Title: The
Sun is Also a Star
Author:
Nicola Yoon
Genre: Young
Adult
Rating: 5*
!!!
“… Meant to be doesn’t
have to mean forever…”
As a reader, I’ve learnt this:
There are some books you read that are good, incredible,
even. There are other books that coax your entire being into it and take you to a
different place completely. But then there are books that are important. The Sun is Also a Star was important to me—and it should be to the
world, not just of readers.
Set in New York, Nicola Yoon (after a delightfully deep and
emotional debut of Everything, Everything),
manages to address every concept of life within a 344-page novel, and all
taking place on the same day. Not only to write about so many realistic
concepts, but to set it as she did… that had to be hard. But Nicola Yoon pulled
it off in a way that surrounded me entirely, starting from the how-to-make-an-apple-pie
philosophy beginning, to the tearful ending.
Backtrack to December, 2016. I asked for this book as a
Christmas present. I knew I wouldn’t read it straight away, no matter how
excited I was for the author’s next book after completely adoring Everything, Everything. For some reason,
this book sat on my shelf and I wouldn’t pick it up—something told me to wait, that there was something about
this book that required special timing. So I waited. Fast-forward a few months,
to a couple days ago. I was holiday-ing in Corfu, a place I’d never been
before, on a relaxation break. I packed The
Sun is Also a Star—finally, it felt right to read it. I’m glad that I
followed that weird feeling to wait because I got to read a thoughtful and
beautiful book in a beautiful setting.
Immediately after closing the book, I said to my mum, “I
need to write about this book. I can’t just leave it at that. This book needs
to be spread so much further and I want to contribute to that.” After spending
two days falling in love with the characters, the realism of the novel, I still
couldn’t shake off this story.
Daniel Jae
Ho Bae is a dreamer. Natasha Kingsley is a realistic cynic. Both are
immigrants; one illegal, one legal. Daniel was born in America, but his parents
originated from South Korea, and moved to America for better prospects, and
their knowledge and experience of being poor weighs heavily on their two sons.
Because of their past, they heap pressure on Daniel and Charles (aka, Asshole)
to get themselves better futures. Doctors, is what they want their sons to be.
And they push.
After being a Harvard drop-out,
Charles becomes the sort-of frowned-upon son, when he’s always been the one Daniel is being told to be more like. Finally, one day, Daniel’s mum says that she
doesn’t want him to end up like his
older brother. Despite being born in America, Daniel is very Korean, completely
opposite from his brother, who tries his best to be everything American. All
these aspects are very important to the plot and Daniel’s character and
life. On the day it is set, Daniel has an interview to begin his journey to the
Second-Best university and then become a doctor eventually. He’s dressed up
smartly and promises his mum that he’ll cut his hair.
Spoiler: he doesn’t.
It becomes quickly apparent through a train (literally) of awry things
happening on his journey that Daniel does not want to be a doctor and he cares
very little for the interview, clearly only going to make his parents happy
because he knows how strongly they feel about not being poor, wanting their
children to have a better life. What Daniel—sweet, innocent (again, not quite in thought as the story
progresses), dreaming Daniel—wants is to be a poet. And he’s so immersed in his
poetic world that it utterly collides (both well and terribly) with Natasha’s
scientific, factual one.
Natasha
Kingsley is also a main character with a sibling. This time younger. Peter is
the brother that she has to share a living-room-turned-split-bedroom with. A
curtain partitions their two rooms, barely. Living in a poor neighbourhood,
Natasha’s family are immediately revealed that the day of the story is the day
they’ll be deported. But instantly, Natasha is the only one not accepting that
and acts to save her family.
Progressing into the novel, it
becomes clear the resentment Natasha harbours for her father and their life and
the unfairness of the situation. She remembers very little of the country she
has come from-- Jamaica. What she does remember though is America being her home and now she’s being told that she
has to leave that home, through no fault of her own. She’s paying for the
mistake her father made. Obsessed with the facts and workings of the world,
Natasha has no true passion. It’s clear
that she loves science and the world she surrounds herself with; she’s full of
all this clever knowledge of the world and the reasons. But that’s just it for
her: everything has to have a reason and evidence behind it. Nothing can never just be.
Then she
meets Daniel. Daniel, who is beautiful to her and tempting and a dreamer. And
he takes her to a Korean restaurant and to a Korean karaoke room
and she offers to take him to her favourite museum, and he does his best to
link love to scientific experimentation, and alters her way of thinking; she
allows more thought to the way he sees things. In turn, she alters his.
This story
is about the impossibility of falling in love as quickly as they do—that its
fate, Daniel argues. But Natasha pushes and refuses that—she’s being deported, of course she doesn’t believe
that it is fate. Why would she happen to meet him, fall in love with him, all
on the day that she’d never see him again after? All throughout their day
together, she can physically see Daniel’s brain wandering into a deeper love
for her as she talks to him about her facts and world. And bit by bit, her
resistance seems to fade, as such. She realises that she does feel for him. All these realisations come to her so strongly
that it’s almost overwhelming.
A very
important aspect of the book is that each background character mentioned meet get their own chapter (or two) of their backstory, to explain
why and how they got to be a part of the story at the time they were. A
security guard assesses Natasha’s phone at the office she has an appointment
for about her deportation, and Nirvana’s album cover is her phone case. The
security guard takes note of it, and she listens to the album on her break.
This leads to her solidifying the fact that she wants to take her own life. But
then the security guard gets another chapter—and her life is changed (very importantly
so, for the ending that is sure to bring tears to eyes), thanks to Natasha.
In one part, a man nearly runs
Natasha over in his car. His story is explained—and then it evolves to involve
another man, who turns out to be the lawyer who is handling Natasha’s case—and happens to be Daniel’s interviewer. Each
part of this story is intricately and well-thought out to weave together in a
perfect and plot-twisting way to tell a story that expands so much more from
the streets of New York. Each character is intertwined and tells a story that
shows just how much one small move from one small person can affect another. A half-thought “thank you” can inspire a woman to move past the darkness,
get help. A flight time falls perfectly to get two torn-apart people on the plane, plus
an air attendant who remembers goodness. A man who recklessly drove can affect
the mental outlook of another man, who realises that he needs to alter his
married life and finally tell the woman he truly loves that he wants only her.
A boy who’s on the verge of losing the best thing in his life can give altering
perspective to a man who has so many more years on him.
And a poet can change the life
of a factual, aspiring scientist who is facing the worst thing in her life.
So many
aspects make up this book: family, friends, love, past, futures, legal matters,
aspirations, passion, culture. With the two protagonists being so diverse,
culture takes a massive front seat in The
Sun is Also a Star and there are so
many informative explanations and history in selected chapters. Despite coming
from a South Korean background, Daniel’s father owns a black hair product
store. Which, evidently, links into Natasha’s and her mother’s different hair
styles. Through this, Nicola Yoon gives facts on the background of how the
popularity of Koreans in America came to open up these kinds of stores which
thrived. Following that, there is history on black women’s hair and styles
and how they changed, what was fashionable, and how Natasha’s mother
disapproves of her Afro, when she herself chemically straightens her hair.
Natasha expresses her interest in changing up her hair styles, despite the
popular “look”.
I’m not
American, I’m not very well versed on American culture. So through this book, I
learnt things about Korean culture as well as American and Jamaican. I wasn’t
just reading a story, I was reading history and facts and things that made me
wonder and think and consider. There’s a part in the book where Daniel and
Natasha go to the Korean restaurant, and she asks the waitress for a fork as
she doesn’t know how to use chopsticks. The Korean waitress responds with,
“Teach girlfriend how to use chopsticks,” to Daniel. She then gets her own chapter
of how she’s had her family divided by culture and American-Korean
disagreements within the family. Her son married a white woman, moved away from
his family’s disapproval, and how she only gets to see her grandchildren on
pictures through social media. All this comes back to her through an American
customer not being willing to learn how to use chopsticks in her restaurant.
Her chapter mentions how America wants everyone to know their ways but isn’t
willing to accept a small piece of other people’s culture within the
country. I had a similar experience in a Korean restaurant—I asked for a fork
because I didn’t know how to use chopsticks to eat my meal. I had no clue how
to eat Korean food—I didn’t know there
was a way. I didn’t have a Daniel Bae to instruct me. On top of the fork thing,
I mixed my rice with my main meal. Again, wrong.
I was taught that rice is eaten separately, and with a spoon. I did three
things wrong in that restaurant, so reading about Natasha getting it wrong too
made me feel relatable. I sat wondering if I’d offended the waitress who saw
me, as the waitress took offence at Natasha’s asking for a fork.
There are
two opposites in this story: there are people who embrace their origins and
where they’ve come from, and then there are those who try to escape it and
forcefully immerse themselves in the new culture they live in. The latter
includes Daniel’s brother, who gets embarrassed at Daniel calling him a
respectful hyung, the title for
younger brothers to address their elder brother. As well as Charles, there is
Natasha’s father. He’s the one who moved them to America, to follow his dreams
of becoming an actor—evidently he’s also the one who ends them up being
deported back to where he wanted to escape. Yet, he just accepts it where
Natasha fights for her family’s rights.
With so much
disagreement and awful actions over diversity and minorities going on in the
world, The Sun is Also a Star puts
incredible perspective on that through love and family relations in a story
way, but also so it’s clear that this is a very real book.
