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Racism is prevalent throughout the novel and in multiple different contexts. When the Wei-Evans family is still in Hong Kong, they notice prejudice against Chinese people from the mainland. This is because COVID-19 was in mainland China at the time, but not in Hong Kong. Julie is Chinese, and this has the family caught between two different cultures while in Hong Kong. This tension demonstrates that prejudice was not something that just occurred in the US during the pandemic. 

The Wei-Evans family hopes that they will not experience significant racism in the US, but this proves to not be the case from their earliest times in the country. While they are able to get into the country relatively easily because they are Americans, they experience their first instances of racism when they get an Uber to go to their grandparents’ home from the airport. The Uber driver pulls over when he learns they have come from Asia because he does not want to get COVID-19. His prejudice underscores how pervasive racist fear was directed toward Asian people and people traveling from Asia at the beginning of the pandemic.

As the pandemic spreads, so does the racism the Wei-Evans family notices. At school, classmates treat

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