The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon

Daniel Jae Ho Bae's older brother Charlie Jae Won Bae has just been kicked out of Harvard University. Daniel's parents who are immigrants from South Korea are disappointed and angry that their beloved first-born son who can do no wrong has failed. Charlie doesn't like Daniel and the feeling is mutual. As a little boy, Daniel looked up to his older brother but that changed when Charlie pushed him away to be with friends.

Daniel and Charlie's parents Min Soo and Dae Hyun met and married in South Korea and came to New York City to start a new life. With the help of a cousin they opened a beauty supply shop called Black Hair Care which sells hair care products to the African American residents of New York. They expect their children to be successful to be doctors. Now that Charlie has been forced to withdraw, the pressure is on Daniel to gain admission to a good school and to stick to the path chosen by his parents - becoming a doctor. But Daniel doesn't want to be a doctor. Instead he wants to be a poet.  He's refused to apply to Harvard, but has an interview today with a Yale alum.

Daniel dresses in his new gray suit and a bright red tie for the interview and takes the Westbound 7 train to Manhattan where his favourite barber is located. He has the entire day free before his interview and he decides he will "do whatever the world tells him to", that he will "blow in the direction of the wind."  Enroute the train is stopped in a tunnel just before the Times Square station by the conductor who encourages everyone to find God. From Times Square Daniel decides to walk to the barber keeping an eye for a "Sign". He stops outside a church on Thirty-Seventh Street but when it's locked his sits down to people watch. That's when Daniel sees a black girl with a huge Afro and huge pink headphones completely blissed out listening to music. Daniel recognizes that she's passionate about music and finds this attractive. He decides to follow her when she enters a music store called Second Coming Records. 

Natasha Kingsley, her nine year old brother Peter and her parents Samuel and Patricia are being deported tonight. She and her parents are undocumented, illegal immigrants from Jamaica. They were discovered when her father was charged with a DUI.  Natasha decides to try one last time to prevent their deportation by going to the offices of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. On her way into the USCIS offices, Natasha has her personal effects scrutinized by Irene, one of the many security guards. She's late for her 8a.m. appointment with Karen Whitney by five minutes and she is refused. Just as she's about to be escorted out by security, a brown-skinned man by the name of Lester Barnes intervenes. Barnes tells Natasha that her family is here illegally and that she has to leave. He attempts to tell her "Everything is irie there, man" but Natasha questions him about whether or not he saw the real Jamaica on his trip. She begins to cry telling him she planned to attend college and will be returning to a country she doesn't know and hasn't lived in since she was eight. Barnes gives her the name of a lawyer, Jeremy Fitzgerald who can "fix" her situation. Natasha has an appointment at eleven a.m. and so she decides to walk to the lawyer's office and stop in at her favourite record store along the way.

Inside Second Coming, Natasha is disgusted to see her ex-boyfriend Rob and his new girlfriend, Kelly, making out and stealing records. Also watching is a stranger, a Korean boy who is astonished at what Rob and Kelly are doing.Natasha refers to him as Red Tie and together they watch as Rob and Kelly are confronted by a store employee. Daniel introduces himself and shakes hands with Natasha but she's not interested, doesn't tell him her name and tells him to have a nice life. Daniel follows Natasha out of the store and when she goes to step off the curb to cross the street, Daniel sees a BMW running the red light and pulls her out of danger. Natasha is stunned but grateful despite her headphones being broken. Daniel presses her to tell him her name which she does and he invites her to get something to eat. He learns that Natasha is from Jamaica and that she has an important appointment to keep, something that is causing her worry.

While Daniel believes he could have the life his father wants for him and be a great doctor, "something about Natasha makes me think my life could be extraordinary.." Daniel finds himself inexorably attracted to Natasha. In fact, he believes he's falling in love with her even though he knows being with a black girl will never gain his parent's approval. In the coffee shop, Natasha is not friendly towards Daniel and is dismayed to discover that Daniel is falling for her. She tells him not to fall in love with her because she has no intention of falling in love with him. In fact she doesn't believe in love because it can't be measured and is temporary.

So Daniel challenges Natasha that he can get her to fall in love with him. To do this he decides to use some of the questions from a study mentioned in the New York Times. But what Daniel doesn't realize is that time is running out for them. Are they destined to be together? Can Fate intervene?

Discussion

The Sun Is Also A Star is a beautifully crafted novel that explores the way our lives are inexplicably interconnected to one another. Throughout the tapestry that is woven in this story, Nicole Yoon asks her readers to consider the role of God, Fate or chance in what often seems like random encounters in our lives.

The central characters are Jamaican born, illegal immigrant Natasha Kingsley and Korean-American Daniel Jae Ho Bae. Around them revolve a cast of smaller characters that include Natasha's father Samuel, Daniel's brother Charlie and his father, Dae Hyun Bae, Irene a security guard at USCIS, the train conductor, the BMW driver Donald Christiansen, Attorney Jeremy Fitzgerald, his assistant Hannah Winter, a Korean waitress, and the building security guard named Joe. Although Daniel and Natasha affect each others lives significantly so do the other characters and in particular one character who plays an unexpected part in bringing them back together.

Like the string art on the novel's front cover, Yoon weaves a set of colourful, imaginative narratives together that portray the desperation of a girl to stay in America while demonstrating the threads that connect us all. The Sun Is Also A Star brilliantly demonstrates how we are all interconnected and asks us to consider the origin of the meetings that happen between people. Are these encounters coincidence, random acts that happen in the universe or do they happen due to Fate, destiny or God? Of course the main encounter in the novel is that of Daniel and Natasha. Were they destined to meet and fall in love or was it just random chance?

The two main characters view life very differently and thus approach this question very differently. Natasha is intelligent and practical. Like most people today, she doesn't "like temporary, nonprovable things, and romantic love is both temporary and nonprovable." While her mother believes everything happens for a reason, and her father prefers to see the hand of God in things, Natasha believes "that life is just a random series of good and bad things that happen until one day you die. There is no fate, no destiny, no meant-to-be." Natasha believes she's a realist: "It's better to see life as it is, not as you wish it to be. Things don't happen for a reason. They just happen." Natasha intends to be a data scientist but she feels this choice is not destiny. "I chose this career. It didn't choose me. I'm not fated to be a data scientist...I did research on growing fields in the sciences...No fate."

Practical Natasha believes the "poetic heart, the heart of love songs and soliloquies...is fickle and will lead you astray. It will tell you that all you need is love and dreams." Despite this, Natasha's "fickle, nonpractical, non-future-considering, nonsensical heart wants Daniel. I know there's no such thing as meant-to-be and yet here I am wondering if maybe I've been wrong." This sets up an intense conflict within Natasha who believes that "love is just chemicals and coincidence."  Natasha believes in "determinism -- cause and effect. One action leads to another leads to another. Your actions determine your fate." She views the actions of one individual human as inconsequential compared to the forces at work in the vast universe. 

In contrast, Daniel, an aspiring poet  challenges Natasha's practical, less passionate outlook on life. "We are capable of big lives...Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? We are born to dream and make the things we dream about." Unlike Natasha, Daniel believes in love and shortly after meeting her, he's certain he's going to fall in love with her. Daniel believes in Fate or destiny - their meeting might have been by chance but once it happened, falling in love was inevitable. When Natasha reveals that she is hours from being deported, Daniel is deeply hurt. He struggles and wonders if "Life is just a series of dumb decisions and indecisions and coincidences that we choose to ascribe meaning to."  He considers what Natasha told him that he's looking for someone to rescue him from his life because then the decisions about his future will be out of his control. "It won't be me defying my parents. It will be Fate." 

But Daniel's faith that something else is at work in their lives is rekindled when he and Natasha find each other a second time that day - he returns to the building where she had the interview while she goes back to his house hoping to meet him there. Perhaps it is destiny or Fate that intervenes but Daniel's brother does the only good thing he will do for his brother in his life, he gives Daniel's phone number to Natasha. They discover yet another coincidence - Daniel's interview is in the same building as Natasha's lawyer and that the interview is with her lawyer, a Yale alumnus.While Daniel believes in God and that the connection people share with one another represents God, Natasha believes only in science to explain that connection. When it becomes apparent that Natasha will have to leave, Daniel has succeeded in his quest but while he hopes there will be "something else that could lead them back to each other" someday. For Natasha, maybe meant to be isn't forever.

 Themes and ideas from Natasha's narratives are explored further in separate chapters. For example, when Natasha meets with Lester Barnes at the Immigration office he makes reference to the Jamaican term "irie" which means good or pleasant. He tells Natasha of his limited Jamaican experience, "I had a nice time. Everything is irie there. You'll be all right." But in the chapter titled "irie. An etymological history" Natasha explores the meaning of irie, but also how words can mean one thing to one person -like Barnes, but a totally different thing to another person. Barnes really doesn't know or understand the Jamaican concept of irie in the same way that Natasha might. "A word can start off meaning one thing and end up meaning another. Is it from overuse and oversimplification, like the way irie is taught to tourists at Jamaican resorts? Is it from misuse, like the way Natasha's father's been using it lately?"

Yoon also shows her readers how the slightest of our actions can influence another person in ways we might not know. Irene who is the security guard at USCIS loves her job because it is the sole source of connection with other people in her life. She slows down each bin she needs to search, forcing people to "look up and meet her eyes." Irene decides that she will kill herself, something she's been contemplating for some time. However, Natasha, believing that Attorney Fitzgerald can save her family from deportation, decides to phone Lester Barnes asking him to thank Irene. Her delaying Natasha getting through security resulted in the chain of events that led her to meeting Daniel. Barnes call to Irene ultimately saves her life, leads her to start on a new path and results in her, years later helping to reunite Daniel and Natasha.

The Sun Is Also A Star is another brilliant, beautiful novel by Nicola Yoon. Her stories are engaging, thoughtful and remarkably well crafted. Nicola Yoon grew up in Jamaica and also in Brooklyn New York. Her second novel makes her a force to be reckoned with in young adult literature.

Book Details:

The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon
Canada: Doubleday Canada    2016
344 pp.

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

Eighteen year old Madeline Furukawa Whittier suffers from SCID, Severe Combined Immunodeficiency or what has been referred to as "bubble baby disease".  She's allergic to the world around her and must live in a germ free world. As a result, she hasn't left her home for the past seventeen years. Her mother, Pauline is a doctor and cares for her, along with her longtime nurse, Carla Flores.

Things change for Madeline when a new family moves in next door.  From her window Madeline sees a mother and father, a young girl and a tall, lean boy dressed all in black. Madeline watches the new family, discovering that while everyone has some kind of routine, the boy in black does not. As it turns out, his bedroom is directly opposite Madeline's. This means she can easily observe him and one thing she does notice is that he likes to climb out of his bedroom window and sit on the roof. She learns that his name is Olly, although his father calls him Oliver and that his younger sister is Kara. Madeline also notices that the father drinks alot and yells at the family.

Shortly after moving in, Olly comes to Madeline's home, bringing a Bundt cake as a gift. However, Madeline's mother must refuse the cake and doesn't offer an explanation. This of course, makes Olly very upset. But it also results in his father becoming enraged The father throws the cake at Olly, causing the plate to break but leaving the cake undamaged. Two days later, Madeline hears pings at her window and looks across to see the Bundt cake wearing googly eyes. Olly pushes the Bundt cake to its "death" and what follows is a series of evenings involving the cake recovering from its "jump", making another suicide attempt, on life support and finally "dying" as evidenced by Olly dressed for a funeral. Olly leaves his email contact on his window for Madeline and the two begin to talk, first via email and then by chat.

Eventually Madeline and Olly's friendship deepens and Madeline finds herself wanting to actually meet Olly, something she's not allowed to do because of her illness. However, after begging Carla to allow her to let Olly visit her inside her own home, Madeline and Olly do meet in the sunroom of her house after agreeing not to touch. Olly stays on the opposite side of the room. The meeting leaves Madeline thrilled because she really likes Olly, but she also feels conflicted for keep their meeting a secret from her mother.

After a week without any serious medical repercussions, Madeline and Olly meet again and Madeline is certain she's falling in love. She spends her nights instant messaging Olly leaving her tired and resulting in Madeline skipping movie nights with her mother. Olly reveals details about his family and how his father became abusive towards him and his mother. This leads to Maddy's mother noticing that she's changed and questioning Carla about those changes.Carla tells Maddy she can't keep seeing Olly, that he will eventually return to school and forget about her. But Madeline insists that she keep seeing him and promises to spend more time with her mother.

Olly and Madeline continue to meet, moving from touching one another to kissing. Still Madeline remains healthy. Things drastically change when one night Madeline and her mother witness a violent altercation between Olly and his father on the front lawn of their house. As Olly attempts to protect his mother from being assaulted, his father punches him in the stomach. Without thinking and to her mother's horror, Madeline races outside and intervenes, preventing Olly from being further assaulted. Madeline's mother realizes that Madeline intervened because Olly is no stranger. The repercussions of Madeline's actions are swift and devastating. Her mother discovers that she has been seeing Olly and fires Carla for her part in bringing the two together. Madeline loses her internet priviledeges and her mother takes a week off work to care for her while interviewing for a new nurse.

Although Madeline and Olly continue to communicate through their bedroom windows, Madeline becomes increasingly dissatisfied with her isolated existence. Three weeks later, Madeline makes a decision that sets in motion a chain of events that change her life forever.

Discussion

Everything, Everything is part sick lit and part romance. Readers will probably quickly figure out the twist in the story early on partly because unlike the real "bubble baby", Madeline is not in total isolation. SCID is now curable if caught immediately after birth and many jurisdictions test newborns for this serious condition.

Everything, Everything's strongest theme is that of identity and self-determination. Madeline's entire existence is defined by her illness. Her life is a series of missed events driven home to her even more when she has her eighteenth birthday.
"Another whole year of being sick, no hope for a cure on the horizon. Another year of missing all the normal teenagery things -- learner's permit, first kiss, prom, first heartbreak, first fender bender...This year is a little harder than the previous. Maybe it's because I'm eighteen now...I should be leaving home, going off to college. My mom should be dreading empty-nest syndrome."

Meeting Olly for the first time results in Madeline thinking about her place in the universe, outside the confines of her home, and to acknowledge what she really wants. This is something she hasn't really allowed herself to do until this point.
"And it's not just Olly that I see. I keep picturing myself floating high about the earth. From the edge of space I can see the whole world all at once. My eyes don't have to stop at a wall or at a door. I can see the beginning and the end of time. I can see infinity from there.
For the first time in a long time, I want more than I have."

The loss of Olly after their relationship is discovered by her mother results in Madeline's perspective on her life gradually changing. Although she describes herself as "two Maddys", in reality Madeline is growing up and beginning to make her own decisions about the risks she will take and how she wants to live her life. "Ever since Olly came into my life there've been two Maddys: the one who lives through books and doesn't want to die, and the one who lives and suspects that death will be a small price to pay for it... The second Maddy knows that this pale half life is not really living."

Her decision to travel to Hawaii with Olly leaves Madeline conflicted but not enough to cause her to not follow through on her plan. The trip opens her to new experiences - travelling in a car and a plane, wearing a swimsuit for the first time and going to the beach, snorkeling.

Madeline meets Zachariah, Olly's gay friend who wants to be an artist,  but who won't tell his parents because he knows they would make him choose. He wonders perhaps if  "Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love." At this time it something Madeline doesn't really have an answer for but will eventually come to understand.

After recovering from her illness on Hawaii, Madeline comes to discover the truth about her situation. Yoon does a great job of chronicling Madeline's journey towards forgiving her mother for what she has done. The novel doesn't become bogged down in details but shows Madeline taking the initiative to discover the truth about her health, confronting her mother and beginning to set boundaries while still living at home. Although Madeline will never know "the moment that set my life on this path", she learns to forgive her mother, understanding that what she did was out of love. Unlike her mother who tried to protect her from the "dangers" of life, Madeline accepts that life and living have its risks. "But anything can happen at any time. Safety is not everything. There's more to life than being alive."

Despite the serious subject matter, Yoon never lets it overwhelm her story. The episode involving the Bundt cake is quite funny and well written. And over Madeline's serious illness is a sweet coming of age story that involves two lonely teens struggling to deal with serious issues. Olly, the caring boy whom Madeline falls for, is a believable character with real life problems who unwittingly motivates Madeline to risk all in order to live more fully.

Readers interested in something a bit different with a touch of humour will enjoy Everything, Everything.

Book Details:

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
Toronto: Doubleday Canada     2015
306 pp.