Book #3 : Our Missing Hearts

 This novel was written by Celeste Ng in late 2022, but I just found in featured at my local Barnes & Noble. I picked it up and decided to buy it because I had read her other novel, "Everything I Never Told You", and watched the mini-series for "Little Fires Everywhere". I should probably read the book version of it, but I am discouraged since I already watched the show. But the show was absolutely amazing. And "Everything I Never Told You", was a novel full of twists and turns that I really enjoyed reading. It took me only a few days to read "Our Missing Hearts".

"Our Missing Hearts" follows 12-year-old Bird Gardner as he navigates a world without his mother. His mother Margaret Miu, a poet whose words were radicalized against the government. In this society, set in the US, the government was under strict policing after the Crisis, a 3-year economic depression. To come back from this, the US government created PACT to promote American patriotism, but it also promoted hate towards Asian-Americans as the Crisis was blamed on China. Bird's mother left him without explanation and now he is searching for not only her, but answers as to why she left.

I cried many times, especially at the end, while reading. It was a tough read because it felt all too real. The Crisis was similar to the Covid years which spiked up lots of Asian-American hate especially against Chinese Americans. It was clearly dramatized but some of the events happened in real life. The hate crimes and violence towards Asian-Americans was the same as our reality. People were blamed for things they did not do simply because of what they looked like. 

This book also had the concept of taking children as a form of punishment. The title "Our Missing Hearts", in my opinion, refers to the missing children that were taken. If parents stepped out of line or were deemed to be against America, they would have their children taken never to be heard from again. This part really got to me because that is the easiest way to silence people; threaten their kids. It was also something that was so common in history with residential schools taking away Indigenous youth, enslaved children being stolen from their parents, immigrant children being separated from their parents at the border, the list goes on. Ng mentioned all these things in the books to emphasize that this was something that happened in real life.

"Our Missing Hearts" also delves into motherhood and what a mother would do to protect her child. Margaret would do anything to protect Bird and she really proved how much she loved him. She was torn between being with her child and aiding the general public. Motherhood is something that has been present in all of Ng's work and I think she does an amazing job tackling the complexity of it.

I would overwhelmingly recommend this book to anyone. It is not a difficult read and is around 325 pages. I am not an avid reader and was able to do it easily. While it was hard to understand at the beginning, I was quickly able to envision what was happening. This fiction novel will really make you think about where we are as a society. Please read soon!