time.com/5846732/books-to-read-about-anti-racism/), and then ends up right back with June—her feelings, her tragedy, her future prospects. This was deliberate. I wanted to structurally and thematically emphasize the voicelessness of Athena Liu, the deceased writer whose manuscript June steals and publishes as her own. She and the other Asian American characters in _Yellowface_ exist as absence; we only ever get June’s interpretation of their positions. But I’ve always known I wouldn’t write that sort of story again. The conceit runs for 300 pages and that’s it, we’ve run out of things to say, and you can only bang your head against the wall so many times before you start seeing stars. I’ve spent quite enough time with girls like June. From here on out, I’d like to work on filling in the absence. _Erasure_, the book by [Percival Everett](https://time.com/6445109/most-anticipated-books-2024/) on which _American Fiction_ is based, resolves this problem by putting two novels before the reader. There’s the garish and thudding _My Pafology_ (the book Monk publishes under a pseudonym as a bitter joke), set against the particular, layered story of Monk and the rest of the Ellison family coming to terms with his father’s suicide and affairs, his sister’s murder, his brother’s sexuality, and his mother’s slow deterioration from Alzheimer’s. _Erasure_ is brilliant because it doesn’t just offer a parody, it also offers an alternative. _American Fiction_ is strongest when it leans into the same. The best parts of the film are not the cheeky, cheap laughs about the publishing industry’s shenanigans (and later, Hollywood’s [similar shortcomings](https://time.com/collection/american-voices-2017/4623411/zoe-saldana-battling-racism-sexism/)), but the loaded, tense confrontations between family members hurting in unseen ways they’re trying to make one another understand. Outside the theater, I heard someone call the film a “bait and switch.” The trailers advertised a cringey industry comedy, not a quiet family drama. But the movie doesn’t so much fool you into watching a different story than the one you thought you were going to get so much as it emphasizes all the narrative possibilities available if we’re not so concerned with the baggage of representation. What do we talk about when we’re finished catering to—or making fun of—the [white gaze](https://time.com/5846072/black-people-protesting-white-people-responsible-what-happens-next/)? Class, for one thing. The book makes explicit that Monk doesn’t think much about race in part because he doesn’t _have_ to; because his family of wealthy doctors own a beach home near Boston and have employed a live-in housekeeper, Lorraine, for decades. The film has a shakier approach to money and class: it acknowledges they exist while hesitating to condemn those who obtain them. This is why Monk’s confrontation with Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), author of a stereotype-riddled bestseller that Monk despises, feels so ambivalent. Sintara defends the representational validity of a book like _We’s Lives in Da Ghetto_, then quickly backtracks: What’s so wrong with giving the market what they want? All this waffling could be resolved if Monk and Sintara could just come out and say what they’re both thinking: sometimes folks just want to make some money. And sometimes playing on white insecurities is a great way to secure the bag. **Read More:** [_R.F. Kuang on Olivia Rodrigo and the Impossible Pressure to Stay a Prodigy_](https://time.com/collection/time100-voices/6333801/rf-kuang-olivia-rodrigo-guts/) Alas, _American Fiction_ fizzles out when it returns to easy humor satirizing its own form. In the novel, the Ellison family’s simmering dysfunctions come to a head in an awful confrontation at Lorraine’s wedding. Monk’s mother’s Alzheimer’s makes her vicious, and the class divisions between the Ellisons and Lorraine—who they’ve always spoken of as “family”—become explicit. The film smooths over the wedding, rewriting it as a loving, harmonious moment. Everyone is dancing and smiling, and no one’s asking questions about Monk’s money. The film wants its protagonist and his family to remain safely likable. The book was much bolder in showing how the Ellisons could be sympathetic and vulnerable and callous and cruel all at once. In _American Fiction_, Monk and his agent discuss how white readers don’t want books to tell them the truth; they want to feel absolved. A parallel patronizing is going on in the adaptation from book to film. White movie audiences don’t want to think carefully about race and class, they want to watch feel-good punch-downs against a certain breed of white liberals that we’ve all been making fun of on Twitter for years. But when the joke is told, and the laughter’s died down, what story do we tell next? [_R.F. Kuang_](https://time.com/collection/person-of-the-week-podcast/6316100/rf-kuang-interview-person-of-the-week/) _is the best-selling author of the_ Poppy War _trilogy,_ Babel: An Arcane History_, and_ Yellowface_. She is a member of the_ [_2023 TIME100 Next_](https://time.com/collection/time100-next-2023/6308472/r-f-kuang/) _list._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-voices/6463460/rf-kuang-american-fiction/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-voices/6463460/rf-kuang-american-fiction/"},"headline":"The Trouble With Race Satires Like 'American Fiction'","datePublished":"2023-12-15T22:17:31.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-05T07:46:28.062Z","description":"R.F. 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