the sun is also a star by nicola yoon summary

Natasha, whose family came to New York from Jamaica when she was in grade school, is on a desperate mission to prevent their deportation. His own ambitions are more literary, but as the dutiful first-generation son of Korean immigrants, he accepts his destiny.

Daniel has an alumni interview that he hopes will get him into Dartmouth, a first step in realizing his parents’ dream that he’ll become a doctor. One radiantly sunlit morning, they both have urgent business in Manhattan. Natasha Kingsley (Shahidi) lives in Brooklyn, Daniel Bae (Melton) in Queens.

That’s not a spoiler: If you didn’t know that Shahidi and Melton were destined to make out within 10 minutes of seeing them onscreen, you have no hope of passing whatever class this is. But philosophical interests aren’t a prerequisite and may in fact interfere with the business of watching the two main characters banter, flirt and then, at last, make out. If you are fascinated by this line of inquiry, you might enjoy this super-sincere young-adult romance, directed by Ry Russo-Young from Tracy Oliver’s screenplay and based on Nicola Yoon’s best-selling novel. What, I wondered, had brought me to that dark room where two nice-looking teenagers (Yara Shahidi of “black-ish” and Charles Melton of “Riverdale”) were canoodling in a karaoke booth, and then on an empty Roosevelt Island tram car hovering above the East River? Was it fate? A series of decisions I had made earlier in my life, or that someone else had made for me? Might I find the answers in the writings of Carl Sagan or the poems of Emily Dickinson?

A few years ago, I was giving a talk somewhere, and a gentleman in the audience asked, “What is the role of free will in criticism?” I didn’t have a good answer, but the question came back to haunt me during a recent screening of “The Sun Is Also a Star,” a film much concerned with issues of chance, destiny and choice.

The sun is also a star by nicola yoon summary