Black-Korean Romance: Racially Triangulated Interracial Relationships and Immigrant Narratives in The Sun Is Also a Star

Abstract

This article navigates Afro-Asian relations and immigration issues through its analysis of the romantic relationship between a Jamaican American immigrant and a second-generation Korean American in Nicola Yoon’s young adult novel The Sun Is Also a Star (2016). My textual analysis of Yoon’s work shows how this novel functions as a counterhegemonic literary project that problematizes systemic racism, anti-immigration policy, prejudice against interracial relationships, and stereotypical images of Asian men and Black women. Because representations of interracial relationships between Black women and Asian men in American culture are still scarce, Yoon’s literary work has social and political implications in need of scholarly attention. Unfortunately, the cinematic adaptation of this novel dismisses its discursive discourse, and the filmic narrative arc reproduces dominant ideologies of race and immigration. My analysis of the novel thus serves to recognize the literary activism of Nicola Yoon, on the one hand, and to critique the hegemonic discourses of the cinematic adaptation on the other.