Race, Class, & Motherhood in Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere

by Mariam Shin

In Celeste Ng's second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, the Richardsons, a wealthy family of two parents and three children, find their lifestyle disrupted when another family settles into the neighborhood. Mia and Pearl, a mother and daughter, challenge the Richardsons by poking holes in their perfect bubble. Situated in Shaker Heights, a suburban neighborhood with a deep sense of tradition, Ng challenges the structure of an ideal suburban family, and explores the effects of race and class.

While Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere is settled in a suburban area, with characters who live completely different lifestyles from me, it was not difficult to relate in a small way to the characters in the novel. The life of teenagers Lexie, Trip, Moody, and Izzy are seemingly simple: they apply to Ivy League schools because everyone else in their school does, their most passionate conversations are about Jerry Springer, and they have a weekly allowance of more than how much Pearl carries altogether. At least that is how it seems from a surface level. But, the offhand dialogue between the teenagers are actually heavy topics. In one conversation the kids had while watching an episode of Jerry Springer called “Stop Bringing White Girls Home to Dinner!”, Lexie remarks, “Skin color doesn’t say anything about who you are,” and then her comment is dismissed by her brother, and then again when talking about Mia’s absent father, she nonchalantly states, “ ‘He could have left her for another woman. Or-’ She sat up, titillated. ‘Maybe he raped her. And she got pregnant and kept the baby.”  When grouped together, these small bits of dialogue from the characters all connect to Ng breaking down the veneer of what the American family is like for each character involved.

This concept is not unfamiliar. In our Recently Released: Reading and Reviewing Contemporary Fiction class, there have been many books related to motherhood, the female body, and the different experiences of women of different races. Not only is Ng also a part of this literary trend as a female writer, but as a Chinese woman, her questions about race and identity are also woven into Little Fires Everywhere. When Mia learns about the story of Bebe, a woman whose baby is being given to the McCulloughs, a white family who desperately wants a child, without her consent, she gets involved. While Ng rarely gives readers access to Mia’s thoughts, there is a scene when Ng writes, “All this time she had been thinking; in fact, she’d been thinking about this ever since Lexie had mentioned the baby: about what she would do if she were in Bebe’s position, about what it was possible for anyone in Bebe’s position to do.” Mia’s similar past of almost having her baby taken away from her influences her to help working-class Bebe to fight for custody of May Ling Chow.

She advises her to contact the press, and the story of May Ling Chow gains nationwide coverage. Because of this baby, the peaceful neighborhood of Shaker Heights is under threat, and all this drama comes back to Mia’s involvement of May Ling Chow’s adoption, and her sense of morality.

 Because it was so easy to get wrapped up in the plot shifts from scene to scene, there was never a moment when I was prompted to take a break from the book to think about the bigger concepts that Ng almost reaches, but never fully addresses. Throughout the novel, there are other short, almost irrelevant scenes, that are unnecessary, and don’t provoke any questions. For example, in Mia’s past, Ng briefly mentions Mrs. Delaney, Mia’s past landlady, and the uncharacteristic hug she gives Mia. Ng writes, “ ‘I never told you about my daughter, did I.” The plot then moves on, without synthesizing this information or offering more background. While this character is supposed to be mysterious, the scene becomes confusing and feels too stretched.

Or, in another scene, there is a long description of Madeline Ryan, and the eerily similar facial features that Mia and her share. Ng describes her as “not identical- Madeline’s chin was a bit more pointed, her nose a little thinner, her voice deeper, richer, almost throaty- but they looked so similar they could have been mistaken for sisters.” The paragraph then ends and moves on, and is never mentioned again. So, were they sisters? I felt that Ng was unsuccessful with these abstract paragraphs.

Though Little Fires Everywhere sometimes indulges unnecessary details, the details that land have a big impact on the reader. From Mrs. McCullough’s casual comment about rice being May Ling Chow’s first favorite solid food, to Lexie and Brian’s tense conversation about a potential baby that would only implicate Brian as “another black kid, knocked a girl up before he even graduated from high school”, Ng does a good job of writing the this kind of tense dialogue between characters that can easily be missed.  By writing about and examining controversial topics such as motherhood, race, and teenagehood, Little Fires Everywhere is a novel that can be added to our collection of books that argue against the existence of that a perfect American family.