Resistance through reading in ‘Our Missing Hearts’
Celeste Ng will be the first to tell you: She’s not psychic. But anyone who has read her most recent book, “Our Missing Hearts,” might disagree.
Ng’s third novel follows 12-year-old Bird, whose society is governed by a law called PACT (Preserving American Culture and Traditions). Under PACT, any work deemed un-American is subject to censorship, and those accused of disseminating un-American ideals — especially those who are Asian American — risk having their children taken away.
Though the story is framed as a dystopia, many aspects of Bird’s world — book bans, rising anti-Asian sentiment, and family separation among them — have grown increasingly prevalent since the novel’s publication in 2022.
“Virtually everything that’s in the book has a precedent in real life,” Ng said. “The biggest thing I learned from researching this book is sadly that history repeats itself if we don’t do anything about it.”
Censorship is also at the heart of Bird’s separation from his mother, a Chinese American poet named Margaret Miu. When a protester with a sign bearing one of Margaret’s poems is killed, the poem becomes a rallying cry for the resistance, forcing her into hiding. In the process, she discovers a host of other people impacted by family separation, which, as she discovers, is a very old practice within the US.
“It felt important to write a story that was about Asians in particular, because that’s what I felt like I could speak to with any kind of experience and authority, but to also acknowledge that actually, this is a shared pain that lots of communities have had,” she said.
And as Ng acknowledges, the practice of removing children from their families for political reasons is hardly a thing of the past.
“We’re still finding new ways to separate parents from children and use it as a threat,” she said. “I’m thinking about what’s happening in Texas, for example, where parents who affirm their child’s gender in any way, like by taking them for gender-affirming care, or by allowing them to use different pronouns, can now have their children taken away from them.”
Though the novel is undoubtedly a cautionary tale, Ng sees it as a hopeful one as well.
“How do we encourage our children to still have hope for the world? Maybe it is by teaching them about mistakes of the past and trying to help them find ways to go forward.”
Celeste Ng will read at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 22, at Coolidge Corner Theatre in an event hosted by Brookline Booksmith, where she will be joined by Emily Habeck.