REGISTER HERE
The first 15 registrants receive a free copy of the book! (Hesburgh Library also has a free electronic copy, available here.)
Moderator: Hyunsoo Kim, English PhD student and Gender Studies graduate minor
This book club event connects to the Reproductive Justice: Talks for Solidarity and Social Change series: in her public lecture on Monday, April 24, Dr. Laura Briggs will be putting Ng's novel into conversation with the US Supreme Court case Brackeen v. Haaland, which challenges the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned—and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him.
Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both.
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.