Anti-Asian Discrimination and Its Historical Roots in Our Missing Hearts

The Thematic Claim: A Recurring History, Not a New Aberration

In Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng builds a dystopian America where the PACT Act criminalizes “un-American ideas” and removes children from families deemed disloyal. But the novel’s central argument is that this present is not a rupture—it is the latest expression of a long American pattern of anti-Asian discrimination. As Ng writes in her author’s note, the pandemic brought a sharp increase in anti-Asian prejudice, “but this isn’t a new phenomenon, either: such discrimination has long and deep roots in American history.” The novel traces those roots from Japanese internment to Vincent Chin’s murder, and then shows how they flower into the surveillance state that separates Bird from his mother, Margaret. The thematic claim is precise: the dystopian present is not a cautionary fantasy but a continuation of historical practices, and the only way to resist is to remember and bear witness—exactly what Margaret’s art and Bird’s journey attempt to do.

Historical Roots in the Author’s Note

Ng’s author’s note functions as a key to the novel’s historical scaffolding. She explicitly names Japanese American internment during World War II and Vincent Chin’s 1982 murder as touchstones, along with the Department of Justice’s “China Initiative” and the pandemic-era spike in anti-Asian violence. These are not decorative references; they are the “real toads” that populate the imaginary garden of the novel. The internment, which saw over 100,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned without trial, established a legal and cultural precedent for treating Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners and potential traitors. Vincent Chin’s murder—a Chinese American man beaten to death by two white autoworkers who blamed him for the auto industry’s decline—exposed how economic anxiety can be redirected into racial violence. The China Initiative, which targeted academics and scientists of Chinese descent, shows how the state itself can weaponize suspicion. By listing these events, Ng insists that the novel’s PACT regime is not invented but extrapolated from real policies and attitudes. The author’s note also connects the novel’s protest methods to historical resistance movements, from yarn-bombing to the Otpor! movement, grounding Margaret’s art in a lineage of nonviolent defiance.

The Epigraphs as Framing: Witness and State Language

The novel opens with two epigraphs that frame the theme from opposite directions. The first, from Anna Akhmatova’s “Requiem,” depicts a speaker waiting outside a Leningrad prison during the Yezhov terror. A woman with blue lips asks, “Can you describe this?” and the speaker replies, “I can.” This exchange establishes the moral imperative of bearing witness to state violence—a duty that Margaret, as a poet and artist, takes up. The second epigraph, from the fictional Let’s Learn About PACT, presents the law as a “promise” to protect American ideals, with consequences for those who “weaken our country with un-American ideas.” This language of protection and consequence is precisely how historical discrimination has been rationalized, from the internment camps to the China Initiative. The juxtaposition of Akhmatova’s raw testimony with PACT’s sanitized propaganda sets up the novel’s central tension: the state’s language erases suffering, while art and memory preserve it. These epigraphs are not just decorative; they are the first two “parts” of the plot that establish the theme’s stakes.

The Dystopian Present: PACT and Its Enforcement

The novel’s plot unfolds in a world where PACT has already been enacted. Bird, a twelve-year-old boy, lives with his father Ethan while his mother Margaret has been forced into hiding. The author’s note reveals that Margaret’s protest methods include bottle caps, yarn-bombing, and other guerrilla art—tactics that appear throughout the narrative. The knitted web in the Common and the ice children in Nashville are specific instances of this art, designed to draw attention to the state’s removal of children. These protests are direct responses to PACT’s enforcement, which targets families like Bird’s. The novel shows how the law operates not just through courts but through social pressure: neighbors inform on neighbors, libraries purge books, and children are taught to report “un-American” behavior. This is the third distinct part of the plot: the lived experience of a society that has internalized the historical patterns of suspicion and scapegoating. Bird’s journey to find Margaret becomes a journey through this landscape, where he encounters the consequences of PACT—missing children, broken families, and a culture of fear. The novel’s title, Our Missing Hearts, refers both to the children taken and to the emotional toll of a society that has lost its capacity for empathy.

Character and Symbol Connections

The theme is embodied in the novel’s central characters. Margaret, a poet of Asian descent, uses her art to resist the erasure of history. Her bottle caps—each one a small, portable protest—echo the way that individual acts can accumulate into a movement. The author’s note credits the Otpor! movement and Hong Kong protests as inspirations, linking Margaret’s tactics to global struggles for freedom. Bird, her son, is initially apolitical, but his search for his mother forces him to confront the history she is fighting to preserve. Ethan, Bird’s father, is a linguist whose etymologies reveal how language carries hidden histories—a subtle but crucial connection to the theme, since the state’s language of “protection” obscures its discriminatory roots. The symbols of yarn-bombing and beacons of hope are directly tied to the theme. Yarn-bombing, a form of guerrilla art, transforms public spaces into sites of memory and resistance, as when the knitted web appears in the Common. Beacons of hope, mentioned in the author’s note as the opposite of “real toads,” represent the possibility of change—the small acts of courage that keep history from repeating. The missing hearts symbol, meanwhile, literalizes the emotional and physical losses caused by state policies. Together, these symbols show that the theme is not abstract but woven into the novel’s imagery and character arcs.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel does not present anti-Asian discrimination as a simple, monolithic force. Ng’s author’s note acknowledges the “blurry overlaps between resisting, tolerating, and colluding,” and the novel explores how ordinary people become complicit. Some characters support PACT out of fear, others out of genuine belief, and still others simply go along. The historical roots themselves are not uniform: Japanese internment, Vincent Chin’s murder, and the China Initiative each have distinct causes and contexts, from wartime hysteria to economic scapegoating to post-9/11 security concerns. The novel also complicates the idea of resistance. Margaret’s art is powerful, but it also puts her and her family at risk. Bird’s journey shows that even those who oppose PACT can be uncertain about the right course of action. The epigraph from Akhmatova suggests that bearing witness is necessary, but it does not guarantee change—the speaker can only describe the suffering, not end it. This complexity prevents the novel from offering easy answers. Instead, it insists that understanding the historical roots of discrimination is the first step toward resisting its recurrence, even if that resistance is imperfect and costly.

Study Questions

1. How does the author’s note frame the novel’s dystopian world as a continuation of real history?

Answer: Ng explicitly cites Japanese internment, Vincent Chin’s murder, and the China Initiative as inspirations, arguing that anti-Asian discrimination has “long and deep roots.” She also connects the novel’s protest methods to historical movements like Otpor! and yarn-bombing, showing that the novel’s world is built from real events and resistance tactics.

1. What role do the two epigraphs play in establishing the theme of bearing witness?

Answer: The Akhmatova epigraph presents the moral duty to describe state terror, while the PACT epigraph shows how the state uses language to justify oppression. Together, they set up the tension between personal testimony and official propaganda that drives the novel’s plot.

1. How does Margaret’s protest art function as a response to anti-Asian discrimination?

Answer: Margaret’s bottle caps, yarn-bombing, and other guerrilla art are direct challenges to PACT’s erasure of history. The author’s note links these tactics to real nonviolent movements, showing that her art is both a personal act and part of a larger tradition of resistance.

1. In what ways does the novel complicate the idea of resistance?

Answer: The novel shows that resistance can be risky and uncertain. Margaret’s art puts her family in danger, and Bird’s journey reveals the difficulty of knowing how to act. The author’s note also mentions the “blurry overlaps” between resisting, tolerating, and colluding, suggesting that complicity is not always clear-cut.

1. How do the symbols of yarn-bombing and missing hearts connect to the theme of historical roots?

Answer: Yarn-bombing transforms public spaces into sites of memory, countering the state’s attempt to erase history. The missing hearts symbolize the children taken by PACT and the emotional toll of discrimination. Both symbols show how the novel uses visual and emotional imagery to make the historical roots of anti-Asian discrimination tangible in the present.