That is the way only she can possibly see him, in stealth and in secret from his father. Since then, the father refuses to acknowledge her existence or to talk with Bird about her or her poetry.īut Bird stills wonders where she went, and one day he hears from her in a rough drawing showing her location in New York. She deserts Bird and her husband to escape what would surely land her in a bad place where she would never get out.īird misses his mother and wonders why she disappeared from them in order to escape PACT’s harsh laws that would have put her in prison and her family in jeopardy. The main characters are a mixed American family: Bird, the young boy who now lives with his American father a word scholar and professor, who now shelves books at the college library where he used to teach, after his Chinese-American mother, the world famous poet Margaret Gardner, is declared UN-American and her work banned from sale and libraries, like most other books in this new age of oppression. Many Chinese-Americans adults up end up in prison, never to be heard from again.

PACT especially hates Chinese-Americans, and it does its best to take their children and put them in what is a brainwashing camp. These PACT laws were passed unilaterally by the House and Senate in an effort to bring America out of the Crises. They also have the right to remove any child from its family if the parents do not follow PACT constraints faithfully to protect American values. PACT has the power to read all mail, wiretap any phone, or impose an ongoing curfew, which the breaking of brings down the law. PACT has the power to suppress any activity that is considered UN-American or seditious. This is the time of PACT (Preserving American Culture and Traditions), a totalitarian authority that controls the whole country.

The story begins after the collapse of the United States economic system (which is blamed on the Chinese, of course). Such is the premise in the new masterwork by Celeste Ng, titled Our Missing Hearts ($34.00, Random House ISBN978-7-3). Poetry has to be words too a light illuminating the darkness in some human souls. Words can be weapons whether written or spoken, or the more dangerous implied threat by authority.

Celeste ng our missing hearts