Celeste Ng was the featured headliner at this year’s Fall for the Book Festival. She spoke to a sold-out crowd on Oct. 9, in conversation with local writer Priyanka Champaneri. Ng was charming, finding much in common with Champaneri and laughing as they explored their backgrounds.
Ng wanted to be a writer from an early age. She told the audience she tells stories to decode human behavior and to examine dark times and social pressures. Her novels, “Everything I Never Told You,” “Little Fires Everywhere,” and now, “Our Missing Hearts,” grapple with identity, race, insider-outsider feelings, motherhood, and how political or societal pressures impact families.
Champaneri pointed out that motherhood is a frequent theme, and Ng acknowledged it is, not because of any deficit in her own relationship with her mother, but perhaps because of her mother’s importance in her life and her own role as a mother to a (now) teenage boy.
Ng wrote this recent novel to explore that mother-son relationship given her concern about growing up in an era where some books are banned, and some immigrants are being singled out. It is no accident that the young man in her novel encounters an underground network of librarians and activists as he searches for his mother. It was no accident that earlier in the day, another novelist sponsored by Fall for the Book was speaking at a high school in Fairfax thanks to a librarian who is clearly tuned into the teens that wander in and out of her “safe space” full of books. Books help us interpret the complicated world we live in.
Ng finished her evening by signing copies of her new book. It took almost an hour for the long line of fans to purchase a copy from Bard Alley books and meet the author in person.
That close personal interaction with authors is one of the hallmarks of the Fall for the Book festival. To learn more about the festival and year-round events, or to join as a friend and get updates, see: https://fallforthebook.org.