All the Yellow Suns
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
When a queer Indian American teenager is swept into a life of art, romance, and resistance, she must make up her own mind when it comes to identity, activism, and love in this story perfect for fans of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.
Sixteen-year-old Maya Krishnan is fiercely protective of her friends, immigrant community, and single mother, but she knows better than to rock the boat in her conservative Florida suburb. Her classmate Juneau Zale is the polar opposite: she’s a wealthy white heartbreaker who won’t think twice before capsizing that boat.
When Juneau invites Maya to join the Pugilists—a secret society of artists, vandals, and mischief-makers who fight for justice at their school—Maya descends into the world of change-making and resistance. Soon, she and Juneau forge a friendship that inspires Maya to confront the challenges in her own life.
But as their relationship grows romantic, painful, and twisted, Maya begins to suspect that there’s a whole different person beneath Juneau’s painted-on facade. Now Maya must learn to speak her truth in this mysterious, mixed-up world—even if it results in heartbreak.
Between emotional threads of first love and identity, comes a powerful exploration of the crusade for social change within a divided community.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Queer Indian American 16-year-old Maya Krishnan, a talented artist, attends a conservative high school in a central Florida suburb that often feels like "it has two sides." Maya's mother jokes that their neighborhood, populated by people of Cuban, Ethiopian, Korean, and Puerto Rican descent, is like the United Nations. The block where Maya's enigmatic white classmate Juneau Zale lives, meanwhile, has "realtor dads railing in their booming voices about the Immigrants and Newcomers Raising Their Taxes." As relations between school administration and BIPOC students become strained, Juneau asks Maya to join the Pugilists, a secret society of Banksy-esque artists and mischief-makers who use art to fight against their school's bigoted policies. But with Maya engaging in increasingly risky behavior with the Pugilists—and falling for Juneau—she begins neglecting her family and friends. When an incident jeopardizes Maya's future, she realizes that her work with the society has her in way over her head—and that Juneau might not be who she presents to the world. If occasionally polemic prose sometimes halts narrative pacing, debut author Kannan's critiques of law enforcement, misogyny, and racism are astute, and Maya's perceptive first-person narration is both polished and emotionally raw, making for a socially conscious self-love story about identity, family, and belonging. Ages 14–up.
