Secondly, the circumstances under which they met were unusual. Well, first of all, they didn’t go gaga for each other at first sight. So, I’m usually the type who doesn’t buy insta-love type romances (because it’s usually just insta-lust), but this book was different. But miraculously, yet also believably, these two starkly different teens start to connect and appreciate each other over the course of the day. And she’s a tough sell on the ideas he peddles on love. Instead of him mansplaining stuff to her, she gets to be the one who educates and impresses him. He’s the one who’s idealistic to the point of being naive, and she’s the one who’s practical to a fault. Daniel is not the science person, Natasha is. Thankfully, The Sun Is Also A Star turns racial and gender stereotypes on their heads. So, between these two extremely loaded stereotypes, the Asian male/Black female pairing becomes the ultimate “mismatch.” Black women were not only agricultural laborers but also responsible for the reproductive labor of producing more slaves, so they were treated as “breeders.” In general, the stereotype of Black people as hypersexual was used to dehumanize them and compare them to animals, thus justifying their oppression and exploitation by white people.
Under slavery, Black people’s status was a function of their “utility” as laborers. This stereotype has its origins in the days of slavery. In order to appease white laborers whose job security was threatened by the cheap labor of Chinese immigrants, the government passed laws restricting the types of work that Chinese men could legally pursue, thus relegating them to “feminized” jobs like laundry, cooking, etc.įor Black women, the stereotype goes the other way: they are hypersexual.
This did not happen naturally or by accident.
This stereotype came about as a result of early Chinese immigrant men taking on jobs that were considered women’s work. Historically, Asian men have been portrayed and viewed by white Americans as sexually inferior and even asexual. Studies looking at data from dating sites and marriage records have found Black female/Asian male as the least common match among heterosexual couples, and this has a lot to do with the way normative ideas of sexuality are gendered and racialized in our society. The lives of these two teens who appear to have nothing in common collide, and both are changed in ways they never would have imagined during the course of a single day.įirst of all, can I just talk about how groundbreaking this novel is? A YA romance novel with a Black girl and Asian boy as the main characters/pairing? This kind of pairing is as rare in real life as it is in fiction. Natasha is a science geek who is about to be deported to a Jamaica she barely remembers. My Summary: Daniel is a dreamer on his way to a Yale interview that he doesn’t actually care about to please his Korean parents.
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