The Politics of Looking and the Reversal of the Gaze in The Eyes Are the Best Part

The Thematic Claim: Who Gets to Look, and Who Gets Consumed? In The Eyes Are the Best Part, Monika Kim builds a sustained interrogation of the politics of looking: the power to observe, objectify, and define others is never neutral, and it is always tied to race, gender, and social standing. The novel's central claim is that the gaze can be seized and reversed—that the person who has been looked at, categorized, and dismissed can learn to look back, and eventually to consume. Ji-won, the narrator, begins as someone who is seen but never truly perceived: George calls her a