Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
Bird Gardner, 12, and his devoted father, a former linguist who now works as a bookshelf in a university library, lead tranquil lives. When he was nine years old, his mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, disappeared. He is angry because she cared more about her art than about him even though he has no idea what happened to her and only knows that her books have been banned.
Then one day, Bird gets a strange letter in the mail with only a puzzling drawing, and he soon finds himself drawn into a search for her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she instilled in him as a child, through the ranks of a secret society of brave librarians, and ultimately to New York City, where he will discover the truth about what really happened to his mother and what the future holds for him and his sister.
In Our Lost Hearts, an old tale about how seemingly civilized societies may overlook the most egregious injustice is told in a new way. It has to do with the teachings and legacies we leave for our children, as well as the ability of art to effect change.
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
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Ethan Gardner and Margaret Miu have one child, a young boy they named Noah but gave the nickname Bird, and they reside in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they are happily married. Bird is 12 years old at the beginning of the story. Chinese-American poet Bird’s mother is also a poet. All our missing hearts, a single word from one of her poems—not even her greatest poem!—has served as a rallying cry for opponents of the administration. Although Margaret was long before singled out, she and Ethan arranged that she would depart and virtually vanish when they felt Bird might be taken away from them. She would be rejected by Ethan.
Three years have passed, and the plan appears to have been successful—if you ignore the fact that Ethan and Bird are both shattered individuals who ache to remember Margaret but are unable to do so, not even with one another. Then, one day, Bird gets a puzzling cat drawing from his mother, which he discovers later along with an odd New York City address. Could he track out his mother three years after she vanished? Bird is inspired by the numerous fairy tales his mother read to him as a child and knows he must set off on a similar journey, playing the role of the hero who must face hardship.
