![]() “All of these things become colors on your palette, there for you even if you’re not consciously reaching for them,” she wrote. Those factors include her father serving in Korea while in the army, old schoolmates on a school bus and her friend Paul. “I don’t have a complete, definitive answer,” she writes in the post and then offers several factors she believes may have influenced the character’s inception. In the now-deleted blog post, Rowell states that many have asked her why she chose to write Park as a Korean character. Bookstacked retrieved a copy of the cached webpage. However, as of May 16, 2019, the post is absent from her website. ![]() Google cached the web page on April 10, 2019. The post, titled “Why is Park Korean?”, was published on April 28, 2013. Rowell seemed to partially-address criticisms in the past via a recently deleted blog post on her website. ![]() Other criticisms have stemmed from the fact that Park is a Korean surname, not a first name. But all I could keep thinking was, Damn it! Why did he have to be Korean? Why did this boy, who is so filled with self-loathing and contempt for his heritage, have to be Korean? Why did his mother with her sing songy broken English have to be Korean? Here’s the thing, it IS a lovely little teenage love story. But then another friend of mine asked me if I had any problems with the depiction of Park and his mother and I hurriedly picked it up before my daughter could read it. I even recommended it to a friend of mine (non-Korean) who loved it. It sounded like a perfect teenage love story. Of course I was! I bought it right away for my daughter. When I first heard of the book, it was through friends who thought I’d be interested in the portrayal of a half-Korean boy. But at the same time I have developed a growing angst over this subject and I will try to put it into words for you. I admit that I’ve not been very vocal about my feelings on this book because as a fellow author, I don’t feel comfortable speaking negatively about another author’s book. YA author Ellen Oh shared her feelings in a Q&A post on Tumblr in 2014: ![]() The arguments that Eleanor & Park is racist aren’t new. They have been talking about this for a while. “Boost them and the conversations they are having. “Listen to the Asian community on this one,” McKinney tweeted. McKinney was among those who spoke out against the movie adaptation because of the book’s depiction of Park. He never embraces his Asianness, and also manages to dismiss the exotification that Asian women experience. Park himself has a lot of internalized anti-Asian hatred, and doesn’t think he’s attractive specifically because he’s Asian. Others took to Twitter as well to voice their concerns. ![]() In The Wizard of Oz - the book, not the movie - Dorothy goes to this place called the Dainty China Country, and all the people are tiny and perfect.” ![]()
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