Our Missing Hearts

LOVED this one.

This book is set in the near future in the USA. Life is ruled by PACT: the protection of American culture and traditions. Which means foreigners, especially anyone who looks Asian, are suspect, as China is seen as the biggest threat to American values. Under PACT rules, children can be removed from their parents if the parents expose them to unamerican ideas or activities.

The story revolves around Bird, who has an Asian mother and white father. His mother has written books banned under PACT and Bird's father takes steps to distance him and his son from any suspicion that they share the mother's beliefs. But Bird misses his mother and when an opportunity arises to find her, he takes it.

This book is evocative of so many show more actual events, such as the residential schools and the "Sixties Scoop" programs in Canada where Aboriginal children were taken from their families. And the way immigrant children are separated from their families at the US border. It is also reminiscent of Communist regimes where neighbours were encouraged to report each other. And of George Orwell's "thought police".

It's also a good story about love, loyalty and doing what you can to stand up for what is right.

Like I said, I loved it. show less

I am not sure how to explain this book, I’m not even sure I know whether I liked it or not. What I am sure of is that it’s beautifully written. I’m also sure that the realism and beautiful language made this book extremely terrifying. The story predicts a dystopian future for America and maybe the entire world. It also illustrates the power of a mother’s love and how that love can maybe mend a totally broken and dysfunctional world. The story is told from the viewpoint of a 12- year-old boy called Bird. Up until the age of 9, Bird led a perfectly normal life with a loving family. Then a global crisis occurs and somehow Bird’s mom is caught in the crosshairs. She becomes a wanted woman and goes on the run leaving her family show more behind. For three long years Bird and his father lead a quiet life, but then it becomes too much for Bird and he has to find his mother. His quest takes him to New York City and to a mansion on Park Avenue and then to a derelict brownstone on the outskirts of the city. The story is heartbreaking with the message it delivers and with the eeriness of recognition throughout which alludes to our world today. It is quite a story that Celeste Ng delivers! If you decide to read it you will fall in love with Bird too. Expect to be shocked and saddened, but also be prepared for the story to touch your heart too. show less

dystopian fiction (CW/TW: anti-Asian violence, forced child/parent separation, government censorship and oppression, animal cruelty). Set in Cambridge and NYC, with guerilla art protests and a secret librarian network.
12 y.o. Bird doesn't understand why his Chinese-American mother left him and his white father, who has barely been able to keep them fed because of Red-Scare like politics. When a mysterious clue from his mother arrives in the mail Bird is determined to find the woman who seems to have become a leader of the resistance.

I liked the etymology (Bird's dad's hobby) showcasing the hidden beauty in Chinese writing, though in the Large Print edition the various symbols had all been reproduced the as the same identical symbol show more (cat), so the effect was lost in that printing. Skilled storytelling and depth in the characters (Bird, Sadie, Margaret, Ethan) and the world they inhabited, with positive messages of hope and resistance amidst oppression that feels all too believable. show less

In a near future United States, America has suffered through the Crisis, a collapse worse than the Great Depression. PACT (Preserving American Culture and Traditions) is what pulled the country back together, but at great cost: by pinning the blame on China, all Asian Americans are suspect, as is anyone who speaks out against PACT. To enforce submission and compliance, the government will remove children from homes where the parents are a bad influence, so parents live in fear.

Bird's mother, Margaret Miu, was a poet whose lines became the rallying cry of anti-PACT activists, throwing suspicion on her; in order to protect Bird, Margaret and Bird's white dad, Ethan, agree that Margaret will leave, cutting off all connection to the show more family, when Bird is nine. Three years later, Bird receives a letter from his mother, and follows his memories of the stories she told him to find the clue that will bring him to her.

In New York, Margaret was reunited with her old friend from the Crisis, Domi, now in charge of an electronics empire, and Bird is reunited with his mother and with his friend Sadie, a foster child who is searching for her parents. Margaret is working on a project that Bird and Sadie believe will change everything - but will it make enough of a difference?

Heartbreaking. And as Ng mentions in the Author's Note, "There is a long history, in the U.S. and elsewhere, of removing children as a means of political control."

Quotes

People didn't like to talk about it, liked to hear about it even less: that the patriotism of PACT was laced with a threat. (40)

She was always doing that, telling him stories. Prying open cracks for magic to seep in, making the world a place of possibility. (101)

...but if there's one thing he remembers from stories, it's that people who offer help along your way - whether directing you to treasure or warning you of danger - should not be ignored. (105)

The librarian sighs. How can you know, she says, if no one teaches you, and no one ever talks about it, and all the books about it are gone? (114)

How porous the boundary was between him and world, as if everything flowed through him like water through a net. (148)

...the wind scrapes across the top of the city like a knife leveling flour from a cup... (151)

Here [in New York] no one noticed you, she realized. Which meant you could do anything, be anything. (158)

It can't go on, everyone said, but it kept going on. (177)

Left unsaid was that unity required a common enemy. One box in which to collect all their anger; one straw man to wear the hats of everything they feared. (186)

It happened so slowly that you might not even notice it at all, like the sky turning from dust to dark. (228)

[Sadie] looked around. There was the street lamp. And here in front of her was the magical doorway that might take her home. (252)

...[Bird's parents had] loved him so fiercely it had made them dangerous. (290)

Is anyone listening, out there? Are people simply rushing by? And how much of a difference can it make really, just one story, even all these stories taken together and funneled into the ear of the busy world - a world moving so quickly that voices and sounds Doppler into a rising whine, so distracted that even when your attention snags on the burr of something unusual, you are dragged away before you can see it, uprooting it like a bee's spent stinger. It is hard for anything to be heard and even if anyone hears it, how much of a difference could it really make, what change could it possibly bring, just these worlds, just this thing that happened once to one person that the listener does not and will never know. It is just a story. It is only words.
She does not know if it will make any difference. She does not know if anyone is listening....But still: she turns another page and goes on. (299)

Bird. Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense. (301) show less

A PACT of Suppression
Review of the Penguin Audio audiobook edition narrated by Lucy Liu released simultaneously with the Penguin Books hardcover (October 4, 2022)

This is America. We don't burn books, we pulp them.

Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts imagines a not-too-distant future dystopian America which goes through an economic crisis in which China and by extension all Asian countries are scapegoated. This results in nationalist elements enacting a so-called PACT (Preserving American Culture and Tradtions) Act which is consequently used to control the population through ever looser interpretation. One aspect becomes the removal of children from families who have been identified as having dissident views.

The story centres on 12-year old show more Noah "Bird" Gardner the son of etymologist Ethan Gardner and poet Margaret Miu. The story begins in a flash forward from the Crisis in the midst of PACT America where Miu has been separated from her family and son. We gradually learn that she has become a symbol of the anti-PACT movement through her book of poetry "Our Missing Hearts", although we don't know if she has been imprisoned, executed or is on the run and underground. Bird receives clues to his mother's possible continued existence and sets out in an attempt to find her. Further discussion of the plot would get into spoiler territory.

This was a powerful and compelling story which I listened to in only a few days mostly during travel to seasonal gatherings and events. It felt completely plausible due to its many historical and recent parallels whether from slavery to indigenous residence schools to immigrant family separation to the anti-Asian racism which was inflamed by the COVID Pandemic. It leads to a dramatic conclusion in which the individual stories of tragedy and suppression can still be a message of hope, endurance and inspiration to others.

Trivia and Links
Author Celeste Ng reads the Author's Note afterword in this audiobook edition and recommends the following additional reading:
On the history of American political control of families by the forced separation of children:
Taking Children: A History of American Terror (2020) by Laura Briggs.

On anti-Asian discrimination:
The Making of Asian America: A History (2015) by Erika Lee.
Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear (2014) edited by John Kuo Wei Tchen & Dylan Yates.
Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II (2015) by Richard Reeves.
From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement (2021) by Paula Yoo.

While Ng acknowledges that the version of the folk story of "The Boy Who Drew Cats" is her own variation, the classic version is The Boy Who Drew Cats (1898) translated by Lafcadio Hearn from the original Japanese language series "Japanese Fairy Tales" by Hasegawa Takejirō. show less

I have mentioned once or twice before that I think it is sort of douchy to quote my own reviews, and as with those other times I am going to do that here anyway. Here I am going to quote myself for an important reason. When I read Little Fires Everywhere I said:

"I had some of the same issues with this book as with Ng's last. It is worth noting that I thought those issues were less significant in Little Fires than in the last book; Once again I came away thinking Ng is enormously talented, that she hasn't reached her peak yet, and that I really want to see what is next."

Here we are. Ng is enormously talented, and here we see it. This is a BIG book filled with commentary and truth and a really special story. Ng has an endnote where she show more talks about the many books and events that inspired Our Missing Hearts. All of the books were new to me, but the events were not surprising. This is dystopia that screams at us that we are already living in an early stage dystopia. As with books like The Handmaid's Tale there is no question we are already on a path where this is likely to happen. We live in a country where families are torn apart by our government and the majority of Americans do not care at all. Any natural primal feelings that might rear up at the thought of parents having their children ripped away for no reason get shoved into the background by propaganda that stokes fear and endorses racial hatred. In the book the hate is anti-Chinese, but we saw Trump and friends doubling down on messaging about the danger we were all in from undocumented Latin American people all on some giant killing spree. In fact undocumented people commit far fewer crimes than nearly any other demo in the US, but why look at facts when we can roll around in fear like pigs in shit. (I hear lots of people my age lamenting that it is not like it was when we were growing up and kids could run free. No it is not like the seventies, in fact violent crime is down exponentially from that time. We are all in less danger -- but the 24-hour news cycle and places like NextDoor and The Daily Mail website remind us that we have much to fear. Many people get off on being afraid. It gives them an excuse to sit around in their bubbles where they enjoy complete control rather than engaging with the world.)

I don't want to talk about the plot too much, because it unfolds very nicely when you go in blind (as I did.) This is a touching, intricate, engaging story of love of country, love of truth, and love of family. It is also a celebration of people who swim against the tide and a warning of what happens when people twist that love and replace facts with lies and the people follow along like sheep. It is also a story of the importance of storytelling through prose, poetry, public art and other avenues. It is not perfect. Ng hits some of her points too hard, but it is damn good.

I listened to this narrated by Lucy Liu, and she was great. show less

This was absolutely a 5 star read for me, despite the difficult subject matter and need to put it down half-way through. It's intense, and there are moments of violence that may be triggers for readers.

The story is told mostly from the point of view of young Bird, now known as Noah, who is 12 and who lives with his father in a student college dormitory. His father shelves books at the college library, and Bird's/Noah's mother has not been part of their lives for about three years. It is during encounters at a pizza place, and recollections of a school friend, that we the reader learn of the PACT act and violent anti-Asian sentiment in the US.

At about the half-way point, we meet Bird's mother, daughter of Chinese immigrants, and learn show more how this violent campaign against not just Asians but also protesting the government and banning books began. How inflation and a loss of jobs led to picking one group to blame, with scrutiny of library shelves for subversive books being just one of the results. This latter is important because Margaret, Bird's mother, wrote a book of poetry that is one of the books removed from library shelves.

There is also the PACT Act, a law enacted during the Crisis, that allows the government to remove any children from any household deemed too "radical" for the child to stay. Spying on one's neighbors is encouraged, and signs are posted in windows of houses and shops both with messages that sound eerily similar to the slogans from "1984" by George Orwell.

How Bird copes with his loss, how his mother copes with her loss, and how millions of Americans are affected by the chaos of a few difficult years makes this a timely and prescient book. show less