Eleanor and Park are both misfits in their Omaha high school, but they see the best and the beautiful in each other. To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny HanĪuthor Rainbow Rowell touchingly explores the overwhelming nature of first love - the kind of love that feels as if it can last a lifetime, that can help heal wounds and open doors. Please seek other books by Authors of Color! There are many other things to say, but I wanted to keep this as concise as possible. The book also contains harmful stereotypes in Eleanor’s friends, two Black girls who are only loud, sassy, and constantly ready to fight someone. Park also has a lot of internalized anti-Asian hatred, and doesn’t think he’s attractive specifically because he’s Asian. He also has a lot of self-loathing, mostly having to do with being half-Korean. Park embodies many common East Asian stereotypes: he takes taekwondo (which is incorrectly used interchangeably with “kung fu”), is great at math, struggles in English, and is often described as “small” and “feminine-looking”. “Park” is a Korean last name, not first name. She knows she's being racist, but no one ever does anything to change this. That was probably the most racist question of all time”. Well, sort of… Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes effected how he saw things. Eleanor later says, “Park’s eyes got wide. She calls his mother a “dainty China person”, when she is in fact Korean. She says, “His mom looked exactly like a doll… tiny and perfect… Eleanor imagined Park’s dad, Tom Selleck, tucking his Dainty China person into his flak jacket and sneaking her out of Korea.” The comparison is supposed to be a compliment about how delicate and “perfect” Park’s mother is, but it just furthers the stereotypes that Asians are tiny and “delicate”, and that all Asians are the same. The racism Park faces should not equate to Eleanor’s hair color and weight.Įleanor often focuses on the appearances of Park and his mother, usually in a negative way. Eleanor is strange because of her red hair, and Park is “strange” because he… is Asian. In the time since this book’s debut, many readers (including myself) have realized this book contains a lot of casual racism, fetishization of Asians, and harmful stereotypes usually involving the Koreans and Korean-Americans in this story.įirstly, the author makes the two main characters out to be “strange” and “outsiders”.

Eleanor i park