Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (2013)

After a year of staying at the neighbor’s house, Eleanor is finally being allowed to come back to her house. Except, her house isn’t what it use to be. Now, it seems like all of her siblings worship her abusive step-dad and her family is even poorer than what they use to be. Across the neighborhood lives Park, a teenage boy who’s always had a stable family and loves all things punk. Eleanor and Park are total opposites so when they end up sitting next to each other on the bus they have nothing but displeasure for each other. But on the next bus ride, things change. Things change again on the bus ride after that and the bus ride after that. Soon they’re sharing comic books and then speaking to each other and even better, holding hands. Set in the backdrop of the late 1980s, Eleanor and Park’s relationship seems to come straight out of a movie. Unfortunately, it’s real life and it’s crashing down on them.

Eleanor & Park is a really good concept for a book. What I mean is, it glides on a lot of meaningful topics like bullying, racial dynamics, abuse, and mental illness. But like I said, it glides on those topics. All these topics were put in the book and talked about enough that it was a topic, but not enough that it actually had developed messages for the reader to take in. It’s like Rainbow Rowell was afraid that by talking about real issues the sweetness of the romance would be ruined. Basically, reading this book was like reading a rough draft that someone should’ve been like “Hey, maybe you should fix that.”

I’ve read this book a total of three times and it took the third time to realize that this book has really uneducated writing and ideas toward people of color and their role in society. So to start off, let’s address the fact that Rainbow Rowell writes from the point of view of someone of color while being white. For me and so many other people, there’s simply no way that, as a white person, someone could accurately represent the point of view of someone of color. Not only that, Rowell thinks she has merit to write from the point of view of Park, who is Korean, because she has Chinese friends. That’s not how it works.

Not only that, it’s obvious that she didn’t do her research on harmful stereotypes of Asian cultures because she definitely encouraged them. Granted, she did it unintentionally. Still, Park was continually talking about how much he hated being Korean and envied his brother for being white passing. He also said some pretty self destructing things about the shape of his eyes and so did Eleanor. Speaking of which, Eleanor refers to Park as “the stupid Asian kid” throughout the whole book. Um, no. At first, I thought that she was going to grow out of it once connecting with Park but she literally calls him that in the last few pages. Even that doesn’t make sense because people of color aren’t here to convince white people not to be racist. White people are supposed to do that by themselves by simply being good people.

Eleanor & Park takes place in 1987, a time I assume had even more racial tension than we have now. That being said, I find it hard to believe that Eleanor and Park never talked about what it was like to be in a interracial relationship. Interracial relationships are almost never represented in YA and I feel Rowell had a responsibility to discuss it. In general, their relationship also encouraged harmful gender roles.

I like to think that boys are beautiful people that are completely capable of being decent people. Apparently Rainbow Rowell does not, or at least it seems that way. It seemed that every other page Park was being praised for daring to be a sweet boy and loving Eleanor. Eleanor’s weight was also brought up all the time. The girl had the lowest self confidence I’ve ever read and she constantly gave credit to Park for liking her. Like I said, maybe Park was just a decent person and realized beauty and weight don’t relate.

There is one thing the Eleanor & Park does really well and that’s telling the story of a family going through domestic abuse. There were truly some terrifying scenes in this book that definitely show that abuse comes in so many different forms. It also shows an example on why it is so hard to escape abusive relationships and that it isn’t just getting the courage to get up to leave. That being said, it was obvious that the abuse Eleanor was experiencing left her with some pretty severe mental health issues. This was another issue that just wasn’t talked about and should’ve been.

So yeah, those are my thoughts on Eleanor & Park. Honestly, the only reason I’m giving this book three stars is 1) because I loved it the other two times I read it and 2) besides all the issues it was a sweet story at its core. I encourage everybody to read it for themselves and see what they think.

3 Stars