Our missing hearts by Celeste Ng
Set in a dystopian future, not too distant from the present, Our missing hearts is set in an America that has been through a national economic and social ‘Crisis’, with people losing their jobs and homes, and blaming China ‘that perilous, yellow menace’. Suspicion turns to the Chinese, or Asian looking Americans, in their midst, those with ‘foreign faces, foreign names’. The Protecting American Culture and Traditions Act, or PACT, is introduced to protect American values, report potential threats, and protect children from environments espousing harmful views. Child removal becomes a means of political control. America has a long history of child removals: the separation of enslaved famiies, and of American Indian families, inequities in the foster care system, and separation of migrant families at the U.S. border. It also has a resonance in Australia’s stolen generations. So the world Ng creates has its roots in history, and could be a heightened version of times past, and ongoing.
Bird is the child of an American father and a Chinese American poet. All he knows is that his mother has left them, her books are no longer held in the library, and he has to keep his head down, and not draw attention, because it is just not safe. His only friend, Sadie, is a runaway foster child, removed from a mixed race family. Sadie encourages him to find out what has happened to his mother.
Our missing hearts is a challenge to the reader to think of how they would act in such an environment. So many times in history, people have turned in suspicion against each other with a brooding distrust of those who look different, speak a different language, or follow a different religion. There has been betrayal of neighbours and internment of foreign nationals. How can the individual act with courage and integrity? What can the ordinary person do when any act could put their own family at risk?
For Celeste Ng, there is hope in art, poetry and literature. Folk tales teach us moral lessons. And public art provokes empathy and compassion. Finally, the real heroes of the novel are librarians, guardians of knowledge and protectors of books. Librarians share information, and help the seeker to find what they need. ‘The brain of a librarian [is] a capacious place’ – they collect information, ‘collating it with the Rolodex in their minds’.
Our missing hearts is a kind of quest. Bird has to avoid the constant danger, follow the clues, find the right people to trust, and venture forth to find the truth about his missing mother. Along the journey, the reader is reminded of the cruelties of history and the need to learn from the past, not repeat the same mistakes. It takes courage, trust, friendship and love.
Themes: Xenophobia, Racism, Political control, Propaganda, Child removal, Social activism, Protest, Libraries.
Helen Eddy