Poured Over: Celeste Ng on Our Missing Hearts

“He thinks of himself as a character in a fairy tale in a way who’s going on a quest. And there’s so many stories like that about a character who’s going in search of a lost loved one, whether it’s a daughter, a mother, a son, there’s this sense of I’m going off to find you. And that’s really powerful.” Celeste Ng follows her massive hit Little Fires Everywhere with a novel set in a world that “looks like ours, but with the volume kind of turned up to 11” in Our Missing Hearts, an indelible story about family and identity, art and connection. Celeste joins us on the show to talk about the novel she never planned to write, mothers and sons, coming-of-age (for adults and children), Asian American history, pushing against our ideas of hero figures, being a word nerd and her love of Shakespeare, her literary influences and more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TNR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books (Episode)

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston
Tripmaster Monkey by Maxine Hong Kingston
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Featured Books (TBR Topoff)

Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays with occasional Saturdays here and on your favorite podcast app.