Our Missing Hearts – Truth, Courage, and Personal Integrity
A near-future novel exploring family, resistance, and the power of speaking your truth in an oppressive society.
Our Missing Hearts – Celeste Ng (12 minutes total)
Our Missing Hearts – Spoken Script (~500 words)
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to grow up in a world where fear shapes every rule, every law, every action? // Where speaking the truth or asking questions can put your family at risk?
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng tells the story of twelve-year-old Bird Gardner, who lives quietly with his father, a once-brilliant linguist now reduced to shelving books in a university library. // In their world, silence is survival. // For the past decade, laws have been enforced in the name of protecting “American culture.” // Families who question authority—especially those of Asian heritage—live under suspicion, and children can be removed from their parents. // Even libraries have been forced to strip their shelves of books deemed dangerous—including the poetry of Bird’s mother, Margaret, who vanished when Bird was nine.
Bird has learned not to ask about his mother, not to read her words, not to wonder why she left. // But when he receives a mysterious drawing in the mail, he is pulled into a quest that takes him back through the folktales she once told him, into the hidden world of underground librarians, and finally to New York City, where the possibility of reunion collides with a quiet act of resistance.
The novel wrestles with powerful themes: the endurance of love, the resilience of art, and the way stories carry truth even when voices are silenced. // At its heart, it is about the sacrifices parents make for their children, and the courage it takes to defy fear when fear itself has become law. // Ng captures the tension between personal integrity and societal pressure, showing how one small act of courage can ripple outward, even in the darkest times.
At its core, the philosophy of Our Missing Hearts is clear: authenticity and moral courage are essential, even in societies that punish truth-telling. // Personal identity and integrity can exist even under immense pressure, and love and art themselves can be acts of resistance. // Bird’s journey reminds us that protecting what is most precious—family, freedom, truth—requires not only courage but also creativity, resilience, and hope.
Upon its release, the novel was widely acclaimed for its lyrical prose and unsettling timeliness, becoming a New York Times bestseller and earning a place as one of the notable books of the year. // Readers and critics alike were struck by Ng’s ability to capture both the tenderness of a mother’s love and the fragility of freedom when fear governs society.
So—why should you read Our Missing Hearts? // Because it is a story about the heart, courage, and resistance, about the ways love and truth can survive—and even thrive—under pressure. // It challenges us to reflect on our own responsibilities, our own moral choices, and what we are willing to stand for, even when the stakes are high.
In the end, Ng leaves us with a question that lingers: What truths are you willing to protect, and how far would you go to preserve them—for yourself, for your family, for the world?
Part 2: Reading Segment 1 (3 mins)
Excerpt (Bird reflecting on his mother and injustice):
The letter arrives on a Friday. Slit and resealed with a sticker, of course,
as all their letters are: Inspected for your safety—PACT. It had caused
confusion at the post office, the clerk unfolding the paper inside, studying
it, passing it up to his supervisor, then the boss. But eventually it had been
deemed harmless and sent on its way. No return address, only a New York,
NY postmark, six days old. On the outside, his name—Bird—and because
of this he knows it is from his mother.
• • •
He has not been Bird for a long time.
We named you Noah after your father’s father, his mother told him once.
Bird was all your own doing.
The word that, when he said it, felt like him. Something that did not
belong on earth, a small quick thing. An inquisitive chirp, a self that curled
up at the edges.
The school hadn’t liked it. Bird is not a name, they’d said, his name is
Noah. His kindergarten teacher, fuming: He won’t answer when I call him.
He only answers to Bird.
Because his name is Bird, his mother said. He answers to Bird, so I
suggest you call him that, birth certificate be damned. She’d taken a Sharpie
to every handout that came home, crossing off Noah, writing Bird on the
dotted line instead.
That was his mother: formidable and ferocious when her child was in
need.
In the end the school conceded, though after that the teacher had written
Bird in quotation marks, like a gangster’s nickname. Dear “Bird,” please
remember to have your mother sign your permission slip.
Dear Mr. and more fully in class. It wasn’t until he was nine, after his mother left, that he
became Noah.
His father says it’s for the best, and won’t let anyone call him Bird
anymore.
If anyone calls you that, he says, you correct them. You say: Sorry, no,
that’s not my name.
It was one of the many changes that took place after his mother left. A
new apartment, a new school, a new job for his father. An entirely new life.
As if his father had wanted to transform them completely, so that if his
mother ever came back, she wouldn’t even know how to find them.
He’d passed his old kindergarten teacher on the street last year, on his
way home. Well, hello, Noah, she said, how are you this morning? and he
could not tell whether it was smugness or pity in her voice.
He is twelve now; he has been Noah for three years, but Noah still feels
like one of those Halloween masks, something rubbery and awkward he
doesn’t quite know how to wear.
• • •
So now, out of the blue: a letter from his mother. It looks like her
handwriting—and no one else would call him that. Bird. After all these
years he forgets her voice sometimes; when he tries to summon it, it slips
away like a shadow dissolving in the dark.
He opens the envelope with trembling hands. Three years without a
single word, but finally he’ll understand. Why she left. Where she’s been.
But inside: nothing but a drawing. A whole sheet of paper, covered edge
to edge in drawings no bigger than a dime: cats. Big cats, little cats, striped
and calico and tuxedo, sitting pert, licking their paws, lolling in puddles of
sunlight. Doodles really, like the ones his mother drew on his lunch bags
many years ago, like the ones he sometimes draws in his class notebooks
today. Barely more than a few curved lines, but recognizable. Alive. That’s
all—no message, no words even, just cat after cat in ballpoint squiggle.
Something about it tugs at the back of his mind, but he can’t quite hook it.
Mrs. Gardner, “Bird” is respectful and studious but needs to participate
more fully in class. It wasn’t until he was nine, after his mother left, that he
became Noah.
His father says it’s for the best, and won’t let anyone call him Bird
anymore.
If anyone calls you that, he says, you correct them. You say: Sorry, no,
that’s not my name.
It was one of the many changes that took place after his mother left.
Part 3: Reading Segment 2 (3 mins) page 82
Excerpt: Once, in Harvard Square, Bird and his father had run into Sarah, who lived
two houses down, who had sometimes brought them rhubarb muffins and
borrowed Margaret’s pruning shears. She’d crossed the street as they
approached, casually but quickly, as if there were a bus she needed to catch.
The next time they saw her, on their own street, hauling in garbage cans
after the truck had gone by, she didn’t meet their eyes.
Worse than the neighbors who ignored them: the ones who began to
check on them. To see if you needed anything, one would say. Just dropping
by, to see how you were doing. To see how you were holding up. What was
it they were supposed to be holding up, Bird wondered, though eventually
he realized it was themselves. It did feel that way in those early days, on the
mornings when he’d learned to eat his cereal dry, because the milk in the
fridge always seemed to have curdled: like they were puppets and the
strings holding them up had gone slack. His mother had done all those
things, but she was gone, and they would have to learn to survive on their
own: a near impossible thing, those first weeks.
When the smoke alarm went off, the fire department arrived and his
father had to explain: no, everything was fine, just the pancakes left in the
pan too long. Yes, he knew the stove should never be unattended; Bird had
called him into the other room; no, Bird was perfectly safe, everything was
under control. Another afternoon, Bird fell off his bike at the corner and
skinned both knees and ran back home, screaming, blood trickling down
both shins: he was sitting on the closed toilet, sniffling, his father dabbing at
him with a damp paper towel—it’s okay, Bird, see? just a scrape, not as bad
as it seems—when the police arrived. A neighbor had called. The little boy,
crying and alone. The bike abandoned, front wheel still spinning. Just
wanted to make sure he wasn’t unattended. You know, with his mother gone.
Just wanted to be sure someone was watching.
Someone was always watching, it seemed: when Bird went out without a
hat and stood shivering at the bus stop; when Bird forgot his lunch and his
teacher asked him if his father was giving him enough to eat. There was
always someone watching. There was always someone wanting to check.
It’s probably nothing, but—
I just figured I should say something in case—
Of course I’m sure everything is fine, but—
Posters were starting to appear all around town then, all over the city. All
over the country. United neighborhoods are peaceful neighborhoods. We
watch out for each other. Years later, Bird would see Sadie pull a Sharpie
from her jeans pocket and scribble over out for. Their neighbor across the
street, who had never liked them, who said their yard was overgrown and
their house needed painting and their car was parked too close to hers, took
particular joy in calling in everything. When his father burned his hand on
the cast-iron skillet and dropped it on the floor with a loud clang and a
shouted oath, a police officer arrived fifteen minutes later. Report of
domestic disturbance, they’d said. Was he in the habit of using profanity in
front of his son? Would he say he had a temper? And to Bird, privately, out
of his father’s hearing: Was he ever afraid of his father, had his father ever
hit him, did he feel safe at home?
Part 4: Reading Segment 3 (3 mins)
Excerpt
Two weeks after Bird’s ninth birthday. Over breakfast, Ethan had suddenly
paused, stunned, and set his phone before her. Heads bent over the screen,
they’d read the headline together: CONFLICT ERUPTS AT PROTEST; 6 INJURED, 1
DEAD. Below, a photo of a young Black woman—long braids pulled back in
a ponytail, glasses, yellow hat. Still standing, eyes still clear and open,
mouth still parted in a cry, a millisecond before her mind knows what her
body already feels: a red rose of blood just starting to bloom on her chest.
Clutched in her hands, a poster: all our missing hearts. And a caption:
Protester Marie Johnson, 19, a first-year student at NYU from
Philadelphia, was killed by a stray bullet in police response to anti-PACT
riots Monday.
The first of many such articles, but they would all use the same photo.
This young woman—Marie—had read Margaret’s book in her dorm
room. She was studying developmental psychology, planning to become a
pediatrician, and with each news report of a child taken, the last lines of the
last poem had come back to her, insistent as an infant’s cry. Nine years after
PACT’s passage, there were more and more of them: the few that made the
news here and there, framed as stories of negligence and endangerment, the
parents portrayed as reckless and careless and callous; but others, too,
shrouded in rumor and secrecy and shame.
Just rumors, some people scoffed; re-placements happened only in a few
isolated cases. Others insisted PACT removals were a necessary evil: a
rescue, for the child’s good, and society’s. Can’t rock the boat, one
commenter wrote online, and be surprised when your kid gets washed
overboard. But for every child you heard was taken, how many families
said nothing, stopped protesting, stopped everything, hoping their good
behavior would earn their children back?
The night before the march, Marie bought sheets of posterboard at the
drugstore. With fat-tipped scented markers, she jigsawed words onto the
sign, sketched the solemn face of a child below. After the march, they’d
found the markers and the rest of the posterboard on the floor of her dorm
room, blank and unused, beside a spread-eagled copy of Margaret’s book.
After that: vigils. Campaigns to remember Marie. Online, thousands of
people changed their profile photos: Marie after Marie after Marie, a sea of
them crying out, flushed with youth and fury and pulsing lost life, every one
of them brandishing the poster with Margaret’s words. People googled
those words, and up popped the name Margaret Miu, the title of her book.
The poems she’d written while pregnant, in a sleep-deprived haze nursing
Bird late at night, watching the sky turn from black to navy to bruised
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