“Our Missing Hearts:” Taken, Not Lost
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng: Penguin Random House, 2022. 335. U.S. $18.00, Paperback.
“Our Missing Hearts” is simple in words but complicated in thought, a realm Celeste Ng thrives in. The message in Ng’s novel is about making way for a better future by peacefully engaging with the present. In the novel, an economic crisis devastated the U.S. until an attempted assassination propelled the “Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act,” or “PACT.” The resonation to real-life rests in the severe marginalization of Asians or Asian-Americans in America. The situation was unsettlingly reminiscent of the uptick in Asian-hate in 2020, concerning the spread of the coronavirus. Ng’s dramatization of such racism is unfortunately not that far of a stretch from reality.
Although uncommon names are a staple of literary fiction, naming the main character “Bird” is more than the freedom symbol we tend to apply to the word. Names in Asian culture inherently hold more meaning than they do in America. Asian names are recognizable throughout the novel, noticing when a family chooses to “Americanize” their name or when families with Asian surnames are noted as being large donors—noting that donations acted as a shield to keep law enforcement from criminalizing them based on their name alone. The mother’s name, Margaret Miu, is broken down in the first part of the novel. Bird’s father enjoys etymology and explains to Bird the meaning of “Miu.” He remarks on how it is sounded out like the noise a cat makes and draws the character to show that the name also comes from a symbol for “cat” or “protector” of “seedlings” or “farmland.”
When lines from Margaret’s poetry book started to appear in forms of anti-PACT protests, she became a target. To protect her son from being taken from their home, Margaret fled. Bird was forced to go by the name “Noah.” By being called “Noah” and maintaining his father’s surname, Gardner, he did his best to be inconspicuous. Until he met Sadie, a re-placed child, he did not question why. He received a letter, a code, and was certain it was from his mother. From there, he embarked on his journey where he learned more and more every moment about the world he lived in, the truth of it, and the darkness behind what his schooling tried to make students believe.
In the book, the mother’s parents told her that “the stick hits the bird that holds its head the highest” (156). Later, when plotting her peaceful act of defiance, Margaret remarks on those words, changing them, “Maybe sometimes… the bird with its head held high took flight” (234). There is a struggle between obedience and defiance. Discriminatory crimes and disruptions of families, such as children being taken from their homes, has been happening across multiple communities all around the world for much longer and at much higher rates than most people realize. “It had been happening all along, and she’d never known. No, she admitted to herself: she’d never chosen to know” (228). Sometimes, ignorance is easier, but what is easier is not what makes us feel whole.
Celeste Ng invents a world that is not ours but falls into the uncanny valley, leaving its audience in an uneasy feeling of loss, injustice, and (somehow) hope. Through the meaning of names, the focus on words and where they come from, and engaging with the power of words, Ng creates a poetic understanding of how seemingly little things can act as seedlings that may bloom into new ideas, actions, and futures.
