This book was scheduled for June, and, in a nutshell, it is fantastic. The words flew easy, and each word choice was a meaningful one, either symbolically, or to further the plot. Ah, the plot; simple enough, but utilizing the full depth of human emotion concerning the very real need and want to connect and feel in sync with someone, which is what we crave deep in our depths of loneliness… Or maybe that’s just me. Whoops.
The story is easy to follow, and has its roots on historic sites: Shaker Heights was a prominent, ridiculously affluent neighborhood and district in Cleveland, Ohio, back in the 80s and 90s. It feels odd, reading it from this outside-in perspective, as I live in Columbus with family residing close to Cleveland. With this surrealness of reading a book about a district of people that should matter to me, at the very least to matter at the lowest level of name acquantaince as possible, came my own familiar experiences living with white people and their arrogance. Some of the conversations explored in the novel were super cringey to read through, because it’s clear as day that, although the white protagonists were with good intentions, they had very limited resources and no support of other white folk to learn and understand any different reality than the bubble-wrapped one they find themselves living.
I related, very much so, to the mother and daughter that end up moving into Shaker Heights, who feel at odds with the already established and tight-knit community, as well as the revelry in rebelling and the sheer joy in freedom, as realized by the different protagonists in the book. Ng narrates a story so easy to dissmiss, but it is more a cautionary tale of being so “woke” it recycles into blind privilege, progressing into the suppressing and sweeping-under-the-rug of racial, cultural, and economic biasis we carry in ourselves daily, instead of confronting our shame and learning from it.
Little Fires Everywhere was released in 2017, but I still feel very much incensed, influenced, and touched, by her words. Her soft way of writing about the things that matter to you and shape your worldview is absolutely heartwrending, and it challenges the reader, or maybe just me, to reflect on opinions previously held tightly that I am revising now through different lens. Every day, I am learning more and more about living my truth, and my most authentic self, and to do that, I need to keep addressing privilege, in myself or in those I surround myself with, to keep myself in check with the bigger understanding that privilege leads to placidity, and allowing even one slip leads a precedent for more injustice in bigger ways to follow.
As a woman, as a Chinese immigrant, I am in a marginalized group and that immediately my existence is politized. I am fortunate that I have other privileges to “fall back” on, but there are many others that require us to uplift their voices. This book was a good reminder of that, and a good refresher for my soul to keep on fighting the good fight, no matter how exhausting. Because sometimes, along the way, you get to read a neat little book like this, that reminds you that having other teens and kids, dark-skinned or light-skinned, reading books like this and learning from them, is what all of this is for.
4/5
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