All the Yellow Suns

by Malavika Kannan

Genres: YA Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

A coming-of-age story about a queer Indian American girl exploring activism and identity through art, 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.
 

Release date: July 11, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 320

Sample

The real kicker is that I wasn’t even supposed to live in Citrus Grove. I was supposed to live in Houston with both my parents in a house with a swimming pool. But things didn’t work out between them, so Amma and I moved to Citrus Grove—a sprawling suburb of Orlando with too many houses to count that has never actually felt like home.

It has two sides, like a coin. My side is filled with people of all backgrounds. There’s my mother, Sujatha Krishnan, and me. There’s Anya Patel, also Indian, next door to Ife Asefa, whose parents own Orlando’s best Ethiopian restaurant. Ife beat me on science tests six years in a row until we finally became friends. My best friend, Silva Rivera, moved from Puerto Rico the year I did from India. There are also Cubans and Koreans and lots of people who have thick accents and even thicker blood. Amma once joked that Citrus Grove was like the United Nations—that is, if the Security Council met in the Publix deli and instead of nukes, people hurled insults in multiple languages.

Juneau Zale was from the other side. She lived a mile away, but sometimes it felt more like a light-year. Her neighborhood had bake sales, church fundraisers, and Girl Scout cookies. Her parents even fostered dogs. At first glance, Juneau’s side was perfect. But then you saw the church ladies calling the cops on homeless people in the park. The realtor dads railing in their booming voices about the Immigrants and Newcomers Raising Their Taxes. Kids like Juneau roaming wild at night, smoking weed and raising hell. The white picket fences protecting their families from all forms of danger leaking from our side into theirs.

We all lived in Citrus Grove, but “we” looked very different depending on whom you asked.

I was always vaguely aware of Juneau Zale’s life because I ended up in it—briefly, mistakenly—when I was eight. I was running away from home. Those days Amma often fought with my father on the phone, their voices rattling the house like a snow globe, and I’d had enough. Before Amma could notice, I walked out the door. I didn’t really want to leave my mother, I just wanted to see how far I could go, if I could.

Unfortunately, I only made it a mile before the identical lawns started blending together like pages of an endless magazine. Deep in my belly, I knew I was lost. Amma had warned me that this could happen—it was all over the newspapers, TV, old bedtime stories dredged up from her childhood in India: Bad girls misbehaved and then they went missing, never to be seen again.

That was when I first saw Juneau. She was playing on the lawn of a massive house with pillars. The reason I’d stopped to stare at her house was because I thought it looked like the castles illustrated in fairy tales. Then I saw that Juneau was doing the kind of stupid shit Amma told me only white kids did. She had a pair of binoculars, and she was trying to stare directly at the sun.

I remember running up to her and saying, “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to stare at the sun?” or something panicked like that. Juneau Zale laughed at me, I think. She told me she was trying to figure out what color the sun was. “It’s the biggest mystery of our times,” she said. I had just read a book about the solar system, so I informed her it was actually just a colorless ball of gas. I asked her if she could see how many fingers I was holding up. At some point we both busted out laughing, and that’s when her parents came out.

Normally, being a kid, I automatically zoned out my friends’ parents, but I remembered Juneau’s vividly. One reason was that they were the first white adults, besides my teachers, to ever speak to me: officious and stern, like the porcelain couple atop a wedding cake. The other is that they called Amma and snitched on me, and she drove so fast she ran into their mailbox.

“Maya,” she snarled, gripping my arms hard enough to hurt. “What’s wrong with you?”

Mr. and Mrs. Zale were disturbed by the great Indian spectacle we were making. Maybe they’d heard that in immigrant cultures, runaway kids got their asses beat. Maybe they wanted to look out for me. “Are you new to town?” they asked Amma. “Are you okay?” they asked me, perhaps worried about my punishment.

“No,” said Amma shortly, answering two questions in one. She glared at the Zales and their lovely house, casting a curse with her gaze. “You’re lucky these people didn’t kill you!” she whispered, whisking me back home for a stern lecture about American stranger-danger.

I’m not sure who turned away first, me or Juneau. Because all I remember is looking back for one last glimpse of the girl with pickle-green eyes, but she was already gone. And I figured maybe I’d imagined her.

I forgot all about Juneau until she crash-landed back into my life in high school. In the eight years until then, we were occupied with other things. I was becoming a good daughter to Amma. Meanwhile Juneau was becoming a local legend: a rock star, minus the guitar smashing. Rumors followed her wherever she went—how Juneau painted portraits of each of her lovers, burned them in the dead of night. How she once hooked up with the whole football team. How she ran away the summer before junior year, possibly to hide a secret pregnancy. Lore swirled around her, and she never denied it, whether or not it hurt.

Regardless, I fell in love with her. I did it the way I learned to swim—quickly, recklessly, no lifeguards or life vests: just straight into the deep end, my lungs straining from the depth. Amma thought it was the quickest way for me to learn. I’ve been taking blind leaps ever since.

I was with Silva the night before I met Juneau all over again. It was the last night of summer before sophomore year. Anya and Ife traveled all summer, returning to their motherlands, so it was quiet at home, just the two of us. That night started like most nights—rented movies at his house, wine stolen from his brothers—and ended with our lying side by side in the yard, talking about our plans in the abstract way you do when you’re half sober beneath the stars. Mine, as always, was to move to New York and open an art studio for women of color. Silva’s was more practical: make a shitload of money, enough to take care of his parents for years.

We were sprawled across his lawn, sharing his headphones. Violin burst into fireworks of sound, and I resisted the urge to seize my sketchbook. We often spent hours like this, connected by the ear, but this time was different, because this music was written by Silva.

“I can’t believe it,” I said when the music ended. “I can’t believe you composed music all summer and didn’t tell me. It’s just so—” I searched for a word vast enough to hold Silva’s music, but I came up short. Everything was floating past the finish line of this summer. We had yet to find out where our lockers would be, whom we’d watch football games with, or whether we wanted to fall in love. But there was time to decide before tomorrow. With Silva, there was always time.

“After spending the whole summer together, I think we’ve transcended verbal communication,” Silva said, smiling. “We’re functionally telepathic.”

“That’s true. You always bring the exact snacks I’m craving, even before I realize I’m hungry.”

Silva smirked. “That’s because I know when you get your period.” I laughed, and he sobered. “But the violin stays between us. I don’t want everyone to know I’m working on all this.”

“What? Why not?”

I still remembered finding the violin at a garage sale in the sixth grade. Silva picked it up, and something inside him seemed to soften.

“I just don’t want it to become a big deal,” said Silva.

“Is this about your parents not supporting your music? There’s that conservatory I researched, they have scholarships for low-income students—”

“You know what my parents are like,” said Silva. “Music doesn’t pay the bills, that’s what they said. I have to think about them, too.”

“Maybe if your parents heard your music, they’d think differently,” I pressed.

Silva was already putting his headphones away.

“Maya, can you not fight me on this?”

“Silva, I don’t understand,” I said. “You have a chance to get out of Citrus Grove and have the world. Why are you giving up?”

“Because not all of us want the world,” he said, closing the box. “I think you should go home. There’s school tomorrow.”

I knew better than to argue with him, not even telepathically. So I walked home alone. When I got inside, Amma was gone—she worked as a nurse, and her hospital shift started at night. I barely saw her outside of weekends, and even then, she was often too tired to hang out. There was an opened Chinese takeout box with lipstick on the fork, abandoned mid-bite. Amma rarely stayed in one place after my father left—or, more accurately, never arrived. Instead, she circled between home, work, and men: a never-ending midlife merry-go-round. You’d think if she didn’t stop moving she’d vanish.

Amma’s mistake was falling in love with an artist. My father, Rajendra Krishnan, is a famous painter, and when he joined us from India, we were going to move to Texas. But then my father’s visa got denied. His career took off in India. He and Amma fought for years on the phone, until one day the phone stopped ringing. There were no birthday cards, no video calls, just silence, until even my memories of him faded. I forgot the sound of his voice. He forgot he had a child.

We never moved away, but we eventually had to move on. Amma did her best to raise me in this strange country alone, but I knew she really missed my dad. Once, when I was thirteen, I tried asking about him.

“I have a question,” I said. We were eating dinner: homemade tacos, because Amma was feeling culinarily adventurous. We’re all brown-skinned people, she’d said. How different can Mexican food be from our own? She ended up burning the tacos, but I ate them without complaint, because I wanted her to lower her guard.

It worked. “What is it, kanna?”

“Why doesn’t my father call anymore?”

Amma didn’t say anything, but the taco shell cracked in her hands, spilling onto her plate—undercooked beans, soft lettuce. “Am I not doing enough for you?” she asked.

I stared. “Of course you are,” I said.

Amma’s eyes flickered, and it felt intrusive to see her pain. Sharply personal, like reading her diary.

“He loves you, Maya,” said Amma. “But he knows he can’t be a stable, present parent for you. That’s why he’s stayed away.”

Something tipped over inside me. “He can’t?” I said. “Or won’t?”

Amma set down her taco. “Rajendra is a brilliant man,” she said. “But his true love is his art. He made his choice when he stayed in India.” She smiled sadly. “Genius takes sacrifice, Mayavati. I’m just so glad he passed his talents to you.”

“Why aren’t you angry at him?” I demanded, surprising her. I was younger then—I rarely challenged Amma.

“Are you, Maya?” said Amma. “Angry, that is.” She was using the calm, even-tempered voice she used on her patients. Rather than soothe me, her voice irritated me. I often felt this way—ignited for no reason, when nobody else was. I didn’t know where my rage came from, but I knew better than to let it show. I just stayed inflamed, like a bruise that wouldn’t heal.

“Of course I am,” I said, and Amma frowned.

“I’m only going to say this once,” she said. “When you love someone, there’s no place for anger. You accept them as they are, even if it hurts. Do you understand?”

She didn’t wait for my response. “But we cannot accept these burned tacos,” she said. “They taste horrible.” Amma dumped our plates in the trash, offered me her hand. “Come, Maya,” she said. “Let’s get pizza.”

Amma believed that love had no place for anger, but I had plenty of room for both. I could resent Amma for excusing Rajendra and still love her more than anybody on earth. I could hate Rajendra for leaving us and still grow obsessed with his art. For years I watched him from afar, like a patron in a gallery. I started googling him, following his famous portraits of brown women, imagining the world through his eyes.

After my outburst, Amma began dating other men, but more often she rearranged the furniture. I’d come home some days and find the couch upside down on the porch. Amma said this was to prevent spiders.

But I knew better. I knew about immigrant mothers and the ways they exerted control in a changing world. Besides, I really liked spiders. Once, I watched a spider build its nest under my windowsill. I let it live, despite Amma’s orders. Who was I to deny anyone the chance to choose their home?

I must’ve fallen asleep at the table, because the next thing I registered was Amma’s prodding me awake.

“Maya?” she said. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

Amma had her work face on—hair twisted back, lipstick fresh. On her name tag, the As in Sujatha had smiley faces drawn in. I checked the kitchen clock: 3:00 a.m.

“You worry me, kanna,” she said. “I’ve got a date visiting tomorrow and this house needs cleaning. God, I’m hungry.” She reached for her takeout, but I’d already finished it. “Did you save me the fortune cookie at least?”

I slid her the cookie. “Who’s the date?”

Amma cracked the cookie to find the message. “What we spend our lives outrunning is what brings us true peace,” she read aloud. “Isn’t that lovely?”

“Amma,” I interrupted.

She flushed. “His name is Ramesh and he owns a car dealership in Kissimmee. You remember him, from the Patels’ Diwali dinner? He’s very respected in the community.” She crunched the cookie. “They should just sell these in plastic boxes at the grocery store. People would line up for all this luck.”

Amma’s voice swelled with an emotion I couldn’t pinpoint. It took me a second to recognize it: hope. The same hope from back when she worked day shifts and could take me to restaurants at night, would ask me to dance after her third or fourth drink. We fought less back then, and our movements felt easier. She’d shimmy slowly, her arms linked with mine so hard our elbows poked. In those moments, I wasn’t her child, I was the life she could’ve lived.

“I hope it goes well,” I said.

Amma smiled. She was beautiful, all curves, soft laughter, easy smile, so unlike myself—I scowled too much, slouched, bounced on my feet like I wanted to make a run for it. Amma liked to joke that I got my ornery traits, including my thick wild hair, from my father. My friends loved Sujatha Aunty for her endless warmth. Sometimes I wished she wasn’t mine so I could love her so easily, too.

“Go to bed,” said Amma. “You have school tomorrow.”

I slipped out from under her outstretched arm, headed for my room. Then I remembered. “Amma?” I said. “Can you drive me to school?”

She looked up from the kitchen table. “Isn’t Silva driving you to school?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“Is everything all right between you two?”

“We had a disagreement,” I said. “But hopefully we’ll fix things soon.”

“Of course you will,” Amma said. She patted me on the shoulder but didn’t say anything else. She didn’t tell me what to do or pick me up while everything sank—she never did. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a full conversation. Instead she floated off to the living room, which started to creak and groan. She was moving the couches around again.

Unable to sleep, I checked my phone in bed. There was a text from Anya, finally back home from India—I responded with a proportionate number of exclamation points. Another from Ife wondering whether I’d completed the summer homework, which made me laugh. Ife knew full well that I’d finished in the first week of summer, because she’d done the same.

I checked Instagram next. I was a pretty private person online. There was only one person I logged into Instagram to see anyway. And that was my father.

A photo of him loaded onscreen. His dark hair, unruly like mine. His wide nose, which I’d hated on my face until I saw it on him, crinkled from smiling. I glanced at his caption: TOUR.

According to the post, Rajendra had won a prestigious fellowship for the arts—I didn’t need to google it to know it was big because of the thousands of adoring comments. His work would be shown in galleries across the United States. He’d give lectures at museums and universities. This autumn, he’d be the artist-in-residence at the Orlando Museum of Art.

I had to reread for a few minutes before it sunk in. After all these years, he was back.

“Amma?” I almost called, but then I remembered what Amma had advised, years earlier: You accept people as they are, even if it hurts.

The problem is, that’s not what artists do. We imagine people as the portrait versions of themselves—smooth, ideal, never disappointing. I was tired of waiting for Rajendra. It was terrible to do alone.

So I went to bed, and as the furniture scraped the floor, I wondered how life would be if I, too, like Amma, believed in fortune cookies.

The next morning, my mother drove me to hell. Citrus Grove High School, that publicly funded purgatory, was equally known for our town’s lone football team and its propensity for brawls and mayhem. It reminded me of a medieval fortress, because the buildings were surrounded by a massive tar-black moat that was the suburban parking lot. Four thousand of us arrived from all corners of town to do daily, tireless battle. It wasn’t clear if there were ever winners.

Inside the cafeteria, I opened my sketchbook to illustrate my first impressions of sophomore year.

I already knew that Citrus Grove could not be painted into submission. In seventh grade, Amma sent me to art lessons in Orlando. My teacher had studied yoga in India, but she actually had a license plate from Vermont. “Find your home,” she advised, so I tried. I tried sketching the textures of our food, the footprints of mothers who worked night shifts. But the paints sneered at me. Little brown girl plays artist, they whispered. Your home is not here.

Still, the art teacher took a liking to me. She offered to drive me home in her car with the Vermont plates. But when we pulled into my neighborhood, she rolled up the windows and locked the doors. “What a dump,” she said. “They ought to fix this area up.”

I followed her gaze and saw squat, ugly houses. I saw Amma waving at me, but I pretended not to notice her.

My teacher smiled at me. “How much farther do you live, Maya?” she said.

“Take a right.” I smiled back. She took a right, then another, dropping me off outside the house I pointed to, which was red-tiled, shiny, and also a mile away from my actual house. I walked the mile back, feeling like I’d finally found my home, but not the way my teacher wanted.

But now I was older and smarter. I knew who I was. I tried to capture the energy in the cafeteria: girls in ripped jeans, jostling, gossiping, trying to make their summers sound more exciting than they actually were. I always drew girls, because they were the most interesting.

“Miss me, bitch?”

I turned to see my friend Anya Patel racing toward me, a blur of dark hair and floral skirts. There was no chance to brace myself before she threw her arms around me.

“Seriously. Did you miss me?” Anya asked, coming up for air between hugs.

“Not a chance,” I said, and she smothered me again. “Of course I missed you. I could barely function without you. How was India?”

Anya grinned. “My mom didn’t try to find me a husband, but she did unfortunately consult astrologers about my SATs.” She rolled her eyes. “How was your summer?”

Sometimes I envied Anya, with her unbroken family and frequent trips to India. She didn’t know how it felt to be alone, abandoned, or stuck in place—all experiences with which I felt achingly familiar. “I just got drunk with Silva,” I said. “Tried not to murder any of my mom’s boyfriends.”

“Citrus Grove is the armpit of Florida,” Anya agreed. “It was good to get out of here and stop thinking about Sam. I deserve better than cheating white boys.”

“Good riddance,” I said.

“Anyway.” Anya laughed. “I was thinking we should seduce a senior this semester so we get invited to parties. Actual parties with drugs, not just wine and Capri Suns from your mom’s pantry. No offense to Sujatha Aunty’s pantry.”

I smirked. “It would be nice to put our juice box days behind us.”

“Well, who are you interested in, then?” Anya asked. “And I can help you with makeup, if you want. I notice you’re a little heavy-handed.”

“I think you’re better qualified for the seduction,” I said, sourer than I intended. Over the past few years, guys had started noticing Anya, following her around like hired bodyguards. She knew things I didn’t, like how to kiss boys without ever being taught. Standing beside her, I doubted I’d ever be seen at all.

“It’s sophomore year, Maya,” Anya said. “This is the dawn of our womanhood. We’re not freshmen anymore, but we’re not old and jaded, either. You could loosen up a bit.”

Just then, Ife Asefa grabbed me from behind, squeezing me so tightly I was sure I’d grown a much-needed inch by the time she released me.

“I can’t believe this,” she said. “My two favorite brown girls. I lose track of you for one summer, and you both come back indiscriminately hot?”

“Oh, shut up, Ife,” said Anya. “We all know you’re the most beautiful girl in all of Florida.”

Ife blushed, but Anya was right: Ife had unlocked herself two years ago in a dramatic rebirth as a pouty-lipped model, turning heads wherever she went. What exactly happened to some girls over the summer and not others? While Ife’s and Anya’s bodies molded into maturity with the ease of clay sculptures, mine did so awkwardly. As an artist, I lived only in reflected beauty, never my own.

“By the way, Maya,” Ife said, turning to me. “Is everything all right with you and Silva? I saw him a few minutes ago and he seems even quieter than usual.”

I told them about our fight the previous night. Anya clicked her tongue. “Lecturing Silva about his ambition like that?” she said. “You kind of sound like my mother.”

“That’s not true,” said Ife. “Maya was just trying to help him get his shit together. I’m sure he’ll come around.”

I tried to return her smile. “I hope so,” I said. “I would do anything for any of you. Like, I would beat up grown men of any size. You know that, right?”

“Of course we do,” said Anya firmly. “And so does Silva. It’ll all be fine once—”

We turned around at the sound of boys yelling. A fight was breaking out.

“Holy shit, is that Squash?” said Ife.

The louder of the boys was, indeed, Anya’s ex-boyfriend, Sam “Squash” Harvey, so nicknamed for the football accident that left his nose permanently askew. Squash pushed someone to the ground, his blond hair shining. Both guys were massive and well matched, like Titans. The nearest onlookers formed a human ring around them, hooting and cheering.

“It’s not even Fight Week,” groaned Ife, referring to CGHS’s long-standing tradition of student duels the week before homecoming.

“Seven minutes back from summer break, and there’s already a fistfight,” I said. “When is the male species going to evolve?”

To be fair, Squash Harvey had never been the poster child for human evolution, despite being the principal’s grandson and football captain, all while owning the largest house in Citrus Grove. He and Anya had dated in secret from their families for months. He’d been an exceptionally bad boyfriend, cheating on her last year. It was among my dearest desires to punch his twisted nose.

“What did you ever see in him, Anya?” I said. “Besides the football body, I guess. And the fact that he drives a Porsche.”

Anya bit her lip. “Sam wasn’t all bad,” she said. “He snuck me into his family’s condo in Sarasota. He even bought jewelry for my sisters. He took care of me.”

“Remember the time he called me the student council’s diversity pick?” said Ife indignantly. “He’s a racist dick. I hope the other guy beats him up.”

Anya was covering her face—she couldn’t bear violence, not even on TV, so I stepped in front of her. This gave me a close-up view of the combatants. I recognized the tackled figure to be Mateo Chavez, CGHS’s quarterback. His lip bled freely as he delivered a kick.

“Let’s go,” I told Ife. “Before the cops get here and make a scene.” We seized Anya’s arms, but we’d barely waded out of the crowd when an elbow hit my jaw. It was so painful that I did an involuntary karate kick and yelled, “Fuck!”

Eyes watering, I caught sight of the offending elbow, which was connected to a pale arm, which was connected to the body of my erstwhile savior Juneau Zale, who’d appeared out of nowhere.

“Maya,” she said, unsurprised, like she’d run into me at the grocery store. “You should watch where you’re going.”

Ife hissed in my ear, “Juneau Zale knows your name?”

Juneau strode purposefully toward the epicenter of the fight. The whispers spread like wildfire—Juneau Zale was here.

That was just the way she made her appearances: descending like a UFO, spreading shock waves in her wake.

Juneau shoved onlookers aside until she was standing on top of the boys, somehow immune to their violence. “Mateo, stop it,” she snarled, dragging him to his feet.

Swearing, Squash stood up. I felt a sudden spike of fear for Juneau. Her back was turned as Squash towered over her. My legs thrummed with momentum. For a second, it seemed to me that Squash would hit her, and it was up to me to stop him. But then Juneau whirled back around.

“Sam Harvey, right?” she said. Squash opened his mouth, and Juneau said, “That was a rhetorical question. We all know each other’s names. What I want to know is why you were astride your illustrious teammate Mateo Chavez. You looked like a pair of fumbling virgins.”

The crowd laughed, and both guys reddened.

“Stay out of this, Juneau,” Mateo said. “This is between Squash and me.”

“It’s our first day of senior year,” said Juneau. “Isn’t this the time we promise to be friends forever, or sappy shit like that?”

“I sold Chavez some items,” Squash said meaningfully. “He owes me several hundred dollars. The debt has lasted too long. I’m here to collect.”

Juneau laughed. Haughty and dispassionate, she had the kind of laugh that could never sound respectful. She seemed unfazed by all the attention—or she was enjoying it.

“Come on, Squash,” she said. “You’re way too rich to be selling weed. I’ve seen your mansion. Are you sure your family can’t just plow down some more endangered mangroves to make it up?”

Squash opened his mouth angrily, but she cut him off. “Th. . .