Our Missing Hearts

Part 2 details the Crisis and PACT, of which Bird has learned versions in school. Told through his mother’s lived experiences, this history takes on a different tone.

The Crisis highlights the fragility of capitalism and economic wellbeing. A sudden economic meltdown led to mass hysteria because there were few resources to work with. Mass hysteria and individual fears make people less careful about the nature of their government’s solutions. By the time Americans realized the implications of PACT, they had already supported it, and benefited from it. Ng portrays authoritarian moves as the result of citizens’ ignoring them. Margaret is an example of this conflict. When PACT didn’t affect her directly, she didn’t worry about it. Instead, she enjoyed the resurgence of financial wellbeing and security. But when her poetry was used as an example of anti-PACT rhetoric, PACT began to threaten her life—which helped her reevaluate the law and become an anti-PACT activist. ow that Margaret has Bird back in her life, she considers giving up her mission, emphasizing an individual’s desire to survive and protect their family over advocating for larger society—a very human desire. Ng questions the power of individuals to change society because of its overwhelming danger. However, her heroes stay hidden from society’s view, willing to risk their lives for morality and the common good. Our Missing Hearts is a novel that explores the relationship between individual and society, their influences on each other.

Furthermore, Our Missing Hearts explores how fear can deteriorate an individual’s relationship with their society. Most people don’t want to stand out (or stand out too much) because they have a biological understanding of tribalism. If they stand out from the tribe, they can be rejected and their security revoked. For racial minorities, tribalism in a mostly white society has heightened stakes. Racial minorities such as Asian Americans are often visibly different from white Americans, so when society targets “Asianness” as a sign of otherness, their safety is threatened. Blaming people who look different from a majority is an easy way to scapegoat. This behavior deteriorates society because it implies Asian Americans are not true Americans—a racist projection of societal fears.

In writing a dystopian society rife with racism, Ng alludes to the real history of American racism. This history helps her prove that what’s happening in her novel is not so fictional as to be impossible. During World War II, the American government forcibly removed Japanese Americans living on the west coast from their homes, tearing families apart and incarcerating them in prison camps under the false assumption that Japanese Americans would side with Japan. Not only were these internment camps a violation of rights, but considering they were not developed for German Americans or Italian Americans, they highlighted the inherent racism of villainizing Japanese Americans. These internment camps were further complicated by Japanese immigrants, who were not legally allowed to have U.S. citizenship due to the Chinese Exclusion Act and other laws that forbade Asians from becoming American. With its history of anti-Asian racism, it is not a stretch for something like PACT to happen in America.

Ng also explores the fraught history between minority groups in America. The country framed Asian Americans as a “model minority”—in that their good grades and upward mobility were used to shame Black Americans advocating for civil rights. Asian Americans were used to “prove” Black Americans could live fulfilling lives without protests. This uplifting of Asian Americans continues to divide minority communities, pitting Asian against Black in the fight to be accepted in white America. Black Americans have a history of forcible separation from their families as well, because during the Antebellum and pre-Antebellum period, Black Americans could and did lose their children to the economic whims of enslavers. Again, history highlights the removal of children as having once been reality. This history also explains a division in activism. In the novel, Black Americans are no longer the main target of PACT, and are less likely to advocate for Asian Americans because they feel the latter have not helped them in their own activism.

Ng also mentions the history of forcible separation among Native American communities. Native American children were taken from their parents and placed in white, often Catholic schools. The American government explicitly wanted Native American children to be raised by white people, not within their own cultures. This form of cultural genocide was lauded at the time as a way to help Native American children integrate into white society. Thus, in Ng’s novel, Native American families recognize PACT as the same terror inflicted on their communities for centuries.

To combat this terror, Ng develops three powerful forces that advocate for the good of society. Margaret’s poetry and the anti-PACT slogan “Our Missing Hearts” are about motherhood. In the novel, motherhood is celebrated as a powerful antidote to society’s ills. Margaret’s “missing hearts” refer to the many ways in which children create lives separate from their mothers, and the fact that mothers can’t always protect their children. It is an idea grounded in both anxiety and acceptance. This idea is later appropriated by PACT supporters as a slogan criticizing America. Ng uses this misappropriation to frame motherhood as an oppressive society’s ultimate threat, because the bond between mother and child is inherently powerful. Through Margaret’s poetry, Ng celebrates the power of women and motherhood.

The second form of activism that Ng celebrates is the power of the written word to inspire autonomy. Though Margaret’s poetry is not intended to be anti-PACT, protesters’ use of it demonstrates that poetry is open to interpretation. This highlights poetry as a reader’s form, in that regardless of the poet’s intent, readers will ultimately connect to and project onto their writing based on their own experiences. This connects people through poetry in unexpected ways. In the novel, poetry and storytelling are necessary for empathy. This makes the purposeful censorship of Margaret’s poetry all the more powerful—the government understands the power of words, so they seek to erase them.

The third form of activism is librarians themselves. Libraries still exist in contemporary America, but are often underfunded and underutilized. They are a powerful environment for building culture and community, but underappreciated. In the novel, libraries are a place of refuge and subversion, and librarians heroes—appropriate for Bird’s framing of his journey as a fairy tale. Librarians take advantage of the ways society has ignored them to work undercover, secretly fighting the removal of children from their families. Overall, Ng celebrates libraries and librarians as beacons of democratic values and subversive potential.