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Book Review: ‘Our Missing Hearts’ by Celeste Ng

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng transports us to a near-dystopian future where Asian Americans are sidelined in society due to security fears soaring too high over China, and their contributions, especially in the arts, are being systematically eliminated from public consumption.

Bird is a 12-year-old boy who lives with his university librarian father. His mother is out of the picture, but he doesn’t know where she is. She was known as Margaret Miu, a Chinese American poet whose indie-published poetry collection became a target under PACT, or the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act. The poem, “Our Missing Hearts,” remains a rallying cry for the disenfranchised, which includes Asian Americans, now known as Persons of Asian Origin, and other people of color who are still seen as threats. At school, Bird only has one friend, Sadie. Outspoken about being taken from her “Chinese sympathizer” parents, Sadie brings up the memories of her peaceful home and how the current politics destroyed it. Being a biracial girl, Sadie has a hard time staying with foster families. Within a split second, Sadie is transferred out of their community. But Sadie’s stories about her parents have already influenced Bird, who is tapping into his memories of his mother. He receives letters he feels are from his mother with illustrations of cats. He tries to solve the riddles, yet he needs more information. His father refuses to bring up his mother, but Bird is getting older and has questions that lead him on a journey that thrusts him into a world of advocacy. 

All over the country, a scattered network of librarians would note this information, collating it with the Rolodex in their minds, cross-referencing it with the re-placed children they might have learned about. Some kept a running written list, but most, wary, simply trusted to memory. An imperfect system, but the brain of a librarian was a capacious place.

In the real world of banned books impacting libraries, the story shows a deep connection to libraries and librarians acting as justice-seekers. Bird’s father is a linguist whose connection to Margaret has relegated him from professor to librarian. Because he is White, he can raise Bird, but he fears the times when someone may detect Bird’s Asian ancestry in his son’s facial features. This fear forces Bird’s father to remain a quiet librarian who refuses to break the rules. On the opposite side, when Bird sneaks off to the library, librarians search for Margaret’s book or another related book such as one featuring Asian fairy tales on Bird’s behalf. They know these books have been banned, but they still hold out hope they can be found. Someone requesting a banned book may be an advocate. The librarians are sharing notes between pages of books as a secret communications channel for advocates. 

The advocates are seeking racial justice. Asian Americans are in hiding or have been removed through imprisonment or deportation. When one group is being disenfranchised more than ever, then other historically disenfranchised groups do not feel safe. It’s why Marie Johnson, a first-year college student who’s African American, went to a protest and used “Our Missing Hearts” as a rallying cry for the first time. She is killed by a police officer’s stray bullet. The event puts a target on Margaret’s back. That’s when she lives her life on the run, especially since Child Protective Services threatened to take Bird away. Margaret finds herself at Marie’s parents’ house, where she believes they could provide a haven. They are upset that this Asian woman has shown up at their door when her poetry inadvertently led to the events that killed their Black daughter. It forces Margaret to reconcile how she saw her parents react fearfully in the presence of African Americans in the past and how most people react fearfully toward her now as an Asian American. 

She thought, belatedly, of the Asian and Black worlds, orbiting each other warily, frozen at a distance in a precarious push-pull. In her childhood: a young Black girl shot, Los Angeles on fire, Korean stores aflame. Her parents had fumed, reading the news, indignant at the damage, the delinquency. And then, years later, a young Black man dead in a stairwell, a Chinese American cop’s finger on the trigger. There’d been outcry on all sides — an accident, police brutality, scapegoating — until the circles separated again into an uneasy truce.

Margaret’s line of thought goes to the uprising known as the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, which kindled after the acquittal of the police officers who had viciously beaten Rodney King. The uprising inflamed with the burning of Korean American business owners’ stores because of the death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, a Black teenager who was killed by a Korean American grocer the year before. In 2014, Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old Black man, was killed by an Asian American police officer in an apartment building in Brooklyn, New York. In both cases, the punishments were reduced to probation. The aforementioned events emphasize the community relationships fractured by the hierarchical racial caste system that has been turned on its head in the story with Asian Americans at the bottom compared to African Americans who had historically been at the bottom. The story emphasizes how discrimination toward any group harms the entire society as productivity goes down by raising widespread fear and accusing people of not being American enough. 

Margaret eventually becomes a part of the resistance in New York City by trying to raise the volume on the injustice. As Margaret hides from society the best she can, Bird finds himself in hiding as well on his quest to search for the mother he barely knew and for the solution that would bring his family together again.

Overall, the story hits a timely chord as a believable dystopia as anti-Asian hate peaked amid the COVID-19 pandemic and security concerns out of China. The thread on banned books and the authors who wrote them being shunned is also a real issue that penetrates the media every day. Seeing how these relevant issues interplay in a society driven by fear is eye-opening, especially through the lens of a boy who only wants to know where his mother is and how he can find her. Family separation, particularly for Indigenous Americans and people of color who are immigrants, is another issue that has spanned centuries in North America. Bird’s innocence and determination to get answers about his mother’s whereabouts soften the edges of the distressful storyline. The poetic storytelling helps move the mundaneness as the characters seek justice.

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Cuffing Season Is Writing Season

SHE LIT: Cuffing Season Is Writing Season 🔏

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Celebrate National Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month by reading works from these authors 📚

Photo by Element5 Digital: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-book-from-shelf-1370298/

As the weather gets colder, writers start to cuff themselves to their own book projects

“Cuffing season” is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary describing how single people find a partner and attach themselves to that partner to stay warm during the colder months. Well, writers are doing the same thing, except cuffing themselves to new writing projects.

I recently completed the Black Creatives Revisions Workshop with We Need Diverse Books, the nonprofit organization working alongside the publishing industry to diversify the industry on the publisher level and the creator level. The summer-long workshop included monthly discussions with successful traditionally published authors and literary agents of color and meetings with Black editors to help us hone our manuscripts.

For the workshop, I had put forth my most promising project: a social justice, historical fiction, young adult novel. I came up with the idea for the book in February 2020, and when that weekend in mid-March that year came along with warnings to stay inside, I began researching and writing with all the time I was forced to hunker down to avoid contracting the unpredictable COVID-19.

Now with the manuscript on its way to industry insiders, I can start querying agents and outlining the next book. Like thousands of writers around the world, I usually spend October plotting a book in anticipation for National Novel Writing Month in November. Known as NaNoWriMo, the movement that interferes with Thanksgiving plans motivates us writers to craft 50,000 words within the month to call ourselves “winners.” That means laser focus. I win almost every year—I “lost” in 2016, traumatized by the presidential election.

That being said, I’m spending most of my days after I clock out of my real job, wrapped up in my blanket on my loveseat with my laptop. Cozying up to my next book. Also cozying up with a published book, or two, or three, or five. The to-be-read list never goes down, despite all these efforts.

With the slower months, content on shelit.com may come out slower. This newsletter will take hiatus in November aka NaNoWriMo. But hopefully the book and book-to-screen selections below will entertain us enough to keep us warm during the seasons like a piping pumpkin spice latte.

she lit editor + chief content creator

Check out past newsletters!

What we’re highlighting

Well-Read Black Girl opening festival, chapter in D.C.

The preeminent festival celebrating Black female authors and readers is heading to Washington, D.C. this year. The Well Read Black Girl Festival has tickets on sale now for the Oct. 28 and Oct. 29 event. Tricia Hersey, the founder of The Nap Ministry, will be the keynote speaker discussing her new book, Rest Is Resistance, forthcoming from Hachette Book Group’s Little, Brown Spark. The book club is also starting a new chapter in D.C.

Jada Pinkett Smith to write memoir on road to Hollywood

Actress, musician, and host of Red Table Talk Jada Pinkett Smith plans to release her memoir with Dey Street Books next year. The book will cover her journey dealing with suicidal depression to tapping into her “authentic feminine power,” according to media reports. The publisher says Jada will touch on growing up in Baltimore to drug-addicted parents, becoming a theater kid with promise, and breaking out into Hollywood with her friend Tupac Shakur before marrying one of the biggest stars, Will Smith, and starting her own family and path of self-discovery.

Celebrity-helmed book clubs select October picks

Kick back and chill with these fresh book-to-TV shows, films

What we’re reviewing

"The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School" by Sonora Reyes

Carrie Soto Is Back and the Problem of White Authors Creating Main Characters of Color

What we’re reading

Tamera Mowry-Housley Describes How Making Friends Is Like Drinking Wine

Celeste Ng Says Latest Novel Incorporates Rise in Anti-Asian Hate, Book Banning

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Want your book and bookish news to be featured? Write us at shewrites@shelit.com.

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Celeste Ng Says Latest Novel Incorporates Rise in Anti-Asian Hate, Book Banning

Little Fires Everywhere novelist Celeste Ng wrote her third novel during the COVID-19 pandemic as anti-Asian hate violence flared up. What was happening in the world affected her writing, she told the co-anchors on CBS Mornings this week.

“That became a really big part of it, especially after the outbreak of COVID started and we started seeing a huge rise in anti-Asian hate,” she said in the interview with Jericka Duncan, Nate Burleson, and Tony Dokoupil about her new book, Our Missing Hearts, which is out now from Penguin Random House‘s Penguin Press.

The story centers on a 12-year-old boy who embarks on a journey to find his mother, a Chinese American poet whose writings have been banned over claims of being unpatriotic and being outside “American culture.” In this dystopian novel, writers of color, especially those of Asian descent, and their works are disappearing.

“Growing up as a Chinese American—I’m from Cleveland—I think I’ve known my whole life that I’m seen as other by other people and the way other people see me is not the way I know myself to be inside,” said Celeste, whose 2014 debut novel Everything I Never Told You made her a rising literary star. “And seeing that play out in the news with Asian people just being attacked on the street in the middle of the day really made it important for me to try to talk about some of that in the book.”

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a wave of anti-Asian hate in 2020 after the potentially fatal virus was discovered in China.

Current events inspired the dystopian events described in her book, Celeste said, adding what was happening in today’s world naturally crept into the work.

“It’s a world that I think is really governed by fear. There’s a lot of distrust of other people,” she said of her book. “And it’s a world in which if you are acting un-American, your children can be taken away. And, so, it’s a world in which I think the characters have to make some really hard choices and again figure out how they’re going to raise their children to still survive in this world.”

She felt “useless and helpless” during the pandemic wondering if going to medical school would’ve made a difference since she could’ve treated patients, she said.

“As a writer, what am I doing? Am I helping the world at all?” she said. “But I realized one of the things that was getting me through was reading my favorite poems, listening to music that I love, watching movies that I love, that reminded me of what the world could be. The world wasn’t always like this. It’s not always going to be like this. We can make a difference. And I think that’s one of the things art can do. It can give us hope for the future.”

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Celeste Ng’s ‘Our Missing Hearts’ Touches on Racial Tension, Economic Instability

Little Fires Everywhere novelist Celeste Ng is revving up to release her third book later this year.

Our Missing Hearts, published by Penguin Press, surrounds a tween boy named Bird whose librarian father removes banned books, including the ones his Chinese American poet mother wrote. The “American culture” preservation laws around banned books have been in effect since the time of economic instability and civil unrest, but when Bird receives a message, he begins to search for his mother’s work in secret places and relive the stories she used to tell him before she disappeared from his life.

The book is expected to go on sale Oct. 4.

From the description, the literary fiction novel will touch on issues similar to our current environment from Asian American racism and economic volatility stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic to the fast-moving banned books movement that mostly impacts authors of color and LGBTQIA+ authors.

The author’s sophomore novel, Little Fires Everywhere, also juggles themes of race and privilege between two families in a master-planned Ohio city in the mid-1990s. The New York Times best-selling book was turned into an Emmy Award-nominated drama on Hulu. Full episode recaps can be found on she lit.

Celeste established herself as a writer to watch with her 2014 debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, about an Asian American family grieving a daughter who dies mysteriously in 1970s Ohio.

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‘Little Fires Everywhere’ TV Review: Find a Way

The Hulu series Little Fires Everywhere based on the best-selling novel by Celeste Ng came to end with its eighth episode that has the characters realizing and acting on their fates.

The premise revolves around two mothers fighting each other over who is a good mother in Ohioan suburbia. Elena Richardson, played by Reese Witherspoon, embodies the rich white mother stereotype with raising four children in a mansion with her successful lawyer husband. She rents her family cottage to Mia Warren, played by Kerry Washington, a single black mother who’s a traveling artist constantly moving around the country with her teen daughter.

As their children grow closer, the mothers find themselves in conflict when Elena’s best friend Linda McCullough, played by Rosemarie DeWitt, is in the process of adopting a Chinese baby who had been abandoned by Mia’s work friend Bebe Chow, played by Lu Huang, during a postpartum breakdown. The battle for the baby, whom Bebe named May Ling but Linda renamed Mirabelle, goes to court where Elena’s husband Bill, played by Joshua Jackson, defends Linda and Mia pays for Bebe’s legal defense with the sale of a pricey photo.

IZZY’S FIRE

Elena’s daughter Izzy, played by Megan Stott, is the fourth and youngest child that we learn Elena blames for stunting her journalism career. They come to a screaming match at the end when Izzy, upset when she sees Mia and Pearl driving away with their belongings strapped on the hood of their car, pours gasoline on a pile of clothes and her curtains. The other Richardson children—Trip, played by Jordan Elsass; Lexie, played by Jade Pettyjohn; and Moody, played by Gavin Lewis—try to stop Izzy from setting the fire. The commotion brings in a tipsy Elena. She yells at Izzy that she never wanted her. This makes Izzy run out the front door. We later see her riding the Greyhound out of town.

LEXIE’S FIRE

While snooping for more incriminating evidence against Mia, Elena heads to the clinic to ask her friend there for any files connected to Bebe. Of course, her friend denies her request over health privacy concerns, but once she steps out of the office, Elena looks on the computer then sees a paper file with Pearl’s name on it. Pearl, played by Lexi Underwood, is Mia’s daughter who accompanied Lexie during her abortion. But Elena thinks Pearl is the one who had the abortion. She thinks she’s surprising Mia with the news at her door, but Mia reveals that it is Lexie who had the abortion and shames Elena for not being the mother Lexie could run to in such a situation.

After Izzy leaves the house during the gasoline fight, Lexie tells her mother that she is the one who had the abortion. She screams she’s not perfect while Elena screams back that she is. Distraught, Lexie tells her brothers they would end up like their mother desperate to live a perfect life. Then she sets the first fire in her bedroom.

TRIP’S FIRE

When pouring the gasoline, Izzy tells her siblings that their mother drove Mia and Pearl away. Trip is in shock since he developed a romantic relationship with Pearl and hid it from Moody. Earlier in the day, they physically fight over Pearl in a junkyard that Moody had introduced to Pearl as a secret space. Pearl eventually starts meeting Trip there to create their secret relationship. Losing Pearl forces him to set his fire in his bedroom.

MOODY’S FIRE

Coming home after the fight with his brother, Moody is icing his bruised face with a bag of frozen peas in the kitchen. Elena comes in and blames him for Pearl’s alleged abortion. He tells her to look at Trip.

Later, he’s on the sofa still icing his face when he and Izzy are looking at the news when the verdict over who won custody over baby Mirabelle/May Ling appears. The McCulloughs win. Visibly upset, Izzy shakes tears away when Moody tells her she should’ve expected that outcome because the rich and beautiful people always win.

Izzy accuses him of being in that category and that’s why he expected Pearl to be with him instead of Trip. She tells him he didn’t own Pearl as the first Richardson kid to become friends with Pearl and falling for her. While his siblings are setting fires in their own bedrooms, he’s doing the same, watching the flames grow.

WHY EVERYONE IS SETTING FIRES

Mia plants the idea of the fires unintentionally when she tells Izzy a story about seeing a prairie wildfire in California while she was pregnant with Pearl. She says sometimes the land has to be scorched to start over.

Instead of starting an actual fire, Mia soon talks to Pearl about calling the Ryans, the family she originally had acted as a surrogate before losing her brother and being disowned by her family. Now with Pearl knowing who her biological father is, she confides in her mother that she knows their time in Shaker Heights, Ohio is finished. They go into Mia’s art studio as she starts completing a massive art project emphasizing the current and past racial landscape of the town. Then they pack and leave town.

Bebe chooses another route. In the McCullough residence, Mirabelle cries in her room over the baby monitor. But Linda wants to check on the baby when her husband stops her to train Mirabelle to cry it out; they won the baby and nobody is taking her away. Uneasy, Linda falls back in the bed until the early morning when she finds Mirabelle is gone. We see baby May Ling in Bebe’s arms at a rest stop in New York. She kidnaps her own baby.

Bill isn’t home when his children are having breakdowns that turn into acts of arson. He admits to Elena that he knows that she had dinner with her ex-boyfriend, a superstar The New York Times reporter, while she headed to New York to investigate Mia’s background. Though he wins the custody case, he’s sour to the point he leaves the house smoking a cigarette. On his drive back, he returns to his house completely engulfed in flames.

When asked by investigators who started the fires, Elena takes the blame for her children.

WHO REALLY STARTS THE FIRE

In the book, Izzy is the sole arsonist who starts the fires alone in each of her siblings’ bedrooms at the end of Chapter 19.

“On her shoulder she had her bookbag stuffed with a change of clothes, all the money she owned. They couldn’t be far ahead, she thought. There was still time to find them. The sandpaper grated under the match head like nails on a chalkboard and there was a whiff of sulfur and the tip flared bright, and Izzy dropped it onto her sister’s flowered comforter and ran out the door.”

Watching the fractured mother-daughter relationship between Izzy and Elena onscreen may have swayed the writers’ room to take the blame off of Izzy. The girl has been through a lot. The premiere episode shows the house on fire with the investigators asking about Izzy’s whereabouts, which follows the book, of letting us know Izzy commits the fire but the story will reveal the why.

But the TV series went the surprise route with forcing the other Richardson kids to start their own fires. It humanizes the siblings more because in the book Izzy remains the outcast until the end. At least, on TV the Richardsons, except Elena, seem tired of the perfectionism constantly bestowed upon them.

The next chapter reveals Pearl wanting to include Izzy on the car trip out of Shaker Heights. The TV series doesn’t show that aspect; Pearl and Mia just want to flee and avoid goodbyes.

“An idea began to form in Pearl’s mind in wild golden loops. “We could go back and get her. I could climb up the back porch and knock on her window and—”

 

“My darling,” Mia said, “Izzy is only fifteen. There are rules about that kind of thing.”

Izzy fantasizes about running off with Mia and Pearl after actually seeing them pull away from the curb, so that hope remains with Izzy that she can experience the freedom the Warren women have. The freedom theme continues when Elena sees the art project Mia leaves behind. It’s a wheat flour mold of Shaker Heights with a birdcage in the center of the town holding a cardinal feather. We see the feather in the beginning of the episode when a younger Izzy lets an injured bird into the house and Elena becomes upset by the disruption to her perfect home. Inside the cottage, Elena caresses the feather and hopes for her daughter’s return. In the book, the character has the same sentiment, knowing the authorities could find Izzy but if they can’t, she will look for Izzy herself.

The TV series did an excellent job with bringing the book to life even when artistic license created more depth to the characters and their behaviors. The largest difference is making Mia and Pearl black to reinforce the racial tensions in this real utopian community and pitting white mothers with means against nonwhite mothers without means. Since the final episode ends with the book, let’s hope there won’t be a meaningless continuation like HBO’s Big Little Lies based on Liane Moriarty’s book that Reese is also involved in.

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‘Little Fires Everywhere’ TV Review: Seventy Cents

Reese Witherspoon as Elena Richardson

Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu has already set the groundwork for showing the relationships between three mothers—all of different races—and how their circumstances in 1990s suburbia will impact their lives forever.

The show stars Reese Witherspoon as Elena Richardson, a white housewife/journalist raising four teen kids—Lexie, Tripp, Moody and Izzy; and Kerry Washington, a black single mother raising her teen daughter Pearl. The third mother who was just brought into the mix is Bebe Chow, played by Lu Huang, a recent Chinese immigrant who works with Mia as a waitress and is looking for the daughter she gave up. They all live in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a real community outside Cleveland that historically created its own rules for a utopian suburbia vibe.

While the kids are preparing for the homecoming dance, the same night the adults are preparing for a one-year-old birthday party hosted by Elena. These two events will define the storyline with both ending in disaster.

The Mixed Question

After the kids decide to go to homecoming, Pearl, played by Lexi Underwood, jumps at a chance to go shopping with Lexie, the eldest Richardson daughter played by Jade Pettyjohn. Lexie just plagiarized Pearl’s essay to get placement in a math class for her Yale college application. Pearl comes out of a dressing room in a dress she loves. That’s when Lexie tells her about seeing the essay, but she conveniently leaves out the plagiarism part and calls the essay more of an inspiration when for her essay.

Lexie further distracts Pearl from the truth after asking about her lineage: “Are you mixed?” Going on about how pretty Pearl is, Lexie continues with asking who Pearl’s father is because he must have some non-black blood. This loaded question can be seen as offensive with emphasizing Pearl’s racial identity and asking her paternity, but mostly it’s about race and what society calls beauty. Lexie purports herself as an expert in race with having a black boyfriend, Brian, played by Stevonte Hart. How black her boyfriend is already came up in the first episode.

The biggest distraction of all: Lexie buys Pearl her homecoming dress.

“You’re letting some rich spoiled white girl turn you into her dress-up doll!” Mia screams at Pearl after discovering the new dress. “She doesn’t own you. You don’t belong to Lexie Richardson.”

Pearl then verbally hits her mother back by asking about her father and his whereabouts. Mia can’t give a clear answer. Again, Pearl is frustrated by her vagabond life, now realizing other kids didn’t live like her.

In the book, Lexie is talking to her best friend Serena Wong, who hasn’t been introduced formally on the show yet, and calling the new friend of her brother Moody, played by Gavin Lewis, “Little Orphan Pearl.”

You’re letting some rich spoiled white girl turn you into her dress-up doll! She doesn’t own you. You don’t belong to Lexie Richardson.

“She’s so quiet,” Lexie tells Serena at the top of chapter five. “Like she’s afraid to speak. And when you look at her, she turns bright red—red-red, like a tomato. A literal tomato.”

The book goes on about Lexie’s new fascination on Pearl, who is showing her desire to hang out with the older Richardson siblings, Lexie and Tripp, played by Jordan Elsass, who have ascended into high school popularity. The quote also emphasizes how Mia and Pearl are not black in the book with Lexie’s reddening description of Pearl.

The Black Boyfriend

Brian, Lexie’s boyfriend, comes to dinner at the Richardson house where he’s pushed to meet Pearl. Elena bluntly talks about what Pearl and Brian have in common, which is code for both being black. Pearl doesn’t seem interested in getting to know Brian due to that remark, but Brian tries to be friendly.

When Brian discovers Lexie adapted most of Pearl’s essay to her own for college, he doesn’t know how to feel about his longtime girlfriend even when they’re crowned homecoming king and queen. Brian dislikes how Lexie took a story from a black girl’s perspective and badly adapted it to her own perspective, which raises ethical questions for him.

At the dance, Brian tells Pearl about the essay. In the distance, Lexie knows they’re talking about her.

COMMON GROUND

After much despise that Izzy, played by Megan Stott, is not her clone, Elena softens in episode two. The turning point is finding out from Tripp that kids at school have been calling Izzy “Ellen” as in Ellen DeGeneres assuming she’s gay.

The next morning Elena tells Izzy of an embarrassing high school moment. This inspires Izzy to ask her siblings and friends to go to homecoming. Scenes later, while modeling in her emerald dress in the driveway, Mia exclaims that Izzy’s leg is bleeding. A shaving mishap. Elena takes Izzy and shaves Izzy’s legs with care over the bathtub.

The pendulum swings back to normal when Elena discovers from the mother of Izzy’s ex-friend that Izzy allegedly violated the friend. Though Elena runs to her husband Bill, played by Joshua Jackson, the truth will come out in the next episode as the party rapidly goes downward.

whose baby is it?

The episode opens with Bebe months before when she had a hard time taking care of her newborn, May Ling. With the hardship of no power in her bare-bones apartment, Bebe tries to buy formula for May Ling, but she’s seventy cents short, hence the episode’s title. The cashier screams at her to get out of the store. It’s the last straw as Bebe soon leaves May Ling outside a fire station for a safe surrender.

The story obviously touches Mia. With Bebe broken over the baby and also unable to speak fluent English, Mia vows to find out what happened to May Ling.

Elena’s friend, Linda McCullough played by Rosemarie DeWitt, has been introduced in the previous two episodes for a short period of time. It turns out Linda adopted a baby, Mirabelle, and Elena is throwing a birthday party for the one-year-old.

Earlier, Elena tells Mia, the home manager, about the baby shower and Linda’s adoption journey—how Linda and her husband adopted Mirabelle, who is Chinese, after she was abandoned at a fire station.

With this new information, Mia tells Bebe she may have found May Ling,  newly named Mirabelle McCullough. Bebe wants to go to the McCullough house immediately, but Mia calms her and says it’s easier if she goes to see if it’s May Ling first. The identifying factor: a red spot on May Ling’s scalp.

Strapped with more information, Mia offers her photography services for the birthday party at the Richardson home. At the party, Mia is choosy about taking photos until she sneaks upstairs to the sleeping baby. She wakes up Mirabelle and tries to find the red spot. She finds it, but Elena comes in. The baby is handed over as Mia slips away.

The episode, and the party, ends with the earsplitting scream of Bebe, who appears at the party and sees her daughter cradled in the arms of a white family.

Bebe’s baby, May Ling by her supporters and Mirabelle by the McCullough supporters, will be a central point in the story, dividing not only the Richardsons and Warrens in the process but the idyllic community of Shaker Heights.

The first three episodes of Little Fires Everywhere is streaming now on Hulu. New episodes will arrive on Wednesdays.

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‘Little Fires Everywhere’ TV Review: Seeds and All

Kerry Washington as Mia Warren and Lu Huang as Bebe Chow in Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu.

The second episode of Little Fires Everywhere deepens the shaky acquaintanceship of two matriarchs trying to accept their newfound ties.

Kerry Washington is Mia Warren, a single black mother who moves to rule-abiding Shaker Heights, Ohio with her daughter Pearl, played by Lexi Underwood. Reese Witherspoon is Elena Richardson, a rich white mother with four teenage children distraught over how her youngest daughter, Izzy, played by Megan Stott, is not aspiring to be the American dream she set up for her family.

As Pearl hangs out more with the Richardson children—Izzy; Lexie, played by Jade Pettyjohn; Tripp, played by Jordan Elsass; and Moody, played by Gavin Lewis—Mia and Elena are seeing their lives collide more, whether they like it or not.

DOING THE MATH

Pearl wants to take algebra two, but the white male school counselor placed her back in geometry. The counselor claims Pearl attended too many schools and assumes she’s being bused in from Cleveland. Knowing her race is really the decision, she later tells Mia about the situation at the Chinese restaurant where her mother works. But Mia is watching her coworker, Bebe, deal with the diners, especially a baby.

Pearl picks up on the disinterest and asks Elena the next morning if she could proofread her essay to get into algebra two. Elena gladly accepts and mentions the school doesn’t like to put the students of color in the higher-level classes. In the kitchen, Elena puts the essay down on the counter to fetch Izzy for school. Lexie sees the abandoned papers and takes a peek.

BOOK CLUB

Elena’s book club is reading The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, which of course riles her conservatism as she complains she had voted for Arthur Golden’s classic Memoirs of a Geisha instead. At the book club inside her spacious living room, Elena touches on motherhood not being mentioned as much in the famous feminist play.

The moderator shoots back about the last chapter revolving around childbirth and asks if she’s less of a woman for not having children. Pouring liqueur in the background, Mia wanders into the conversation to defend Elena, who barely read the play distraught over the mention of “vaginas,” and discusses the buried motherhood theme. Elena approves Mia’s defense and introduces Mia to the book club.

After the book club, Mia and Elena are bonding on the sofa with wine. The invisible competition comes up again when Elena absentmindedly tells Mia that she helped Pearl with her letter to advocate for her upgraded math class. Mia abruptly ends the bonding session. At home, she asks Pearl about how she got into the class. Pearl said she stood up for herself without mentioning any help from Elena.

WHO IS BEBE?

Back at the restaurant where Pearl is talking to Mia about her math dilemma, Mia zeros in on Bebe Chow, the quiet Chinese immigrant working at the restaurant played by Lu Huang. Mia senses Bebe needs help after Bebe shows happiness then sadness when handling a baby for a family, so Mia gets up from the dining table on her night off and tells Bebe she will take over her shift.

Later, Bebe makes homemade noodles for Mia that she brings to Mia at home. Mia gives Bebe her tips from the night before. Her kindness touches Bebe, who admits she lost her baby daughter.

Mia tells Bebe she doesn’t have to share her story to explain her behavior; she understands as a mother. This signals another mother being brought into the equation and how her race will play a role in discovering what happened to her daughter.

still, Who is Mia?

The episode opens in a years-old flashback of Mia having sex in a cramped car. She’s only distracted by baby Pearl waking up. She kicks out her sex partner and comforts Pearl.

This accompanies the New York City subway flashbacks that Mia has been having since the first episode. She’s scared sitting on the subway and the main person she’s staring at across from her in the car is Grey’s Anatomy actor/activist Jesse Williams. At one point, his unidentified character flickers into Elena. Mia’s traumas may take a backseat to Bebe’s traumas we have yet to see.

The first three episodes of Little Fires Everywhere is streaming now on Hulu. New episodes will arrive on Wednesdays.

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what's lit

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ TV Review: The Spark

Kerry Washington as Mia Warren in Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, which started streaming this week on Hulu with its first three episodes, is already establishing the racial thread between two families in an upscale Ohio suburb in 1997.

The series introduces us to two different neighbors in Shaker Heights, Ohio: Elena Richardson, played by Reese Witherspoon, the well-to-do white housewife/part-time reporter with a lawyer husband and four teenage children; and Mia Warren, played by Kerry Washington, a black single mother/mixed media artist who moved to the restrictive suburb with her teen daughter Pearl.

Below are the top threads laying out the complexities of the characters and opening the pathway to the plot.

Mia and Pearl are black

In the book, Mia and Pearl, played by Lexi Underwood, aren’t described as black. In fact, their race isn’t really identified with the socioeconomic barrier standing between them and the Richardsons.

Adding their blackness to the storyline, the show emphasized the racial tension between mothers Mia and Elena.

Mia is the black single mother barely making ends meet while Elena is the financially comfortable white homemaker who only offers Mia her rental home after seeing Mia’s car and realizing she had reported it to the police for suspicious activity. Elena eventually offers Mia a “house manager” job, which Mia interprets as a maid job and the racial connotations of domestic service.

Elena will be the white woman character not understanding her racism, like when she calls the police about Mia’s car, while convincing herself she’s not racist, like offering Mia the home to rent after seeing the car. She’s the modern-day Barbecue Becky or Permit Patty but trying to right her wrongs while still making offense, like with the job offer.

Pearl gets in trouble

Once Mia’s daughter Pearl and Elena’s son Moody, played by Gavin Lewis, get acquainted, they’re two peas in a pod. Moody introduces Pearl to a junkyard where he’s decorated a small shed he turned into an artistic sanctuary. Pearl is impressed when she sees words from a poem she had quoted to Moody earlier. But then the two get busted for trespassing.

When neighborhood watch brings the kids back to the Richardson home, Mia goes ballistic. Her black daughter is being brought home by a police officer! In a new (mostly white) neighborhood! Of course, she can’t control her emotions, telling Pearl she’s not like the Richardsons aka not white. Elena is soft on Moody for the offense and tells Mia that it was neighborhood watch, with the man’s uniform appearing like that of a police officer. Mia is visibly upset by Elena’s response and leaves with Pearl.

the mothers

How the series is juxtaposing Mia with Izzy, played by Megan Stott, and Elena with Pearl shows how the grass is greener on the other side, but in this case the teen girls see themselves in these adult women who are the opposite of their mothers.

Pearl admires Elena because she represents stability. Being a daughter of an artist, she’s been forced to believe she has to move constantly. She begs her mother that they make Shaker Heights home, at least stay a year.

After Pearl gets in trouble with the neighborhood watch, Mia feels profound guilt and lets Pearl paint the rest of her walls in her bedroom a cerulean hue, buys Pearl a bicycle, and even paints her fingernails. There’s a desperate guilt that she can’t offer her daughter stability, especially the kind the Richardsons have. With Mia’s recurring New York City subway terrors, we see this mother struggling with her past circumstances and how she’s escaping them to focus on her daughter.

In the Richardson home, Elena chastises Izzy for not playing her violin at a school concert and writing in black marker across her forehead: NOT YOUR PUPPET. A chilly distance still remains between them because Izzy is the unique child. She burns her hair, wears black clothing, and refuses to conform to the suburban life her parents had set up for her and her siblings. But this ruffles perfectionist Elena to the point they can’t connect.

When Izzy is spraying black paint on a trunk in the front yard, Mia takes notice of the art in motion. Izzy smiles at the compliment. The connection is snapped between their artistic hearts. Seeing how Izzy may be misunderstood in her ambitious household compels Mia to take on the house manager role Elena had offered previously. Though she first took offense, her motherly tendencies overruled her.

The episode ends with Elena receiving a call from one of the references Mia put down for her tenant application. It turns out the alleged former landlord never met Mia, raising suspicions about who Mia is, where she came from, and how her secrets could threaten the Richardsons and the greater Shaker Heights community.

The first three episodes of Little Fires Everywhere is streaming now on Hulu. New episodes will arrive on Wednesdays.

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what's lit

African American and Asian American Women Writers Show Support for Elizabeth Warren

Prior to Super Tuesday, a group of women writers of color expressed their support for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president.

During this political year, writers have taken to social media to support certain causes, like late last year several women writers and literary groups donated to reunification efforts of families at the U.S.-Mexico border. Some of those causes spilled into the fight for diversity in publishing, such as with the controversy tainting the best-seller American Dirt that many in the Latinx literary community found offensive.

Asian American and Pacific Islander influencers signed a letter in support of an Elizabeth Warren presidency in January. This letter followed Black Womxn For‘s November letter with 100 Black women’s names including author Roxane Gay also supporting Warren for president.

The most well-known writers on the list were Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere coming to Hulu later this month; Jenny Han, author of To All the Boys series, now two films on Netflix; Courtney Milan, romance novelist who became the center of the racism firestorm that crippled the Romance Writers of America; and Ellen K. Pao, the Silicon Valley influencer who wrote career guidebook Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change after losing a lawsuit against her employer over discrimination claims. Actress Constance Wu, who made a name for herself in the blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians based on Kevin Kwan’s novel and will be the star of the film version of Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong, also signed the letter.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar is the other leading female presidential candidate who has been rising in the polls, with a third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 11. As the support women of color are showing for the main female contender for the presidency mirrors the support Hillary Clinton received four years ago, 2020 could be the first election celebrity writers may exhibit more of their influence.

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what's lit

Women Authors Attack Sarah Dessen Critic in Social Media Uproar

Burst

This past week, young adult author Sarah Dessen tweeted a quote from a college article by a woman who campaigned against her books in a campus reading program years ago. Many authors including Roxane Gay and Siobhan Vivian came to Sarah’s defense—until fans clapped back when the woman was being called derogatory names by top women authors. The authors backpedaled with some Twitter users accusing Sarah of white female victimhood and the authors of attacking readers with opinions on their works.

As of the weekend, the discriminatory tweets have disappeared from top authors’ Twitter feeds, including Siobhan Vivian, author of YA book We Are the Wildcats, who tweeted “Fuck that fucking bitch” about the quoted woman with Sarah saying “I love you” back.

Dhonielle Clayton, author of multicultural fantasy YA novel The Belles and co-founder of We Need Diverse Books, called the quoted woman a “raggedy ass fucking bitch.” Tiffany Jackson, author of YA novels Allegedly and Monday’s Not Coming, agreed. Siobhan’s Twitter account doesn’t exist anymore and her professional website has been made private, and Dhonielle’s account, which was very active with thousands of followers and tweets, now only has tweets from Nov. 14.

The Nov. 12 article in question came from The Aberdeen News on Northern State University’s Common Read program. Brooke Nelson, now a master’s degree student, says in the article:

“She’s fine for teen girls. But definitely not up to the level of Common Read. So I became involved simply so I could stop them from ever choosing Sarah Dessen.”

Brooke, according to the article, helped with the 2017 selection, which became Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, a memoir by a civil rights lawyer in pursuit of justice which will be a movie starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx. Sarah’s 2016 novel Saint Anything was in the running, a Vulture article reported. After Sarah mentioned the criticism in the infamous now-deleted tweet, the university issued an apology on Twitter in support of Sarah and against the free speech of an alum. Even the reporter apologized for adding the quote.

https://twitter.com/kgrandstrandAAN/status/1194307799385300998?s=20

The Washington Post was one of the first news outlets to see the Twitter feud unfold. The reporter interviewed Brooke, who said the quote was taken out of context with her emphasizing she didn’t think Sarah’s book was appropriate as a top book for her college crowd, and asked for her input:

Nelson, for her part, said she hopes the controversy draws more people to read books that will encourage them to think critically about pressing social issues.

“If anything comes out of this larger conversation,” Nelson told The Post, “I hope it is that others will make it a point to read books like [‘Just Mercy’] that push them beyond their usual perspective and challenge their assumptions of society.”

https://twitter.com/sarahdessen/status/1195431073892749315

https://twitter.com/rgay/status/1195405484905250817

https://twitter.com/pronounced_ing/status/1195742500369162240

https://twitter.com/jodipicoult/status/1195744857047928840

https://twitter.com/jenniferweiner/status/1195470675034685441

https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/1195745641768652800

Not everybody is going to like your book. And sometimes like in Sarah’s case, your book may be heavily scrutinized in some scenarios, even in a small-town news story about a small-town university’s book program. This comes with the territory.

Also, this story shows even as outspoken writers you have to be careful about what you decide to share publicly. Social media is an important asset to connecting with fans and readers, and now some of the authors involved have chosen to start over or take a break while most just deleted the first tweet in support of Sarah and tweeted an apology instead.

Ignore the haters if you don’t have anything nice to say; if it’s threatening in any way, then report the tweet and block the user, but just breathe when you see something constructive that you don’t like. Let it go, and if someone asks about the criticism, don’t respond or say something diplomatic because at the end of the day not everyone is going to like your work and they have the right to say so.

The unfortunate Twitter saga has some followers promoting a boycott, so we’ll keep a watch on how the authors involved will be impacted. Earlier this year, Netflix announced making three of Sarah’s novels into films.

https://twitter.com/Felicity_M2/status/1195602749959933952

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what's lit

Anika Noni Rose Joins ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ Cast

Anika Noni Rose at an event for The 69th Primetime Emmy Awards (2017) / IMDb

Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose is joining the cast of Little Fires Everywhere.

Variety broke the news Friday that Anika will be guest-starring on the Hulu miniseries expected to debut next year and based on Celeste Ng’s best-selling 2017 novel. Anika, well known for her roles in playing one-third of the Dreamgirls and voicing the first Disney African-American animated heroine in The Frog Princess, will play Paula Hawthorne, an art professor mentor to the younger version of Mia, played by Tiffany Boone. This week, AnnaSophia Robb of The Carrie Diaries TV series based on Candace Bushnell’s young adult novel; Alona Tal, Matthew Barnes, Andy Favreau and Luke Bracey were also named in Deadline as playing some of the characters in flashbacks.

The novel follows struggling artist Mia, played by Kerry Washington, who moves to Shaker Heights, Ohio with her teen daughter, and her neighbor Elena, played by Reese Witherspoon, the traditional suburban mother of four, as their lives intertwine through their children and friends.

Reese with her media brand Hello Sunshine and Kerry with her production company Simpson Street are also executive producing the miniseries. Author Celeste will also serve as an executive producer.

This isn’t Anika’s first time acting in a project based on a book. She also had roles in Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything motion picture; Terry McMillan’s A Day Late and a Dollar Short TV movie; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun movie; Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls motion picture; Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency TV series; Christopher Paul Curtis‘ The Watsons Go to Birmingham TV movie; Gigi Levangie Grazer’s The Starter Wife miniseries; and Alex Haley’s Roots in the 2016 miniseries remake.

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ rounds out casting for Hulu adaptation

Book Launch: ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng

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what's lit

Women Authors Donate to Immigration Nonprofit Amid Deportation Reports

Jodi Picoult, Celeste Ng, and Mindy Kaling are some of the famous author voices who’ve donated to Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services amid reports the Trump administration plans massive deportations in two weeks.

Authors For Families seemed to have inspired the matching campaign to benefit the 501(c)(3) nonprofit known by its acronym RAICES, which is the largest immigration legal services provider in Texas. Asking for authors to donate services from query critiques to signed books for its next fundraiser in July, Authors For Families, a group of authors and publishing professionals raising money to reunite immigrant children with their parents, plans to raise money to also benefit National Court Appointed Special Advocate Association or CASA, Women’s Refugee Commission, Kids in Need of Defense or KIND, and The Florence Project.

Jodi Picoult, the best-selling author behind A Spark of Light and My Sister’s Keeper, tweeted she and her supporters raised $50,000 for RAICES.

Celeste, whose two novels Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere became runaway hits, was one of those supporters.

Circe author Madeline Miller continued matching with her supporters reaching $10,000 with her bump.

Mindy, who celebrated her birthday Monday and recently announced an Amazon Publishing follow-up to Why Not Me? and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), asked what causes she should donate to for her 40th birthday. She first donated $10,000 to RAICES.

Last summer, RAICES raised $25 million after a photo of a 2-year-old girl at the border in a pink jacket crying up at adults went viral.

If you’re an author, do you have a passion you would use your platform for? Or how would you feel as a reader when your top authors stand on a platform you’re not for?

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what's lit

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ Rounds Out Casting for Hulu Adaptation

Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon star and produce the Hulu adaptation of "Little Fires Everywhere." Instagram

Celeste Ng’s best-selling novel, Little Fires Everywhere, is gearing up for its TV debut as casting decisions are being finalized.

According to Deadline, the last major character from the book, Bebe Chow, has been casted and will be played by Chinese actress Huang Lu. Joshua Jackson, originally of Dawson’s Creek fame and recently of When They See Us, was also one of the last to round out the cast and will play Bill Richardson, the workaholic attorney patriarch of a family in crisis when the novel opens up to his youngest daughter, Isabella, missing as their home burns. Intricately weaving the tale of the Richardsons with matriarch Elena and the four children and their relationship with their new vagabondish tenants, Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl, the story also evolves into a custody fight between another two mothers that has divided Elena and Mia along with the 1990s Shaker Heights, Ohio community.

Before the novel was released in 2017, Reese Witherspoon bought the rights, which she had first done with Gone Girl. It has become her specialty: to buy the rights for television and film purposes before the book hits shelves. This time it will be with her Hello Sunshine brand, most known for its monthly book club. Currently starring in the second season of HBO’s Big Little Lies, which already reached the deadly ending of Liane Moriarty’s novel of the same name, Reese is working on the Little Fires Everywhere project with Scandal star Kerry Washington.

This will be Kerry’s first major project with her production company, Simpson Street. It was behind her most recent Broadway play, American Son, which is the debut of playwright Christopher Demos-Brown and directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon.

Celeste, Reese, and Kerry will be executive producers for the eight-episode limited series. According to IMDB and Deadline, the casting for the major characters are complete.

Elena Richardson will be played by Reese Witherspoon.

Mia Warren will be played by Kerry Washington.

Pearl Warren will be played by Lexi Underwood.

Bill Richardson will be played by Joshua Jackson.

Izzy Richardson will be played by Megan Stott.

Lexie Richardson will be played by Jade Pettyjohn.

Trip Richardson will be played by Jordan Elsass.

Moody Richardson will be played by Gavin Lewis.

Bebe Chow will be played by Huang Lu.

Linda McCullough will be played by Rosemarie DeWitt.

Restaurant manager (where Mia and Bebe work) will be played by Paul Yen.

Little Fires Everywhere landed at Hulu following a multiple-outlet bidding war and will also be under the umbrella of ABC Signature Studios along with Hello Sunshine and Simpson Street. Liz Tigelaar (Casual, Life Unexpected), Lauren Neustadter, Pilar Savone and Lynn Sheldon will all executive produce. Award-winning mystery novelist Attica Locke is also one of the writers, as seen in the show’s Instagram account, fresh from working on Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us.

“At Hello Sunshine, we strive to shine a light on female-driven stories that are rooted in inspiration, emotion and truth – all of which form the bedrock of Celeste Ng’s ingenious work,” Reese said in the March 2018 Hulu press release first announcing the project. “Hulu has a rich history of transforming groundbreaking literature into groundbreaking television, and we are confident that their talented team will use this story to spur a long-overdue dialogue around race, class, and what it means to be a mother. With Kerry Washington, Liz Tigelaar and now Hulu, Hello Sunshine has brought together a dream lineup of creative collaborators, and we are privileged and humbled to have the opportunity to work with them to bring this important project to life.”

“As producers, we at Simpson Street are so proud to be part of this team to tell this extraordinary story inspired by Celeste Ng’s phenomenal novel and we are thrilled to be embarking on this journey with Hulu,” Kerry said in a press release. “As an actress, I am floored to have the opportunity to work alongside Reese Witherspoon exploring the rich themes of this story playing these dynamic characters.”

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experiences

Book Launch: ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng

With so many concerts going on around the LA area Friday night, I decided to look for an event more my pace. Luckily, on Facebook I found Celeste Ng was scheduled to speak and sign books at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. Her newest novel Little Fires Everywhere had been gaining momentum on the best-seller lists, and since I recently read and enjoyed Everything I Never Told You, I went to the event to get insight on the author’s work and writing process.

In Little Fires Everywhere, a suburban mother is dealing with her house burning down amid her seemingly perfect life and trying to piece together what sparks ignited the blaze. The story takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio — the author’s second hometown — and at the event she spoke about the “metaphorically rich” planned community and how rules shape it. She used the example of how residents couldn’t leave trash cans out on the curb for collection; it was too messy, so the city had golf carts go in the back of residents’ houses to fetch the trash to bring it up the driveway to the truck at the curb.

This fascinated me. In the book jacket, her bio reads she grew up in Shaker Heights — where she said she lived from 10 to college — and Pittsburgh. Recently I had just realized I spent half my childhood in Chicago and the other half in Sacramento. The most recent novel I’m working on surrounds a teenage girl secretly becoming a mermaid at a nightclub in Chicago, but I based the character’s neighborhood on my original neighborhood of Rogers Park that had such an idyllic quality that it didn’t feel like it was in Chicago, and from Celeste’s description maybe more like Shaker Heights. And I too had moved to Sacramento at age 10 up to college. Chicago has more personality, of course, but maybe Northern California suburban living might creep up into a later story.  

Celeste also discussed her writing process and how the idea of her latest novel  germinated in 2009 but the actual writing didn’t come until after 2014’s Everything I Never Told You. So the characters evolved in her head, so she encouraged writers to not be so consumed with how long the story is taking to get on paper and then the long road to being published. She even praised how Sweet Tarts and other candies got her through writing, with a tweet about Sweet Tarts catching the attention of the company that sent her a package. Like many writers, she worked at home, the library, and cafes, which felt inspiring since it felt like I could create a great novel though I spent so much time writing it in all the same places near me.

The event drew a packed room with about 75 or so people braving rush hour traffic. I bought the hardcover book and got it signed, but I choked when I met her because I wanted to tell her about my author aspirations. Sometimes, I can get my words out when meeting authors quickly at book signings and sometimes not, but she was polite and I’m looking forward to reading the novel soon.