Our Missing Hearts

Our Missing Hearts – Celeste Ng

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet life with his father, a former linguist who now shelves books at a university library. In their society, a law passed to preserve American culture after years of economic and political crisis has made anything seen as unpatriotic dangerous, and books have been removed from libraries. Children whose parents are judged to be a threat can be taken away and placed with other families.

Our Missing Hearts, a novel by Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You, follows Bird as he tries to understand what happened to his mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family years earlier. Her words have become a rallying cry for protesters, and Bird’s father has forbidden him to talk about her.

When Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a drawing, he sets out on a journey to find his mother. His search takes him into the world of librarians and activists who quietly resist, and leads him to discover the truth about his family and the power of stories to preserve memory and inspire change.

Ng explores themes of love between parents and children, the dangers of fear and prejudice, the treatment of Asian Americans, censorship and the courage it takes to resist injustice.

Moving and timely, Our Missing Hearts is a powerful novel for readers of literary fiction and dystopian stories. It deals with family separation, discrimination and violence, which some readers may find distressing.