Celeste Ng makes the case for art as a weapon against oppression in her new novel
Our Missing Hearts is the story of 12-year-old Bird, a quest to find his mother and the power of small acts of rebellion. Saddled by grief, this quasi-dystopian novel is ultimately propelled by hope.
Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts is not exactly dystopian or alternate history, as many events described in her latest novel have in fact happened, or are thinly disguised versions of real-life tragedies.
"The Crisis," for example, is a worldwide economic breakdown allegedly caused by China's market manipulation, and is clearly a fictional stand-in for the pandemic. Existential threats to certain individuals or groups — a common trope in dystopian novels — are already a part of U.S. history, such as slavery, discrimination against Asians, and
