The mighty Celeste Ng has created a dystopian United States where neighbors inform on neighbors, police violence is the norm and people are deemed patriotic based on their belief in American “customs and traditions”. Books are banned and turned into toilet paper and Asian-Americans are met with suspicion, hatred and violence. Children are forcibly removed from parents deemed “unworthy” by the government. Free speech has been all but completely outlawed.
Even something as banal as neighborhood watch groups take on a sinister and dangerous tone, all wrapped up in government platitudes: “United neighborhoods are peaceful neighborhoods. We watch out for each other.”
Against this background, 12-year-old Noah, nicknamed Bird, who lives alone with his father, is determined to find his mother, the poet and dissident Margaret Miu, who left the family 3 years before. An artist, Margaret is compelled to protest the government’s grotesque policies through the use of her voice, but at a steep cost to her family. Too many citizens simply stood by in silence as the government took away their rights, one by one. Margaret and others intend to fight back, in their own way.
All of this sounds chillingly possible in light of the recent banning of textbooks and the rampant rise in racism in our country. I am in complete awe of Celeste Ng’s brilliance. I’ll never forget Bird and Margaret. The ending was brilliant. The gorgeous narration by Lucy Liu make this audiobook a must-listen.
“What happens now is a choice.”
(Many thanks to the publisher for providing an audiobook listening copy via Libro.fm in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.)
About the Book:
From the #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, comes one of the most highly anticipated books of the year – the inspiring new novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.
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.
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s a story about the power—and limitations—of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.