The September recommendations
On doing whatever it takes, making it, and other ways of being together
Hi friends,
I’ve been consuming a lot of content about the artistic creation process this month; about creating despite and in spite; what it takes to create, doing everything it takes, and what we sacrifice in the process.
A book that really spoke to this and blew me away in its exploration was Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang. I could not put it down, and it absolutely deserves all the hype it’s getting. It tells the story of an author who steals the unpublished manuscript of a “friend” of hers, after she dies in a freak accident, and how far she is willing to go to keep what she thinks she deserves. It highlights the loneliness of the creative process, the pressure we put on ourselves to succeed and the scarcity mindset that informs and exacerbates that pressure, while expertly weaving in nuanced commentary on who can tell a story, and if we ever really own our own stories, or that of others. I can’t recommend it enough.
White Ivy by Susie Yang was another novel I very much enjoyed. It follows the life of Ivy Lin, a Chinese immigrant who becomes infatuated with the glamorous, upper-class, white world of her childhood crush, and is willing to do whatever it takes to climb the social ladder - even if it means betraying her family's culture and values, and engaging in deceitful actions.
Both follow traditionally “unlikeable” protagonists, who do some seriously mental things, but for reasons that are, in a way, understandable. Indeed, both novels speak to the sickening importance we place on achievement and “success”; something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, as I skirt between applying pressure on myself, and the inevitable burnout.
brilliantly explores this in her Substack, writing about the importance of “the void that connects the dots between doing and achieving.” She argues that we have no value for this space and time in Western culture, [that we consider it to be] time to be used. Space to be filled. And yet, it may be the most valuable thing we have.” I’m really trying to stop filling the space - I have yet to succeed.Yellowface also speaks to a question that’s been gathering a lot of traction in recent years, on whether or not we can ever separate the art from the artist. Journalist and author
expands on this, arguing that “the idea that ‘biography not colour our experience’ does not hold water, because we live in a parasocial time where we are obsessed with biography…Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
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