The Sun Is Also a Star

“To her I’m just another anonymous face, another applicant, another someone who wants something from America.” 

At the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services building, Natasha pleads with the receptionist to let her see her immigration lawyer, as Natasha is only five minutes late to her appointment. The receptionist refuses to make an exception for Natasha, much to her frustration. Natasha believes that the receptionist has been desensitized from seeing so many undocumented people going through the building. To the receptionist, Natasha’s desperation and struggle mean little to nothing.

“For most immigrants, moving to a new country is an act of faith. Even if you’ve heard stories of safety, opportunity, and prosperity, it’s still a leap to remove yourself from your own language, people, and country. Your own history. What if the stories weren’t true? What if you couldn’t adapt? What if you weren’t wanted in the new country?” 

This chapter tells the story of Daniel’s parents’ immigration from South Korea. To immigrate to a new country like the U.S. requires faith in the idea that the stories one hears about its opportunities are true. An immigrant is worried for their safety, fearful of their possible inability to adapt to new surroundings, and wary of the new country’s prejudices towards people who look like them.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to not fit in anywhere?” 

After immigration lawyer Lester Barnes makes an ill-timed joke to reassure Natasha about her deportation, the young protagonist criticizes him for his lack of sensitivity. As a white American, Lester will never know the struggles she has faced in the U.S. as an undocumented Jamaican girl. Not only has Natasha had to adapt to American ways, she also has had to hide her undocumented status from people around her.

“We were born here, Mom. We were always soft.” 

After Charlie is suspended from Harvard University, Daniel’s parents begin to apply pressure on Daniel to succeed where his older brother has failed. Daniel’s mother is saddened by Charlie’s troubles at school and does not understand how her children can squander such an opportunity as attending an Ivy League school. She wonders if the U.S. made her children “soft” by giving them too many privileges. Daniel affirms this sentiment.

“She didn’t know then what it meant to be an undocumented immigrant. How it meant that you could never go home again. How your home wouldn’t even feel like home anymore, just another foreign place to read about.” 

When Natasha left Jamaica as a young child, she left behind everything she knew to be home. She did not know then that as an undocumented immigrant she would have to hide her status from everyone around her. According to U.S. immigration law, she would not be able to return to Jamaica as an undocumented person and expect to be able to enter the U.S. once again. This creates an unexpected emotional dissonance between Natasha and her home country.

“When Natasha thinks about love, this is what she thinks: nothing lasts forever. Like hydrogen-7 or lithium-5 or boron-7, love has an infinitesimally small half-life that decays to nothing. And when it’s gone, it’s like it was never there at all.” 

Natasha considers the concept of half-life throughout chemistry, biology, and other sciences. In each iteration, a substance decays until half of its preceding value remains. As a substance decays, it takes on new forms. Natasha believes that love also loses substance over time, until it no longer resembles its original form.

“As our eyes meet, I get a kind of déjà vu, but instead of feeling like I’m repeating something in the past, it feels like I’m experiencing something that will happen in my future. I see us in old age. I can’t see our faces; I don’t know where or even when we are. But I have a strange and happy feeling that I can’t quite describe. It’s like knowing all the words to a song but still finding them beautiful and surprising.” 

While the experience of déjà vu refers to a feeling that a current moment has occurred once before, Daniel feels its opposite effect, which is a prediction of his future with Natasha. Contrary to Natasha, who believes that everything can be reasoned through science and logical thinking, Daniel’s belief in fated love is part of his romantic personality. He is aware that his feelings are like knowing the logic and structure of a song but still being moved by it. These feelings eventually overtake Natasha as well.

“I’ll be a great doctor with excellent bedside skills. I’ll be perfectly happy. But something about Natasha makes me think my life could be extraordinary.” 

According to his parents’ plans for him, Daniel is to attend Yale as a premedical student, become rich and successful, and marry a Korean woman. While he knows that this is far from a bad life, it is not his heart’s desire. Meeting Natasha reminds him that he has unique passions for his life that are distinct from his parents’ expectations of him. While these passions include being a starving artist, he feels that following his own path will make him far happier.

“The poetic heart is not to be trusted with long-term decision-making.” 

Natasha’s wariness of Daniel has to do with her own terrible experiences with her father’s creative endeavors. As an actor, Natasha’s father is prone to living in fantasies of stardom such that he often neglects his family in the process. Daniel displays similar romantic ideals through his poetry and expressions of affection towards Natasha. While he declares his devotion to her, she is afraid that the similarity between Daniel and her father’s views of life will lead to a doomed romance in their future.

“The final form is a client questionnaire that asks me to give a full accounting of my time in the United States. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what Attorney Fitzgerald is looking for. Does he want to know how we entered the country? How we hid? How it feels every time I write down my fake social security number on a school form? How every time I do, I picture my mom getting on that bus to Florida?” 

At Jeremy Fitzgerald’s office, Natasha is told by the receptionist that Fitzgerald will not be in the office until later and that she should complete a client questionnaire in the meantime. Natasha struggles to respond to the questionnaire, as she is unsure how much she should reveal about her experience. She does not know what detail will endanger her case or convey a necessary sense of urgency. The process is a frightening one.

“America’s not really a melting pot. It’s more like one of those divided metal plates with separate sections for starch, meat, and veggies.” 

After witnessing Daniel’s hesitation to introduce her to his family, Natasha realizes that he is worried that they will disapprove of her because she is black. While she is accustomed to others passing judgment, she is surprised that Daniel can act so cowardly by condoning his family’s racism through avoidance. She realizes that while the U.S. may portray itself as a “melting pot,” where all cultures blend together as a unified whole, it is actually still a segregated nation where people of different identities still possess prejudices towards others not like them.

“Sure, but why not more poems about the sun? The sun is also a star, and it’s our most important one. That alone should be worth a poem or two.” 

Daniel and Natasha joke about how there are many poems about stars but there are few about the sun, despite it being the center of the universe. This sentiment, particularly the phrase, “the sun is also a star,” is represented in the novel. It relates to the novel’s exploration of world creation as a metaphor for the cultivation of new love. Without the creation of the sun, the universe as they know it would not exist. The fixed position of the sun also relates to the idea of permanence in love, something that Daniel and Natasha are concerned with, as they can only be together for one day.

“Still. You couldn’t fault her. Not really. My father had been dreaming his life away for years. He lived in those plays instead of the real world. He still does. My mother didn’t have time for dreaming anymore. Neither do I.” 

After many years of waiting for Samuel to have a stable and financially-rewarding career, Natasha’s mother, Patricia, has no more patience for her husband’s dreams. In the pursuit of his acting career, Samuel works only a part-time job at night and is only able to afford a one-bedroom apartment for his family. After seeing her friends move into bigger homes and lead better lives, Patricia understands that Samuel has no desire to improve their status in life. As a result, Patricia no longer supports Samuel’s artistic aspirations. Seeing her family’s suffering, Natasha adopts her mother’s disdain for dreams as well.

“Sometimes, though, he still catches a glimpse of the old Natasha. She’ll give him a look like she used to when she was younger. It’s a look that wants something from him. A look that wants him to be more, do more, and love more. He resents it. Sometimes he resents her. Hasn’t he done enough already? She’s his first child. He’s already given up all his dreams for her.” 

While Samuel used to be close to Natasha, his lack of acting success in the U.S. has made him bitter towards his family. He believes that his obligation to them has made it difficult for him to succeed in his career. While Natasha once adored her father, she feels this secret resentment he has towards her and her family and grows distant over the years.

“And what about the lovers who spend hours staring into each other’s eyes? Is it a display of trust? I will let you in close and trust you not to hurt me while I’m in this vulnerable position. And if trust is one of the foundations of love, perhaps the staring is a way to build or reinforce it. Or maybe it’s simpler than that. A simple search for connection. To see. To be seen.” 

As a final part of Arthur Aron’s love experiment, two strangers stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes to build intimacy through eye contact. In this section, the novel contemplates the significance of eye contact as a display of trust, vulnerability, or more. It concludes that eye contact is a way of expressing connection through seeing the other more fully.

“Everyone wants to predict the future.” 

When Daniel encounters a heartbroken Hannah Winter at Jeremy Fitzgerald’s office, he has an instinctual feeling that her affair with Fitzgerald is over. Hannah expresses to Daniel that she wishes she could have known that Fitzgerald would never leave his family for her so that she could avoid her heartbreak. Daniel consoles her by telling her that everyone wants to predict the future, a sentiment that he shares through his feelings for Natasha. Ironically, Daniel’s confidence in his future with Natasha is dashed when Fitzgerald misses his appointment with the judge who could have put a stop to Natasha’s deportation. He misses the appointment to be with Hannah after a series of incidents related to Natasha and Daniel lead him to realize his love for her. None of them could have predicted that their lives would be so intertwined and that a couple’s pursuit of true love could come at the expense of another set of young lovers.

“America done with me and I done with it. More than anything, that night remind me. In Jamaica I got a standing ovation. In American I can’t get an audience.” 

Samuel reflects on the night he got drunk and revealed his family’s undocumented status to the police. While he insists to this family that it was an accident under the influence, he had secretly wanted to leave the U.S. While he had some success as an actor in Jamaica, he found it hard to get an acting job in the U.S. due to the country’s racism and xenophobia. He could never get roles as a black man, especially with his Jamaican accent.

“Does he really need me to tell him that all the seconds matter? That our own universe exploded into existence in the space of a breath?” 

After Daniel learns from Fitzgerald that Natasha is being deported, he leaves the interview abruptly to tell Natasha the bad news. Fitzgerald stops Daniel as he wants him to finish the interview and have a successful chance at getting into Yale. However, Daniel’s priority is not Yale but his time with Natasha. By comparing the creation of the universe to his urgency to be with Natasha, Daniel expresses the importance of time spent with people you love in the moment over a faraway future no one can predict.

“Here’s what we’re not going to do. We are not going to argue. We are not going to pretend that this isn’t the worst thing on earth, because it is. We’re not going to go our separate ways before we absolutely have to. I’m going with you to your parents’ house. I’m going to meet them, and they’re going to like me, and I’m not going to punch your dad. Instead, I’m going to see whether you look more like him or your mom. Your little brother will act like a little brother. Maybe I’ll finally get to hear that Jamaican accent you’ve been hiding from me all day. I’m going to look at the place where you sleep and eat and live and wish I’d known just a little sooner that you were right here.” 

After Natasha finds out the devasting news that she is being deported the next day, Daniel consoles her by setting a plan for their last hours together. While Natasha expects Daniel to make a grand gesture, such as following her to Jamaica, he surprises her by offering a realistic and thoughtful plan. His words are a testament to how much the two have influenced one another over the course of one day.

“What if we are just a digression in someone else’s history?” 

As Daniel and Natasha ready to part ways, Daniel begins to doubt that their love story is as fated as he originally believed. He entertains the possibility that their romance took place to permit other, grander things to happen in someone else’s life. Just as the minor characters within the novel play a role in bringing Daniel and Natasha together, Daniel wonders if he and Natasha are actually the minor characters themselves.

“I can see that this is important to you, and I really want to give you a good reason. But the truth is, I don’t care why. Maybe I’m naïve, but I do not give a single shit about anyone’s opinion of us. I do not care if we’re a novelty to them. I do not care about the politics of it. I don’t care if your parents approve, and I really, truly don’t care if mine do. What I care about is you, and I’m sure that love is enough to overcome all the bullshit.” 

As Natasha and Daniel make their way to Natasha’s home, she realizes that people are staring at them because they’re an interracial couple. While Natasha grows self-conscious, Daniel asserts confidently that he does not care that people are judging them for loving each other as a black and Asian couple. He argues that their love will overcome other people’s prejudices.

“You don’t get to regret us.” 

In a confrontation with her father, Natasha lets him know that she overheard his conversation with her mother, in which he had expressed his regret over having a family. Although her father insists that he had only meant those words when he was angry, Natasha does not believe him. She refuses to let him wallow in his failure as an actor and father. She holds him accountable for his distance from the family and demands that he take better care of everyone once they return to Jamaica.

“Because everything looks like chaos up close. Daniel thinks it’s a matter of scale. If you pull back far enough and wait for long enough, then order emerges. Maybe their universe is just taking longer to form.” 

In the creation of the universe, there was chaos before there was finally order. Daniel wonders if his love story with Natasha works in such a way. He considers the possibility that while it may appear that they cannot be together, perhaps it only means that their love story is just beginning, like the way the universe took time to fully form. This foreshadows the Epilogue, in which Daniel and Natasha meet again ten years later, as adults.