Embracing Sincerity with YA: How Jenny Han Helped Me With Love // Dana Ewachow

The velvet ring box sits in my rain jacket pocket with the zipper pulled tight. I’m worried that I’ll lose it, like all the miscellanea of my life. I can’t let an engagement ring slip away like my five-dollar bills, hair elastics, and crumpled bus transfers. In a way, this is now the most precious thing I own. My partner and I are sitting in a café in Tokyo, debating how we should announce to our friends and family that we got engaged. I stare at the phone and fight my instincts to make a joke out of the situation. I consider posting a photo of a sulphurous volcano we passed the day before, saying I managed to wrestle a ring from the clutches of a wild-eyed Gollum. I think of using the ring box around the city, staging a series of proposals to my partner, escalating the levels of embarrassment every time. I could hit the public park, the Pokémon centre, the line by the subway station restrooms. I consider writing that I had managed to trick this man for several years and had successfully bewitched him into a proposal. If everybody could be cool and not shake him out of this questionable decision, I’d appreciate it. For a solid minute, I debate entering a single, sarcastic #blessed and hitting post.

*

Sincerity is hard for me. Many of my favourite books reflect this. Scaachi Koul’s One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter. Samantha Irby’s We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. I love writers who take serious, deeply-personal topics and turn them into essays that make you laugh too hard in public. Without that deft humour, the topics could be too intimate to touch as a stranger. Moments of deep hurt and affection are easier to swallow this way. I don’t feel as much like an intruder as I tear through the pages of their inner thoughts. Sometimes, I wonder if I use humour as a way to make my own feelings easier to handle. I dance around sincerity. Sarcastic comments, self-deprecating jokes, snarky digs—these can touch on the truth without getting too close. They’re not absent in truth, they’re adjacent to it. The books that push me out of this “comfort zone” are from the YA section. Stories where teen crushes feel like destiny, friendships are tested, and daydreams are brought to life. Sincerity finds a home in YA.In the Atlantic piece “Why So Many Adults Love Young-Adult Literature,” author John Green admitted that while teenagers are often described as jaded, he finds them “wondrously lacking in cynicism and wondrously earnest in their un-ironized emotional experience.” Green reasoned that this is because young adults experience so much for the first time. Everything feels raw, intense, and special. Jen Wang, the author of the modern fairy tale The Prince and the Dressmaker, made a similar statement about writing for the age-group in an interview for Forbes:With the characters as teenagers everything is heightened. You’re discovering who you are, clashing with your parents and falling in love. It’s also more hopeful I think because you’re working with characters who have their whole lives ahead of them and they’re just learning how they can impact the world by being true to themselves. The Prince and the Dressmaker warmed my cold heart. Nicola Yoon’s The Sun Is Also A Star made me cry on a plane. But the YA romance that really spoke to me was Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. I read the book at the very beginning of my vacation and by the end of it, the protagonist Lara Jean Song Covey reminded me that it’s okay to pin my heart to my sleeve, even for a moment. Lara Jean is the epitome of sincere. She’s a pastel-wearing, scrapbooking, romance-reading teen that daydreams about relationships. Her crushes are so overwhelming that the only way to conquer them is by writing secret good-bye letters to the boys. She spills all her feelings about her crush and then tucks the letter away in a teal hatbox.Lara Jean’s sweetness amplifies in the presence of other characters. Her sister, Margot, is practical in her actions, even when it comes to love. When Margot has to leave for university, she decides it’s more sensible to break up with her boyfriend than attempt to keep things going long-distance.Lara Jean’s friend Chris is a stark contrast, as well. Chris is rough-around-the-edges. She hooks up with random guys and doesn’t care much for romance. Her own experiences have shown her that people tend to punish girls who date around, but praise boys for the same. She expects the worst, often coming off callous and jaded. Lara Jean is aware that her two closest allies find her hopeful outlook grating: “My mom always said optimism was my best trait. Both Chris and Margot have said it’s annoying, but to that I say looking on the bright side of life never killed anybody.”When she discovers that her teal hatbox was raided and every goodbye letter was mailed, she tries to stick to that silver-lining attitude. One of the letters was addressed to Josh, Margot’s all-too-recent ex-boyfriend. Admitting her feelings to him would be an act of sisterly betrayal. When Josh confronts her about the letter, she lies and says that she’s dating Peter Kavinsky, another letter-recipient. Peter agrees to join in on the lie, so he can make his ex-girlfriend jealous. Lara Jean and Peter begin a fake relationship. The written contract seems to go against her very nature. She’s been dreaming about relationships this whole time, and then when she finally gets to be in one, it’s a sham.But, it seems like fate is on Lara Jean’s side. As the fake relationship goes on, Peter develops real feelings for her. He confesses at the beginning of a school ski trip. She brushes him off, even though they’re both aware that she likes him back. She’s afraid.Lara Jean realizes that every obstacle has cleared: Peter is single, he likes her, she likes him back. The only thing stopping her from getting the romance she’s always hoped for is her. Inspired by her revelation, she decides to be bold for once: “I wind my arms around his neck. I like the smell of chlorine on his skin. He smells like pool, and summer, and vacations. It’s not like the movies. It’s better, because it’s real.” A small act of bravery led to a moment of real happiness.YA books like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Prince and the Dressmaker celebrate the excitement of love. They let their characters and the readers revel in that joy. They tell you that it’s okay to bask in it.While Jenny Han had no influence on my proposal answer, she got me to think about how I wanted to talk about it, and how maybe my desire to undercut or dismiss a special moment doesn’t do me any good. It could only hurt me in the end.

*

I stare at my phone. I choose a photo that we took in front of a sun-soaked shrine, which happened only a day after he tried to fit the too-small ring onto my finger. I write a simple and excited statement that we’re engaged. It’s nerve-wracking and a relief. Instead of turning the memory into a joke, I leave it alone. I let myself be happy, genuinely happy.We finish our breakfast and then walk outside to soak up the sun before we head home.