Reflections on the WING Book & Breakfast event
On November 21, 2024, members of IPIC’s Women in IP Networking Group (WING) and other colleagues gathered in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver for WING’s annual Book & Breakfast event. I co-hosted the event in Ottawa.
This year’s book club centered on the book Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, a satirical novel focusing on the themes of copyright, authorship, identity, and cultural appropriation.
In Yellowface, the main character, June Hayward, witnesses the sudden death of her (so-called) friend and bestselling author Athena Liu. June steals Athena’s unpublished novel about Chinese labourers during the First World War. After making significant edits and revisions to the manuscript, June passes it off as her own, and the novel rises to the top of the bestseller charts.
During our discussions, we used the intellectual property themes in the novel as a jumping off point. June’s theft of Athena’s manuscript obviously had copyright infringement implications. Yet, June justified her actions based on her significant contributions to bring the manuscript to a publishable quality. We discussed the concepts of authorship and attribution for collaborative works, but also for works typically credited to a single creator (such as novels) but which may have benefited from important input from friends, agents, and editors.
Our most engaging discussions focused on the moral and ethical considerations surrounding telling other people’s stories. In Yellowface, both June and Athena approached storytelling in different, yet deeply flawed and harmful, ways. June wrote about Chinese communities rather sloppily and carelessly, whereas Athena’s writing appropriated and divulged the painful experiences and traumas of her friends and acquaintances.
The novel Yellowface and my discussions with other IP professionals during the Book & Breakfast event have caused me to reflect on how I interact with art and fiction. I look forward to next year’s event for more thought-provoking discussions.
