Kindling uncomfortable questions about us. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.
For a book that’s been published in the last ten years, I can’t remember a book cover more iconic than Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. The shade of sleepy suburbia drowned in either the twilight or dusk or dawn, amidst the display of suburban perfection from a view above. We see the houses as though they were little miniatures in the sales office of these very homes. But in a corner, one house is unmistakably burning, its light is the burning shade of yellow, suggestively nefarious. But each of these houses in the cover has the potential to be set alight, they are themselves waiting for their own tinders to spark.
It is the perfect prologue to what’s about to happen. The title is no spoiler to the fact that something is about to burn. In fact, the story starts with one of these houses burning: the very representation of suburbia, the perfect community, violently set ablaze by another tools of progress — petrol. It is the house of the Richardsons, who are themselves the model family in the community. White, two parents, the father the main breadwinner but the mother with an income on the side as a journo; all the three children now at high school, at the age where they are about to submit college applications.
They have properties — one they are living in and the same one burning at the start of the novel, and another one that they’re renting out, one room to a stable tenant who’s an Asian handyman who minds his own business; the second room to an ever changing set, the latest being the mother and daughter duo of the Warrens, no steady income and whose origins are dubious at best. They may have set the Richardson’s home ablaze and in doing so, the community which for long enough thought they were safe in their own bubble.
Little fires here and there, before the big fire
The Warrens, as the new tenants of the Richardsons were never going to fit in a community whose motto is “Most communities just happen, the best are planned.” Mia Warren isn’t exactly a planner. As an artist living at best multiple paychecks to paychecks, she and her daughter Pearl would move every few months. Her photographs would seldom be sold for a generous amount and there are times when the two would be living close to the poverty line.
The Richardsons, as mentioned above, are the very opposite. Perhaps they would have been comfortable living separate lives if only the Richardson’s younger son Moody did not get infatuated with Pearl. But Moody, an inexperienced teenager, felt that he had not much to offer except connecting Pearl to the larger community, thus introducing her to his family. Pearl instantly connected with Moody’s sister Lexie and developed a crush to the older, hunkier and more athletic brother, Trip.
It would have gone alright: Mia took a part time job to be a part time housekeeper for the Richardsons, encroaching her daughter’s newfound sanctuary. Lexie and Pearl had become closer, as does Pearl’s infatuation with Trip with Moody naturally sidelined to his dismay. But when the friends of the family, the McCulloughs threw a baby shower to their newly adopted baby, things in Shaker Heights were up for a bit of turbulence.
The baby was found in the fire department, Chinese in nature, with soiled clothes. The impotent McCulloughs were over the moon when they were assigned the care of the baby. But Mia, who knew the mother, her fellow employee in a Chinese restaurant, who regretted giving away the baby at a time when she was the most vulnerable, decided to let the mother know what happened to the baby.
In the words of Tom Hardy’s Bane, the fire rises. The issue polarised the community who sided either with the McCulloughs, the adoptive parents, or with Bebe, the natural mother. It also caused a rupture between the Warrens and the Richardsons. Now Elena Richardson is out for blood to expose Mia and find more of her origins, but Mia has a foothold now in the family, especially with their youngest daughter Izzy. But who ignited the fire?
Another story about the American Dream being burned to the ground
Shaker Heights is a real place in Ohio, population almost 30,000, a place all too familiar with the author. It stands with the same ideals as portrayed in Ng’s book. But Shaker Heights is a microcosm of the ideal American life, that nuclear family who are rolling through the American Dream, that is to have the next generation do better than the last. For a family such as the Richardsons this is very achievable. Their generational wealth gave them the boost to earn external income from the rent of their two tenants. That money contributes to their annual family holiday.
There is nothing wrong with this. The Richardsons live their own lives with not too much drama. They’re not hurting anybody, but we couldn’t say that they are changing the world for the better either. They are the very epitome of upper middle class privilege. Offering the room for rent is their way of giving back: selecting less privileged families as tenants with fair rent so they can build their way up to society again. Elena’s offer for Mia to be a housekeeper is this way of giving back, oblivious to the fact that her offer for help is more of a burden than a blessing. I see it akin to take on volunteering in a foreign country without really knowing the context and situation. It is foolish naivete which can do more harm than good.
But this idea of a “planned community” does not have a lot of leeway to any radicals being introduced, thus any changes which may harm the status quo must be eliminated. Just as Elena would eventually evict Mia and Pearl, so would she take the first approach in finding out more about her tenants to dig deeper for the skeletons in the closet. We can view the concept of race in the battle between Bebe and the McCulloughs for the May Ling (renamed Mirabelle), a baby of Chinese parents but being born in America put her as an American citizen. The novel is about this free radical being introduced and how the community as a larger body acts as the antibodies to reject it.
Yet, not all free radicals will kill the community. The custody battle exposes inner rifts the community had among themselves which divides those who believe that Bebe as the natural mother should attain custody, and those who believe that the McCulloughs as parents who’d be able to provide a better life for May , should retain custody. The decision to award the latter is a natural consequence of the system protecting its own status quo, and keep those who had been otherised to the sidelines.
In this way, we can argue that the community must evolve with the changing times to be able to compromise. Yes, this means adapting with the radical in the system, but it is necessary for survival. Yet, this self-examination can also be beneficial in the long run as the community learns to empathise with those outside of their inner circles. The paradigm of the “best community” in Shaker Heights previously a strength is exposed as vulnerability with the community’s insecurities at full display.
Another question then: Can adoption go beyond biological parenthood?
The question of race is perhaps not central to the drama which plays out in Little Fires Everywhere, but it remains a large component of the book. It boils down to the classic question of nature versus nurture in the light of the custody battle of May Ling. It is an intriguing premise with no resolution. Ed Lim, being a lawyer with Asian heritage defended Bebe aggressively when cross-examining Linda McCullough to test whether May Ling would also be taught her Asian roots. Will the McCulloughs buy her a Chinese Barbie (something that does not exist at the market at the time). As part of her upbringing will she be read Asian literature? It is clear from this interview that Linda does not even differentiate between different nuances of Asian countries and viewed “Asian” as a convenient umbrella.
But this raises another question whether May Ling should be taught of her origins. How much should she stick to her biological roots and what is the role of the McCulloughs not just as adoptive parents but also as cultural educators? When May Ling gets a bit older and she does not fit in with the rest of her group, would she start to wonder herself about her biological roots? Would she have been fine if she was brought up the way any white child would have without Asiatic influence imposed by her adoptive parents who clearly have no interest or any knowledge themselves about the subject matter? Would she hang out with people who look more like her — the Asian children as opposed to white children?
But the questions we’re asking are interpolations, conjectures of something that may or may not happen in the future. The book ended on an ambiguous note when Bebe kidnapped May Ling, back to China. But we can sympathise with the McCulloughs when we find out that they spent a significant amount of their wealth on an investigator to find the baby, and finally resorted to adopting a baby from China. It is perhaps a justification that Mirabelle (May Ling) lives for them as a real daughter, to the point that they found a baby who resemble Mirabelle (May Ling) so that they can continue where they left off.
Are adopted parenthood close to real parenthood? Little Fires Everywhere does little to answer these questions but instead asks us to reflect. I think of the Dollenganger children, the elder two acting as the replacement mother and father to their two younger siblings, only a several years apart. This parenthood was imposed on them after the death of the father and the mother abandoning them to their own devices. The two elder children were more affectionate than their mother could ever be to their siblings. The younger siblings in return, treated their elderly siblings as their parents proper. In this way, we can argue that parenthood can cross the traditional boundary of biological parenthood, and those who become parents must earn their positions to be so.
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Little Fires Everywhere can fall easily to the trap of a young adult novel as the main characters and the propellers of the drama are the Richardson children and Pearl. Instead it can fall easily under a tactful bildungsroman. But it does not fall to this cliché and asks question about the nature of communities, of parenthood, of race. This works in the favour of the book as well as against it.
When we have plenty of questions to answer, it confuses and often loses the focus. The shifting between the characters, though their dynamics feed into the general plot, does little to drill down into focus what the underlying question of the novel should be. In this regard, the themes of the book become diluted instead of creating a real impact.
Ng writes beautifully with vivid and poetic prose — something rare to read in bestsellers from the past decade. Despite the small shortcomings, it is an uncomfortable book to read in a good way, foisting questions without really demanding answers. But it is a book which demands self-reflection and does little to allow the reader to sit on the fence, especially if you are living in these kinds of model-home communities.
I need to throw this in — a quote from Mia to Lexie after her abortion:
“You’ll always be sad about this… But it doesn’t mean that you made the wrong choice. It’s just something that you have to carry.”
It is a reassuring quote. In a novel that provides no answer, this is the closest thing. That there are really no right or wrong answers, only the emotional consequences that we have to carry.
