Sarahritchie17 Spoiler Alert! This post contains discussion about the main concepts in the storyline of the book. I do not reveal the ending or the whodunit, but I do hit some highlights and big concepts. If you plan on reading the book yourself, wait to read this post. If you are trying to decide whether to read the book, I highly recommend it! If you need more convincing, then read on…
I’ve been getting bored with non-fiction books lately, so I decided to go on a new adventure and downloaded Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng on the Kindle app.
If you’re a bookworm like me, you’ve probably been inundated with ads for the book, or if you’re a traveler like me, you’ve seen the shiny new cover on bookshelves in the airport front and center.
Side note: Here’s what I mean by “shiny new cover.” I follow @Reesesbookclub on Instagram, and Reese Witherspoon stars as Elena Richardson in the new Hulu original series. I just saw a post that the show is now on Amazon prime too, and I can’t wait to watch it!
I was intrigued by the book’s title and description and the trailers for the new show. Usually I’m not the person who stays up all night reading and can’t put the book down, but this time was different. Maybe it’s the fact that there isn’t much open still due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but I found myself plopped on the couch, sucked into the storyline of this book for hours at a time.
I think that sometimes fiction can teach us as much about ourselves and about life as non-fiction can.
So here’s a reflection on three of the main issues I found so fascinating in Little Fires Everywhere. Though the story was set about two decades ago, and the book was originally published two years ago, they are issues that remain relevant today.
Views on Race and Diversity
The book takes a deep-dive into how we see race. It makes you question whether it is right or wrong to see everyone as equal. The dilemma here is that although it may be important to treat everyone fairly regardless of skin color, it is also a problem if we don’t see and appreciate how a person’s heritage makes them who they are. When we are color-blind, we cannot truly understand why people are the way they are. When you strip away someone’s culture, what else are you taking away?
The story also addresses the challenges of being a minority race through anecdotes, highlighting simple things that on surface-level seem insignificant, but when read with an open-mind are troubling. When there are no dolls or children’s book characters that look like you, does that create problems in self-image and expectations? Isn’t this similar to the problem of over-use of photoshop in advertising?
We can’t be color-blind because colors are what make us who we are. But we also can’t be color-arrogant and pretend we know and understand things just as we see them. We need to understand that each color has depth and is more than meets the eye.
Perspective
The lens with which you see the world is shaped by your experiences. Your lens is very different than mine even if we grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same school. Our upbringings determine so much about how we respond to things all throughout life. The different challenges and adversity we each face not only in childhood, but through adulthood shape our morals, our decisions, and how we choose to live.
Ng narrates Little Fires Everywhere with the omniscient perspective, artfully placing her readers in the minds of each character and highlighting the differences in each one’s thoughts.
Ng writes the following in her note to readers at the end of the book:
“Yet when personally affected by the issues, even idealists often end up making selfish choices with far-reaching effects. It’s human nature, yet I wanted to explore how—and how often—we justify it to ourselves when we cross moral lines. Where do we follow the rules, and where do we justify breaking them? Do our pasts determine what we deserve in the future? And is it ever possible to leave your past behind? These are some of the questions I hope the novel raises.”
When people’s morals clash, does that ultimately make them enemies? Can people with different views and lifestyles still get along? Perhaps they have a significant amount to learn from one another if they would let the other in and listen.
I feel like this is so relevant in the world we’re living in where people are so polarized. Either you’re wrong or your right. We have trouble agreeing to disagree, we seem to have lost the art of debate. In fiction as in real life, things are a lot more nuanced. Characters and people have depth and experiences that have made them think as they do.
What if we stopped talking for a minute and listened to the other person’s story? Maybe then we would understand.
Motherhood
In an interview at the back of the book, Ng says:
“Motherhood seems to be a no-win battle: however you decide to do (or not do) it, someone’s going to be criticizing you. You went to too great lengths trying to conceive. You didn’t go to great enough lengths. You had the baby too young. You should have kept the baby even though you were young. You shouldn’t have waited so long to try to have a baby. You’re a too involved mother. You’re not involved enough because you let your child play on the playground alone. It never ends.”
Without going into the details of the story, Ng brings up a handful of mothering challenges and scenarios in her characters. I thought this quote summed them up well while being a reminder of how the characters relate to women in real-life.
I am not a mother and don’t plan to be one in the next few, maybe several years, but as a woman, this is an issue I’m keenly aware of. I find myself judging other women for some of these things, and I have no right to! None of us do. Motherhood looks like enough of a challenge on it’s own. Women should not have to deal with the judgment of other women on top of it. (And I say “judgment of women” on purpose because we all know that that’s where it comes from.) In general, I think women need to be more supportive of one another, and I write that as much for my readers as I do for myself. This is definitely a place I have room for growth.
I think when we read books, we each pull something different from them. It depends on the time and place you’re reading in, what season you are in personally, and what is going on in the world around you. For me, this novel felt deeply personal; like it was put on the shelf for me to read. From the subtle Pittsburgh references (shout-out to Eat’n’Park) to the interesting anecdotes on the Asian-American experience. I feel like these three main takeaways are things I will continue to ponder and uncover in my daily experiences and interactions.
There were so many loose ends in this book, I guess you could call them little fires, that built a complex web of intertwined drama. I was worried that the ending would be unsatisfying or abrupt, but Ng doused each one by the last page in an intriguing way that left me surprisingly contented but still with thought-provoking questions. Writing helps me process and reflect, and that’s what the aim of this post was. I hope it may help guide your post-reading reflection as well. I plan to write more posts like this for books I read—both fiction and non-fiction—and I hope you’ll read along with me.
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Cheers!
Sarah
