Title: Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
Book Beginning/First Line Friday quote:
Friday56 quote:
She was always doing that, telling him stories. Prying open cracks for magic to seep in, making the world a place of possibility. After she left, he had stopped believing all those fantasies. Wispy, false dreams that disintegrated in the morning's light. Now it occurs to him that, perhaps, there might be truth in them after all.
Summary:
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
Review:
Merriam-Webster defines the word "dystopian" as "an imagined world where the people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives." The Oxford English dictionary also includes "great suffering due to injustice." Think of all the great dystopian novels you've read: The Handmaid's Tale, Fahrenheit 451, 1984. Now add Our Missing Hearts to the list. It is a dystopian novel set in America in what could be today, with issues not far from what we are experiencing now: book banning, morals police, prejudicial attitudes and violence aimed at one racial group (in this book it is Asians, especially Chinese-Americans) and the removal of children from their homes if the parents don't toe the line. Everyone becomes distrustful of their neighbors. Fear reigns.
Noah Gardiner, called Bird by his mother, is twelve and lives with his father in a dorm at Harvard, where his father works in the library. Bird's mother is on the run, leaving the family to save them. She had published a poem called "All Our Missing Hearts" and the poem has been used during subversive actions by others. Though the mother had nothing to do with those actions, she is "guilty" because she wrote the poem. America is living under PACT — the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act — which became law during a confused and economically disastrous period known as the Crisis.
One day Noah receives a letter addressed to "Bird" so he knows it is from his mother. Inside is one sheet of paper covered with tiny little illustrations of cats. Somehow he figures out that his mother is calling out for him to find her. His search leads him to New York City. But before he gets there he finds himself in several libraries and he learns that many librarians are working to discover where the "re-placed" children are. These are the children who were taken from their homes and placed in foster care because the parents were deemed to be subversive. When he gets to NYC the bus lets him off in Chinatown. He notices that the street signs have been doctored and changed, as if to remove anything Chinese. “Someone — everyone — has tried to make the Chinese disappear.”
I won't give anything away from Our Missing Hearts powerful and heart-wrenching ending but I hope you have figured out that it is about words and stories, and the importance that stories have in all our lives to save us.
Ng uses her afterward to highlight all the dystopian-type activities that have happened in the US in our history: Native children removed from their homes, Japanese internment during WWII, children removed from their parents at the border, racial discrimination against Blacks and other BIPOC people, book banning efforts that are under way right now. I shivered thinking this world, Ng's world, could end up being our world if certain politicians campaigning to be President right now have their way.
I listened to the audio narrated by Lucy Liu. I was mesmerized by it. I was completely caught up in this story and highly recommend it to you. I hope that my book club picks it up for a future meeting. It will make a powerful discussion, I'm sure.
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-Anne
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