Yellowface

The Last Front has been published for nearly a year and has begun to fall out of the spotlight. After enjoying initial success, the pressure is building for June to produce a follow-up. June is stuck, however, suffering from writer’s block and Athena’s ghost. She cannot write anything without hearing a critical inner voice. She was so confident when changing Athena’s work, but trying to write in the absence of it is impossible. In this struggle, June admits that The Last Front is not the only piece of writing that she stole from Athena’s apartment the night she died. She also took some papers and notes that had been on her desk, and she now uses them to find inspiration for her next project. She uses a paragraph Athena wrote to start her novella, Mother Witch, an exploration of her relationship with her mother. She assures herself that Athena’s work is merely a starting point for her and that this work is completely and totally her own.

As she grapples with using Athena’s work for her own career, June remembers the time that Athena stole from her. As freshmen at Yale, Athena and June lived on the same floor, and they became fast friends.