CELESTE NG’S HARD TRUTHS

T FIRST, IT WAS THE STORY OF A BOY, his mother, and her art. Could she ever make him understand her work? Could he ever forgive her for loving something as much as or even more than she loved him? These are the types of intimate questions that have long driven Celeste Ng’s fiction. But in the case of her latest novel, which she began to write in the fall of 2016, they slowly gave way to broader, darker themes. As Donald Trump claimed victory in the presidential election and images circulated of families torn apart at the border, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe and anti-Asian racism raged across America and beyond, Ng’s story changed. The setting, grounded on Harvard University’s campus, became an alternate version of the U.S., one defined by anti-Asian racism, censorship, and the constant threat of children’s “re-placement” as a consequence