Tell me about the inspiration for your new book, Our Missing Hearts? How does it relate to and build on your previous novels?
Everything began with the mother-son story: a creative mother and a son who doesn’t understand her work, and maybe sees it as a rival. But while the story was still developing, the 2016 US presidential election happened, the country started to shift to the far right, and it felt strange to pretend those things weren’t happening on the page when they were so present in the real world. So I began to imagine a world in which the country had already entered a post-democratic state. It felt like something new, but I realised I was really working with the same themes I’m always drawn to: parents and children, what gets passed on to the next generation, the role of art in our lives.
To what extent is Our Missing Hearts dystopian fiction as opposed to a reflection of what is already happening in US society?
The truth is that nothing in the book is unprecedented. Everything in there has roots in something that has happened in history — or in many cases, is currently happening. Family separations, anti-Asian laws, discrimination in the name of nationalism. Even in the time since I finished the book, reality has moved closer to “dystopia”: here in the US, there’s a widespread movement to ban certain books from schools and libraries, and librarians are facing death threats.
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Your author’s note reminds the reader that there is a long history, in the US and elsewhere, of removing children from families as a means of political control. Would you tell us more?
The separations of migrant families at the US-Mexico border made news recently, but it’s only the latest example. In the US, enslaved children were often sold away from their parents, and Indigenous children were sent to abusive “residential schools” to “Americanise” them. Even today, the American foster care system often removes children from their families unnecessarily, often for poverty and cultural differences rather than abuse. I wanted to acknowledge that this isn’t something made up, but something that real people have endured.
Before your first novel was published, you wrote an essay entitled “Why I Don’t Want to Be the Next Amy Tan”. Have you succeeded in not being pigeonholed as a writer?
I’m still often thought of as an Asian American writer first — and I don’t mind that! What I hope is that we’ve broadened our concepts of what an “Asian American writer” can be, what kinds of stories get to be told, and who gets to tell them. There’s not just one Chinese American, or Asian American, story; that’s what I meant when I said I didn’t want to be “the next Amy Tan”. The more facets of Asian American experience we see, the richer the literary world is.
Would you say something about the importance of the outsider or the outlier in fiction?
One of the most crucial things fiction does is encourage us to imagine what it’s like to be someone else. It asks us to think the thoughts and feel the feelings of those “others”— and when we do that, we often find that we understand them better, that they aren’t as different as we first thought. We’re discovering our shared humanity, which feels more important than ever these days.
Who do you admire the most?
I’d have to say my mother. She moved to a new country when quite young, made a life here, got a PhD, and raised a family — any one of which would be accomplishment enough! But beyond that, she is always looking for ways to help others — mentoring other women as they got their own degrees, doing public service, helping friends — and by example, she taught me that I should always, always give back whenever I can. I’m so grateful to have had her as my mom.
What current book, film, TV show and podcast would you recommend?
I just finished Hell of a Book by Jason Mott — it is indeed. I can’t recommend Everything Everywhere All At Once highly enough — I’m still thinking about it weeks after seeing it. It’s truly brilliant. And my current podcast is Ologies by Alie Ward, in which she speaks to an expert each week and asks them the questions we’re all wondering but feel too silly to ask!
Which public event affected you most?
It’s cliche to say, but September 11th, 2001. As a Chinese American, I’d always been keenly aware of race and had no illusions that we were “post-racial”. But watching the country turn its anger into widespread discrimination against Muslims — and the decades of distrust and surveillance that it set in motion — brought home that fear can twist a society into something almost unrecognisable, if we let it.
The most remarkable place you have visited?
My father’s birthplace in China, where he lived his first few years before moving to Hong Kong. It was out in the countryside, and hearing him tell stories about being there as a child made me see him, and our family, in a new light.
A book that might move me to tears?
Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell. I don’t cry a lot while reading but cried multiple times!
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng was published on October 4th
