What is going on in his life when we meet him? The novel is called 'Our Missing Hearts,' and author Celeste Ng joins us now to talk about it. Their parents have no idea where they are. Authorities remove children from their homes, assign them to new families. In this dystopia, violating PACT, even questioning the law, puts families at risk. RASCOE: His mother, a poet and an activist. And because of this, he knows it is from his mother. No return address, only a New York, New York postmark six days old. But eventually, it had been deemed harmless and sent on its way. It had caused confusion at the post office, the clerk unfolding the paper inside, steadying it, passing it up to his supervisor, then the boss. He ends up traveling through a secret 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.Celeste Ng's new novel opens with a preteen boy and a sense of foreboding, a la The Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act, or PACT, looms over everything.ĬELESTE NG: (Reading) The letter arrives on a Friday, slit and resealed with a sticker, of course, as all their letters are. 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.īut when Bird decides to go on a quest to find his mother, he finds himself remembering the folktales she poured into his head as a child.

Their lives have gone mostly underground, after Bird’s mother, Margaret Miu, a Chinese American poet, left the family in the wake of laws written to preserve “American culture.”

It delves into the power of intellectual freedom in an authoritarian world and the strong bonds of family in a society steeped in fear.ġ2-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his father, who used to be a linguist but now works at a library. Her new novel, “ Our Missing Hearts,” is also receiving critical acclaim. Celeste Ng’s “ Little Fires Everywhere” was a best-selling novel, even before it became a hit series for Hulu.

Celeste ng new book