The award-winning author on how Trump, Covid and anti-Asian rhetoric inspired her latest novel, digging her way out of ‘post-book fatigue’, and learning to touch type using Ulysses
Celeste Ng, 42, is the award-winning author of three novels, including Little Fires Everywhere, which was made into a miniseries starring and executive-produced by Reese Witherspoon. Her latest, Our Missing Hearts, dramatises the power of art and literature in dark times, unfolding in a nationalistic America riven by anti-Asian violence, where the authorities think nothing of snatching children from dissident parents. At its centre is Bird, a 12-year-old boy searching for his mother, an Asian-American poet who vanished years earlier. Ng lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and their son.
How did Our Missing Hearts begin for you?
It came from a very personal place, with me thinking about being a creative parent and that constant fear of just not being present enough if I’m daydreaming about a plot or going on a book tour. I’d had a creative mother in my last novel, Little Fires Everywhere, and her daughter is quite accepting of the art that she makes and of the sacrifices that that requires, but I started thinking: what if that were not the case?
