توضیحات
Our Missing Hearts
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s a story about the power—and limitations—of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.
«Our Missing Hearts» داستانی قدیمی است که تازه سازی شده، از روش‌هایی که جوامع ظاهراً متمدن می‌توانند شدیدترین بی‌عدالتی را نادیده بگیرند. این داستانی درباره قدرت و محدودیت‌های هنر برای ایجاد تغییر، درس‌ها و میراث‌هایی است که به فرزندانمان می‌دهیم، و اینکه چگونه هر یک از ما می‌توانیم با قلب‌هایمان دست نخورده از یک دنیای شکسته جان سالم به در ببریم.
plot
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, 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 librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
Bestselling American author Celeste Ng’s third novel is a feat of meaty storytelling wrapped around a stark warning about the present day’s racial divisions, political conflicts and inequality. It’s anchored by two fictional conceits: a global “crisis” that tilts the international power balance away from the US.
and a subsequent piece of US legislation called Pact, the Preserving of American Cultures and Traditions Act. Frighteningly fast, the US develops into a jingoistic, ignorant and violently hostile society governed by racist fear and loathing, in particular of east Asians.
Noah Gardner, the young, half-Chinese American hero of the novel.
grows up in this dangerous environment, one in which police violence, censorship and discriminatory segregation are the norm. His mother, a famous Chinese-American artist who left him and his father when he was a kid, kickstarts the plot by sending him a letter – already opened and read by the authorities – covered in drawings. What do they mean and what was the real reason for her disappearance?
از دیدگاه روزنامه گاردین
سومین رمان نویسنده آمریکایی پرفروش سلست انگ شاهکاری از داستان سرایی است. این رمان حول یک هشدار جدی درباره تقسیمات نژادی، درگیری های سیاسی و نابرابری امروزی میگردد. این موضوع با دو غرور تخیلی تثبیت شد: یک «بحران» جهانی که موازنه قدرت بین‌المللی را از ایالات متحده منحرف میکند. و یک قانون متعاقب ایالات متحده به نام پیمان، قانون حفظ فرهنگ‌ها و سنت‌های آمریکایی. ایالات متحده با سرعت وحشتناکی به یک جامعه جنگویست، جاهل و به شدت متخاصم تبدیل می شود. که توسط ترس و نفرت نژادپرستانه اداره می شود، به ویژه از شرق آسیا.
نوآ گاردنر، قهرمان جوان و نیمه چینی آمریکایی رمان، در این محیط خطرناک بزرگ می شود. محیطی که در آن خشونت پلیس، سانسور و جداسازی تبعیض آمیز عادی است. مادرش، هنرمند مشهور چینی-آمریکایی که او و پدرش را در کودکی ترک کرد.
