The Sun Is Also a Star

by Nicola Yoon

To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.

In the end, she chose both. Korean and American. American and Korean. So they would know where they were from. So they would know where they were going.

Irene makes a plan. Today will be the last day of her life.

One day his wife announced that she’d simply stopped loving him. She could not explain it. She wasn’t having an affair. There was no one else she wanted to be with. But the love she once felt had vanished.

In love, it’s the amount of time it takes for lovers to feel half of what they once did.

There’s a Japanese phrase that I like: koi no yokan. It doesn’t mean love at first sight. It’s closer to love at second sight. It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will.

ACCORDING TO SCIENTISTS, THERE ARE three stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment.

People in love have the same low serotonin levels as people with OCD. The reason they can’t stop thinking about each other is that they are literally obsessed.

Oxytocin and vasopressin control the third stage: attachment or long-term bonding. Oxytocin is released during orgasm and makes you feel closer to the person you’ve had sex with. It’s also released during childbirth and helps bond mother to child. Vasopressin is released postcoitally.

If people who were actually born here had to prove they were worthy enough to live in America, this would be a much less populated country.

IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS, hairstyles were markers of identity. Hairstyle could indicate everything from tribe or family background to religion to social status. Elaborate hairstyles designated power and wealth. A subdued style could be a sign that you were in a state of mourning. More than that, hair could have spiritual importance. Because it’s on your head—the highest part of your body and closest to the skies—many Africans viewed it as a passageway for spirits to the soul, a way to interact with God.

Maybe part of falling in love with someone else is also falling in love with yourself. I like who I am with her.

MY FATHER AND I WERE close once. In Jamaica, and even after we moved here, we were inseparable. Most times it felt like me and my dad—the Dreamers—against my mom and my brother—the Non-Dreamers.

How can all these people be going about their lives totally oblivious to what’s been happening to mine? Sometimes your world shakes so hard, it’s difficult to imagine that everyone else isn’t feeling it too.

But time and distance are love’s natural enemies.