Tackling Censorship and Racism with Celeste Ng's Dystopian Novel

Funded May 10, 2023

This last Friday, two of my four classes finished Our Missing Hearts. As I always do, we read aloud the last pages of the book together, so we could experience and process the end together. After reading the last line of the last page, some table groups started spontaneously rallying for a sequel: "Our Missing Hearts Two!!" It's a serious ending but also an ambiguous ending, and the pain of the final chapter was ameliorated for that moment by our joy with a novel that took us on such a compelling journey.

It's a joy to teach a text that is a page-turner and that students love. It's a joy that students desire a sequel as soon as we read the last lines. It's also been powerful to make connections with a dystopian novel that hits so close to home. Throughout the novel, the main characters face escalating racist attacks, escalating censorship and government control and escalating police corruption. This is paired with the themes of the transformative power of art and story so we both have been digging into painful topics as a class and also searching for the characters and our own way forward. We will continue to discuss our ideas and we will be writing our essays in January after the winter break. Here are snippets from three different students I'll share now: Their essays will explore how Our Missing Hearts:

"criticizes unjustified government control and the extent of devastating influence on families and relationships."

"highlights that government propaganda fuels prejudice and the populace not forming their own opinions."

"illustrates the government's control over families and how that control is instilling fear among ordinary civilians."

For those who want to know the nitty gritty (maybe other teachers or folks who know me?), I did have to change my original plan because all my four classes were lucky to receive a surprise opportunity to see a play in Manhattan and write scenes with a drama teacher in November. Thus, I need to do a literary analysis essay with Our Missing Hearts instead of my original plan to do fan fiction. However, I sat down last week with the assistant principal of English, who is a fantastic thinking partner, and we brainstormed together how I might tweak this next year so I can return to my fiction idea and also weave in some literary analysis throughout. In addition, I also work with a terrific special education co-teacher so we have been working together throughout the unit to assure that assignments and texts are accessible and the assessments are flexible for diverse learners. All of this is to say, teaching must be flexible to be real and education must be a team effort to be effective. Thank you amazing donors for being part of this team effort!”

With gratitude,

Ms. Bueckert-Chan