Beacons of Hope in Our Missing Hearts: How Light Guides Resistance and Remembrance

What Is a Beacon of Hope in Our Missing Hearts?

A beacon is a light or signal that guides people through darkness. In Celeste Ng’s novel, the motif of beacons of hope appears both literally and metaphorically, threading through the epigraph, the author’s note, and the novel’s larger project of resistance and remembrance. The author herself uses the phrase directly: in the Author’s Note, she writes that her list of real-life inspirations includes “the real toads—and conversely, the beacons of hope—that shaped my thinking as I wrote.” This framing establishes beacons of hope as the positive counterparts to the historical atrocities and injustices that inform the novel’s dystopian world. They are the small lights—acts of witness, art, and human connection—that persist even under state repression.

The Epigraph’s Faint Smile as a Beacon

The novel opens with two epigraphs. The first, from Anna Akhmatova’s “Requiem, 1935–1940,” describes a speaker waiting in line outside a Leningrad prison during the Yezhov terror. A woman with blue lips asks, “Can you describe this?” and the speaker replies, “I can.” Then “something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.” This faint smile is a beacon of hope in a bleak setting: it signals that the speaker’s promise to bear witness—to describe the terror—offers a flicker of human connection and defiance. The smile is not a grand gesture but a fleeting light, yet it carries enormous weight. It suggests that the act of remembering and telling can itself be a form of resistance, a guiding signal for others who suffer.

The second epigraph, from the fictional Let’s Learn About PACT: A Guide for Young Patriots, presents PACT as a promise to protect American ideals, with consequences for “un-American ideas.” This epigraph stands in stark contrast to Akhmatova’s: one is a beacon of hope through witness, the other a tool of state control. The juxtaposition sets up the novel’s central tension between authoritarian power and the small, human lights that oppose it.

The Author’s Note: Real Toads and Beacons of Hope

In the Author’s Note, Ng explicitly names “beacons of hope” as the positive inspirations behind the novel. She lists historical and contemporary examples of child removal—enslaved families, Indigenous boarding schools, foster care inequities, migrant family separations—as “real toads,” the grim realities that shaped the novel’s world. But she also points to beacons: the nonviolent protests of the Serbian Otpor! movement, Syrian anti-Assad protestors, prodemocracy Hong Kongers, and the guerrilla art that inspired Margaret’s bottle caps and other protest installations. She writes that “the concept of guerrilla art was a guiding light,” using a beacon metaphor to describe how creative resistance can illuminate a path forward.

These beacons are not abstract ideals; they are concrete practices and people. Ng mentions Anna Akhmatova, whose poem appears in the epigraph, as a real person who “arrived in my life” and helped “click” the story together. She also names Sonia Lee Chun, Latasha Harlins, and Akai Gurley as real people who appear in the novel, honoring their legacies. These figures serve as beacons of hope because they represent courage, memory, and the refusal to be erased.

How the Motif Recurs and Changes Meaning

The motif of beacons of hope recurs throughout the novel’s structure and themes, though its meaning shifts depending on context. In the epigraph, the beacon is a fleeting smile—a moment of human connection that promises witness. In the Author’s Note, beacons are the real-world movements and individuals who inspire resistance. Within the novel itself, we can infer that Margaret’s art—the bottle caps, the knitted web, the ice children—functions as beacons for Bird and for the broader community. These installations are designed to be seen, to guide attention toward injustice, and to offer a sense of solidarity. The author’s note explicitly connects Margaret’s project to Anna Deavere Smith’s work and to guerrilla art, suggesting that Margaret’s creations are meant to be lights in the dark.

The meaning of the beacon also evolves from a passive signal to an active call. Akhmatova’s smile is a quiet acknowledgment; Margaret’s art is a public intervention. Both, however, share the same core: they transform private grief into shared witness. The beacon becomes a bridge between individual experience and collective memory, a way of saying “you are not alone.”

Character and Theme Connections

The motif of beacons of hope is deeply tied to the novel’s central characters. Margaret, Bird’s mother, is the primary creator of beacons through her art. Her bottle caps and other installations are inspired by real guerrilla art, as the Author’s Note reveals. She uses her creativity to resist the state’s erasure of dissent, turning everyday objects into signals of hope. Bird, the protagonist, is on a quest to find Margaret, and in doing so, he encounters the traces of her beacons—the art she left behind. His journey is itself a search for light in a world darkened by PACT’s censorship and child-removal policies. Ethan, Bird’s father, represents a different kind of beacon: his etymological research and his quiet acts of care offer a more intellectual, less public form of resistance.

The themes of artistic witness and memory under censorship and individual agency in dismantling authoritarian systems are directly illuminated by the beacon motif. Art becomes a beacon because it preserves memory and challenges official narratives. The author’s note also connects the novel to state terror and the weaponization of child removal, and the beacons of hope are the counterforce to that terror. Additionally, the novel’s engagement with anti-Asian discrimination and its historical roots and language and folktales as generational resistance shows how beacons can take the form of stories and words passed down through generations.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the epigraph from Akhmatova function as a beacon of hope, and what does it suggest about the role of the witness?

The epigraph presents a woman asking the speaker if she can describe the prison-line experience. The speaker’s affirmative answer, followed by the woman’s faint smile, creates a moment of connection and validation. This smile is a beacon because it signals that the act of bearing witness—of describing suffering—can offer hope to others. It suggests that the witness’s role is not passive but active: by promising to tell the story, the speaker becomes a light for those who cannot speak. The smile is fleeting, but its impact is lasting, implying that even small gestures of acknowledgment can sustain people in dark times.

2. In the Author’s Note, Ng distinguishes between “real toads” and “beacons of hope.” What are some examples of each, and why does she make this distinction?

The “real toads” are the historical injustices that inspired the novel: the separation of enslaved families, Indigenous boarding schools, foster care inequities, migrant family separations, Japanese internment, Vincent Chin’s murder, and the “China Initiative.” The “beacons of hope” are the positive inspirations: the Otpor! movement, Syrian protestors, Hong Kong prodemocracy activists, guerrilla art, and real people like Anna Akhmatova, Sonia Lee Chun, Latasha Harlins, and Akai Gurley. Ng makes this distinction to acknowledge that the novel’s world is rooted in real suffering but also to emphasize that resistance and hope are equally real. The beacons show that even under oppression, people find ways to create light.

3. How does Margaret’s art function as a beacon of hope within the novel, based on the Author’s Note and the themes it introduces?

Margaret’s art—her bottle caps, the knitted web, the ice children—is inspired by real guerrilla art and nonviolent protest, as the Author’s Note explains. These installations are designed to be seen and to provoke thought, serving as beacons that guide attention toward injustice. They are public, visible signals that resist the state’s attempts to silence dissent. By creating these beacons, Margaret transforms everyday objects into symbols of hope and remembrance, offering a counter-narrative to PACT’s propaganda. Her art also connects to the theme of artistic witness, showing that creativity can be a form of resistance.

4. How does the motif of beacons of hope connect to the novel’s broader themes of memory and resistance?

Beacons of hope are intimately tied to memory and resistance because they preserve what the state tries to erase. Akhmatova’s poem is a beacon because it remembers the terror; Margaret’s art is a beacon because it remembers the victims of injustice. The motif suggests that hope is not passive optimism but an active practice of remembering and witnessing. By creating and sharing beacons, characters and real-world activists resist the erasure of dissent and keep alive the possibility of change. This aligns with the novel’s themes of artistic witness and individual agency, showing that even small acts of light can challenge authoritarian systems.

Conclusion

In Our Missing Hearts, beacons of hope are not grand, triumphant lights but small, persistent signals—a smile, a bottle cap, a remembered name. They appear in the epigraph, in the Author’s Note, and in the novel’s very structure, reminding readers that hope is a practice, not a passive feeling. By grounding the motif in real historical and contemporary examples, Ng insists that beacons of hope exist in our own world, waiting to be noticed and passed on. The novel itself becomes a beacon, guiding readers toward remembrance and resistance.