美国国家公共电台 NPR A Mother And Daughter Upset Suburban Status Quo In 'Little Fires Everywhere'

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Celeste Ng's new novel is about two families in the heart of America who can't seem to see into each other's hearts. The Richardsons are a happy family with four children and a lovely home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where, quote, "the soft smells of detergent 1 and cooking and grass mingle 2 in the entryway." Then a mother-daughter pair, Mia Warren and her teenage daughter, Pearl, pull up with everything they own in their VW Rabbit and rent the guesthouse at the Richardson's. The two families become enmeshed in each other's lives in all ways.

Breaking the bubbles of their lives sets off "Little Fires Everywhere," which is the title of Celeste Ng's novel. Celeste Ng, whose previous best-seller was the huge best-seller "Everything I Never Told You" joins us now from the studios of WGBH in Boston. Thanks so much for being with us.

CELESTE NG: Thank you so much for having me.

SIMON: Let me get you to describe this Shaker Heights of the time period in this novel, a suburb of Cleveland that is considered so quintessentially American, you know, it's a line in "South Pacific."

NG: I didn't know that, actually. There's a line about it in "South Pacific"? (Laughter).

SIMON: There is indeed, yes.

NG: I'm going to have to go and find that out? My mother loves "South Pacific." So Shaker Heights was my hometown. As you said, it's a suburb on the east side of Cleveland. And it's known for being very progressive, very affluent 3 and very racially diverse, which is actually the reason that my parents chose to move there. Every house has a front lawn. The architecture is sort of carefully designed. And the whole community is sort of planned to be - it's almost a utopia.

SIMON: They really worked at becoming an integrated community.

NG: They really did. And it was very deliberate. It was in the '50s, I think, there was an incident where someone had started an explosion at the house of a black professional in the community. Really at that point, came together and decided 4 that they wanted to try to actively 5 integrate the community. That's an attitude that still continued up to the late '90s and to now.

SIMON: The novel reminds us that nothing is more compromising than children. Pearl Warren is drawn 6 to the Richardsons. The Richardson children are drawn to the Warrens. What's this mutual 7 fascination 8?

NG: I think it speaks a lot to the sort of truism that a lot of times, there are the parents that you're born to, and then there are the parents that you choose. And they're not always the same people. And so in the novel, the Richardson children are drawn to Mia Warren because she's so different from their mother. She's a little bit of a free spirit. She's a freethinker. She's an artist. And likewise, Mia's daughter, Pearl, is drawn to Mrs. Richardson, who's a pillar of the community. She's very grounded. She's a rule follower 9. In some ways, they're seeking out things that they don't get from their own mothers.

SIMON: Now, by the time we meet them, Mia Warren and her daughter have lived in 46 different towns. What makes her decide to kind of try and get involved in something?

NG: Well, Mia's guiding principle, as she's been moving around so much, has always been, don't get involved and don't get attached. And what happens in this case, she meets someone in Shaker Heights. And the struggles of this woman who's a woman who's given up her child for adoption 10 and now sort of wants to find the child again resonates with her very strongly.

SIMON: May I fill in some blanks? She doesn't just decide to give her child up for adoption. She leaves the baby in front of a firehouse.

NG: Yes, she's a - so this is a Chinese-American woman. She's an immigrant. She's not very well-off. She's a single mother. And she feels she's unable to care for her baby. And she leaves her baby at a firehouse. And she's basically given up all of her rights to her child. And now, when Mia meets her, this woman has kind of gotten her life together. And she wants to get her child back. And, of course, that causes some complications.

SIMON: How does this divide Shaker Heights?

NG: Well, one of the reasons that this adoption becomes so contentious 11 is that the baby is a Chinese-American baby. And the family that adopts her is a white couple. And this raises all sorts of questions about race. Can a white couple raise an Asian-American baby properly? Is she going to be missing out on something? It also raises questions of class, you know, this working-class mother versus 12 this very affluent, professional couple in Shaker Heights. And so it touches on a lot of the things that Shaker Heights wants to sort of handle perfectly 13 and, of course, it doesn't.

SIMON: We should mention the McCulloughs are the name of the couple who adopt the child who's left in front of the firehouse.

NG: Right.

SIMON: Are you a little hard on the McCulloughs?

NG: I might be. I tried very hard in writing the book to show that this is a complicated situation. And I think that right now our sort of natural sympathies are often with the biological mother. We tend to prioritize that in not all cases, but in many cases. Even as little as about 20 years ago, often, our sympathies ran in the other direction.

There was a case in the early '90s known as Baby Jessica, where a baby was adopted and then the birth parents wanted her back. And public sympathy at that time was almost completely with the well-off adoptive parents. And so I think it does say something about our position, where we are as a society as to, you know, who we tend to favor.

SIMON: Yeah. It just reminded me, there's some things in life for which you don't get a do-over. You know, and I understand that the birth mother, May Ling Chow, was hurt and sick and deserves sympathy, not a jail sentence for abandonment. But I don't know, can you leave your child in front of a firehouse and expect to come back a year later and say, everything's fine, I want her back?

NG: That - and that's the question. I honestly don't have an answer for that. I feel for all of the parents in this situation. Like you said, there are certain things where you don't get a do-over, you know, cases of abuse or neglect, which this arguably is. It's so hard to know. And I think those situations get so fraught 14 because we're trying to figure out what the best situation for a child is. And yet, that's almost never a clear-cut answer.

SIMON: I noticed, looking at your travel schedule, you have an appearance with this book in Shaker Heights.

NG: I do, yes.

SIMON: How do you...

(LAUGHTER)

NG: The best comparison I have, I think, is that writing about my hometown is a little bit like writing about a relative. You see all of the great things about them. You love them dearly. And yet, you also know all of their quirks 15 and their foibles and maybe their shortcomings. But I hope that people who live in Shaker Heights will see this as a portrayal 16 of the community. The community is really a character in the book, just as all of the people in the book are. And it's got its strengths and it's got its weaknesses.

SIMON: Celeste Ng - her novel, "Little Fires Everywhere." Thanks so much for being with us.

NG: Thank you.