Our Missing Hearts

“Well, it’s like that, the teacher said. We all want our children to be safe. We don’t want them exposed to bad ideas—ideas that might hurt them, or encourage them to do bad things. To themselves, or to their families, or to our country. So we remove those books and block sites that might be harmful.”

The teacher in this quote represents the illusion of safety in a dystopian society. She declares that censorship keeps children safe by keeping them away from ideas that might hurt them. In censoring access to different ideas, the teacher helps uphold a society devoid of interesting layers and contradictions. She becomes a puppet for the government’s ideology, revealing a lack of integrity in what used to be a democracy.

“If we fear something, it is all the more imperative we study it thoroughly.”

This quote reveals one of Ng’s central messages: Her novel is written to encourage readers to embrace the study of things they fear. The more we turn away from what we don’t know, the more we’ll have reason to fear it—and the more we’ll react on impulse. This quote emphasizes the importance of books, education, and freedom of thought.

“It isn’t just dangerous to research China, or go looking for Japanese folktales. It’s dangerous to look like him, always has been. It’s dangerous to be his mother’s child, in more ways than one.”

This quote captures the racial tension in the novel’s world, and the threat posed to Bird simply for being Asian American. It is not simply Asian Americans’ culture and politics that are under suspicion—simply being Asian American is. The visibility of Bird’s Asianness is not something he can control; nonetheless, he becomes a victim of his society’s authoritarianism and xenophobia. This quote also implies that Bird will always be at odds with his society, foreshadowing further conflict.

“But the truth is: it isn’t gone. He can’t see that bare stretch of ground without thinking of it, the bright splotch flashing into his mind, sharp as a wildcat’s snarl.”

In this quote, Ng highlights the subversive nature of silent protest. Though any signs of the anti-PACT movement are erased by authorities, Bird can’t unsee what he’s seen. In an authoritarian society, people and knowledge can be erased—but no one can erase memories of family, of loss and a desire for freedom.

“He’s not sure if she can, but if there’s one thing he remembers from stories, it’s that people who offer help along your way—whether directing you to treasure or warning you of danger—should not be ignored.”

Ng evokes the structure of fairy tales to capture her protagonist’s youth. Childhood fairy tales connect Bird to his mother, and his search for her is framed as a story because he believes life can be as strange as fiction. During his journey, he embraces the help of strangers, like fairy tales have taught him to do—starting with the public librarian, whom he intuits he can trust. Later, Bird applies this storied logic to the Duchess (Domi).

“He was sure if he could stay awake his mother would be there. The fact that the test was so arbitrary did not bother him; the tests they had in school were arbitrary, too: circle the nouns and underline the verbs; combine these two random numbers into a third. Tests were always arbitrary; it was part of their nature and, in fact, what made them a test.”

Bird struggles to contextualize and understand his mother’s disappearance because he is a child who knows little about the world around him. When his mother left, Bird imagined that he could summon her through strength and patience. But deep down, he knows such tests are arbitrary—they cannot bring his mother back to him. In this quote, Ng emphasizes the psychological toll of Bird’s separation from his mother. It also highlights humans’ tendency to project meaning onto the world.

“…he feels oddly at home, and it takes him a moment to understand why: all around him, suddenly, are people with faces like hers. And a bit like his. He has never been in a place like this, where no one gives him a second glance. If his father was here, he’d be the one standing out, not Bird, and Bird laughs. For the first time in his life, he is unremarkable, and this feels like power.”

This quote reveals the importance of representation. In Cambridge, Bird is one of only a few Asian Americans; this made him stand out as a potential target of racism. But in Chinatown, Bird is surrounded by other Asian people, which makes him feel anonymous yet powerful. He is entertained by the idea that in Chinatown, his white father would be the one sticking out. This quote emphasizes the importance of community—especially in immigrant and minority diasporas.

“As far as he knows, her life before him is a clean blank slate. She watches him adjust to it, this new piece of information. This new image of his mother: whizzing through the city, bearing things.”

This quote highlights the moment in which children recognize their parents as fully formed people. For children, life revolves around their parents because they know no other way. But as they grow up, they often learn more about their parents’ lives before they themselves were born. This ultimately builds more empathy between children and their parents. Margaret’s past helps Bird recontextualize his resentment and sadness over her leaving the family. Bird comes to understand that Margaret has had other conflicts and joys in her life that made her who she is.

“Suburban camouflage from the Sears catalog. Her father’s saying: The stick hits the bird that holds its head the highest. Her mother’s: The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. She never, in her memory, heard her parents say a word in Cantonese. Only later would she realize what she’d missed.”

In this quote, Ng emphasizes the complexity of the immigrant experience in America. To protect themselves from the danger of othering, immigrants often seek “suburban camouflage” to blend in. However, adaptation sometimes leads to the abandonment of one’s culture. For example, Margaret’s parents give up their mother language (Cantonese) to survive. Through various characters, Ng explores the possibility of adapting to America while maintaining one’s own culture.

“You stopped thinking about other people at all. You got used to that, too, eventually, just as you got used to people disappearing: gone back home, gone elsewhere hoping for better, sometimes simply gone.”

This quote describes the apathy that sets in when a society struggles. People can get used to anything, even forgetting other people. This apathy is expressed as a byproduct of the Crisis, a symptom of the stress of the past. But apathy continues even after PACT stabilizes the economy. Ng suggests that this lack of feeling is inherent in humans, especially when they are in survival mode.

“For Ethan, words carried secrets, the stories of how they came to be, all their past selves. He would find the mysterious ways they connected, tracing their family tree back to pinpoint the unlikeliest cousins. It was proof that despite the chaos around them, there was logic and order to the world; there was a system, and that system could be deciphered.”

In this quote, Ng emphasizes the importance of words and stories. Ethan’s study of language as a way to uncover history mirrors Margaret’s mastery of poetry as a way to influence society. For Ethan, language is a logical system that connects people; however, Ng also highlights how words can sew chaos. Thus, there are many ways to utilize words.

“PACT: Preserving American Culture and Traditions. A solemn promise to root out any anti-American elements undermining the nation.”

PACT is an acronym that holds great power in the novel because it allows for the control and overreach of the American government. That PACT stands for “Preserving American Culture and Traditions” emphasizes how out of touch the new law is. After all, American culture encompasses a wide variety of peoples, languages, and traditions—shaped by centuries of immigrations. The complex, vague nature of being “American” allows for abuse of the law because it is ultimately up to those in power to decide what is and isn’t American.

“A cable-news host who’d defended PACT from the beginning—Chinese American? he’d said, there’s no such thing; you know where their loyalties really lie—picked up the story. He scanned the photo from the back of Margaret’s book and flashed it on-screen. Letting her foreign face say it all.”

Margaret’s life was destroyed by the racism and willful misunderstanding of one man who works in an influential position in the media. This quote reveals that Margaret’s face is what marks her as foreign, despite being born in the United States. People like the radio host are uninterested in nuance; he wants to stoke people’s fears for his own gain. The quote also emphasizes that despite the government’s narrative of non-racism, PACT is very much about targeting Asian Americans and rejecting them as Americans.

“There was a long history of children taken, the pretexts different but the reasons the same. A most precious ransom, a cudgel over a parent’s head. It was whatever the opposite of an anchor was: an attempt to uproot some otherness, something hated and feared. Some foreignness seen as an invasive weed, something to be eradicated.”

Ng’s story of children being forcibly removed from their parents by the government due to perceived ideological differences is not a far stretch from the reality of America. Historically, minority children have been taken from their parents in an effort to raise them in “American” environments controlled by the government and traditionally white institutions. This act is a form of intimidation, as parents will likely comply with those in power should the wellbeing of their child be in question.

“Spirare, Bird hears his father say. To breathe. Con: together. So conspiracy literally means breathing together.”

Ethan’s definition of “conspiracy” reveals a poetic meaning behind a term commonly used in derision. Conspiracies are widely believed to be against society’s best interests, such as when a government covers up a discovery or a mistake, or when a traitor conspires to bring down a government. This quote reveals that a conspiracy is actually a communal awakening. The underground librarian movement is a conspiracy that comes together to protect ideas and families. Ng’s version of America lacks a healthy notion of conspiracy, as its citizens are too afraid to come together, much less breathe together. Breathing together also implies an intimacy, highlighting the importance of deep connections between people.

“She couldn’t explain why, but she feels this in her bones: certain things must be done in person. Testifying. Attending the dying. Remembering those who were gone. Some things need to be witnessed.”

In a society where people are too afraid to bear witness, this quote emphasizes the need for certain things to be seen. Without presence, certain things are less meaningful. This quote emphasizes Margaret’s subversive nature. She understands that choosing not to witness the world means contributing to its deterioration. Margaret is also aware that she needs to bear witness for her own sanity, so she can still feel part of the world. This quote is Ng’s message to her reader to pay attention and be a witness to the difficult things in life, even if they are painful.

“The voice comes from all around them, as if from the air itself, and though later a few of them would say it sounded godlike, from the sky, most of those who heard it would insist on the exact opposite: it felt like a voice inside them, speaking somehow both to them and from them, and though it was speaking the stories of strangers, people they had never met, children who were not their own, pain they had not experienced, it was somehow speaking not just to them but with them, of them, that the stories it told, one after the other in a seemingly endless stream, were not someone else’s but one larger story of which they, too, were a part.”

In this quote, Ng uses imagery to place her reader among the New Yorkers who experience Margaret’s subversive message. Margaret designed her mission as experiential; some people hear her voice as if from within themselves. This enables the listeners to tap into the deepest recesses of their empathy. They are not necessarily being spoken to or at—they are instead reacquainting themselves with their own and others’ humanity, after having been desensitized to the post-Crisis world.

“It is hard for anything to be heard and even if anyone hears it, how much of a difference could it really make, what change could it possibly bring, just these words, just this thing that happened once to one person that the listener does not and will never know. It is just a story. It is only words.”

This quote explores the difference between hearing and listening. Simply hearing a message doesn’t mean you truly hear it. Margaret’s message can be a powerful force for change—but only if its recipients choose to listen and act accordingly. Communication is complicated, as it requires both a speaker and a listener, otherwise “it is only words”. Ng uses this quote to encourage her readers to listen to, not just hear, people’s stories.

“Who ever thinks, recalling the face of the one they loved who is gone: yes, I looked at you enough, I loved you enough, we had enough time, any of this was enough?

The novel is about the power of love between people, the love of families and alliances. This quote evokes the spirit of “our missing hearts”, in which loved ones are scattered. It warns against taking loved ones for granted, because life is fickle. No amount of time can ease the pain of missing hearts.

“Now they notice the twin sags on either side of the mattress, the worn spots on the carpet where someone must have stood, morning after morning, gathering the strength and the willpower to begin the day again. They notice the crack in the bedside lamp, where it has been broken and then repaired. Burn marks here and there on the wooden floor where hot ash from cigarettes fell.”

Sadie and Bird’s descriptions of Domi’s house reveal two important things. The first is the highly observant nature of children, who can spot intricacies in the world around them. The second is that stories can come from anywhere, even the worn signs of a house. Domi’s house tells a story through its small imperfections. Sadie and Bird are the house’s willing readers, enraptured by the safety it provides.

“Or maybe, he thinks, there were simply many versions of this single tale. What did it tell Margaret and Bird that it did not say to him? He read it again and again, until the library closed, looking for the message, for the clue that would unlock everything and tell him where his family was. But the book revealed nothing.”

In this quote, Ng depicts Ethan’s fruitless search for the coded messages between Margaret and Bird. Ethan can’t see the same message as Bird because he wasn’t a part of the boy’s early childhood reading. This speaks to the power of interpretation and the ways in which stories connect people.

“Those vanished people had wiped their tears and retreated back into their lives, but those tears had been there all the same, even for a moment, and she told herself that this meant something, that this mattered.”

Margaret’s listeners in New York were moved to tears by her stories, and even though they were forced to move on with their lives, this empathy is proof that Margaret accomplished something. The question here is whether or not this change will be permanent. Regardless, the collective experience of hearing and feeling Margaret’s stories is an important victory. This proves the evocative power of storytelling; any story that moves humans to feel is valuable, no matter its lifespan.

“They are speaking about her in the past tense, Bird thinks, and he almost smiles at how childish and shortsighted this is. They are so certain that she is gone, but he’s not. I promise I’ll come back, she had said, but he realizes now: she hadn’t said when. Only that she would.”

Bird starts constructing his own story of his mother, one full of possibility. Though Domi and Ethan frame Margaret’s story as one grounded in the past, Bird prefers his story to be set in the present—a story with a future. This highlights his faith in his mother and overall positivity. Bird’s positivity also speaks to his childlike innocence. He truly believes he and his mother will reunite, so he is willing to wait for their story’s proper ending. Bird leaves his life open to possibility, a true victory in a dystopian society.