Celeste Ng
Celeste Ng is a prominent contemporary author known for her insightful exploration of family dynamics, suburbia, and the experiences of mixed-race families. Born in Pittsburgh to immigrant parents from Hong Kong, Ng's upbringing in Shaker Heights, Ohio, profoundly shaped her writing. With a background in both the sciences—her mother was a research chemist and her father a physicist for NASA—and a passion for writing, Ng pursued her education at Harvard University and earned her MFA from the University of Michigan. Her debut novel, *Everything I Never Told You*, released in 2014, garnered critical acclaim and commercial success, establishing her as a significant voice in literature. Following this, her second novel, *Little Fires Everywhere*, further solidified her reputation and was adapted into a Hulu miniseries. In 2022, she published *Our Missing Hearts*, which explores themes of race, family, and societal issues in a near-future setting. Ng's works are marked by their depth and sensitivity, addressing complex subjects such as racial identity, belonging, and social justice. She currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she continues to write and engage in literary pursuits.
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Subject Terms
Celeste Ng
- Born: July 30, 1980
- Place of Birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Biography
The author of three acclaimed novels dealing with the intricacies and complexities of family life, the darker side of suburbia, and mixed-race families, Celeste Ng has established herself as among the leading voices in contemporary fiction. The daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong, Ng writes out of her own personal experience, even as she transforms it into fiction.
Ng's parents came over to the United States in the 1960s, settling initially in Pennsylvania. Her mother was a research chemist who taught and conducted research at Cleveland State University, while her father was a physicist who worked for NASA. Ng placed a high premium on pursuing a practical career, and although she started writing from a young age, she never envisioned becoming a novelist as a proper career.
Born in Pittsburgh, Ng moved with her parents to the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 1990. A privileged upbringing, along with the dynamics of her community, helped to shape Ng's sensibility and would later form the subject matter of her two novels. The town, when Ng was growing up there, prided itself on its liberalism and its racial integration. The White residents, for example, encouraged African American families to move in. But, according to Ng, there were very few Asian Americans around, and she felt out of place as a result. For the most part, though, she enjoyed growing up in Shaker Heights, which she views as a positive example of a progressive community.
Following her graduation from high school, Ng attended Harvard University, where she earned her bachelor's degree. She then went to the University of Michigan to earn her master of fine arts degree. While there, she excelled, earning the Hopwood Award.
After graduating, she started work on her first novel, a process that took her six years. While working on the book, she took jobs that did not pay particularly well, but that allowed her the time to write, such as freelance proofreading, freelance editing, and creating slides for doctor's presentations. She was also writing other pieces and, in 2012, she had a breakthrough when her short story "Girls, at Play" won a Pushcart Prize. When her novel, Everything I Never Told You, appeared in 2014, it was an immediate critical and commercial success. It was a New York Times Best Seller, named Amazon's Number 1 Best Book of 2014, and won numerous awards.
Ng set to work immediately on a follow-up and the result was the equally acclaimed Little Fires Everywhere, which was named Amazon's Number 2 Best Book, as well as Best Fiction Book, of 2017. In 2020, Ng served as a producer on the Hulu miniseries adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere, which starred actors Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. The same year, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, was published in October 2022. It was widely praised as her strongest work to date, receiving starred reviews from major publications like Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews.
Ng also worked as an editor at Fiction Writer's Review and taught at Grub Street in Boston. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son. She started the Twitter hashtag #smallacts.
Major Works
A literary thriller, Celeste Ng's debut novel Everything I Never Told You skillfully establishes the themes that the author mines in her subsequent novel and stories. The book takes place in the 1970s and centers on the discovery of the dead body of a teenage girl, Lydia Lee, in a nearby lake. While probing this mystery, Ng gives us the backstory of Lydia's parents, a mixed-race couple. Her mother, Marilyn Lee, is White, and her father, James Lee, is Chinese American. In telling their story, Ng explores with great sensitivity the feeling of being an outsider, as well as the subtle racism that plagues suburban communities.
In her follow-up novel, Little Fires Everywhere, Ng paints a portrait of another suburban community, this time, her hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio. Delving into the darker depths beneath the picture-perfect surface, the novel turns on the appearance in the town of a free-spirited artist, Mia, and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Pearl. As their lives become entwined with that of their landlords, the more conventionally minded Richardsons and their four children, tensions rise to the fore. Dealing with such issues as abortion, transracial adoption, and class, Ng once again gives strong novelistic life to these hot-button topics in a rich and satisfying manner.
Ng's novel Our Missing Hearts tells the story of twelve-year-old Bird Gardner, who is raised by his single father after his mother, a Chinese American poet, leaves the family three years prior. Touching on themes prevalent in her previous novels, including race and family, Ng also makes reference to controversial topics like police violence and book banning. Set in a dystopian near future, the novel ultimately turns into a mystery in which Bird searches for his missing mother.
Further Reading
Chung, Nicole. "'I've Always Been Political': Celeste Ng and Nicole Chung in Conversation." Literary Hub, 12 Sept. 2017, lithub.com/ive-always-been-political-celeste-ng-and-nicole-chung-in-conversation/. Accessed 13 June 2024.
Ng, Celeste. "Celeste Ng: By the Book." The New York Times, 21 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/books/review/celeste-ng-by-the-book.html. Accessed 13 June 2024.
Bibliography
Begley, Sarah. "Celeste Ng, Novelist." Time, 25 Sept. 2017, p. 58. Academic Search Complete, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=125153426&site=ehost-live. Accessed 13 June 2024.
King, Stephen. "Celeste Ng's Dystopia Is Uncomfortably Close to Reality." Review of Our Missing Hearts, by Celeste Ng. The New York Times, 22 Sept. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/books/review/celeste-ng-our-missing-hearts.html. Accessed 13 June 2024.
Ng, Celeste. "Author Celeste Ng's Debut Novel Named Book of the Year: 'Writing Is an Extension of Thinking.'" Glamour, 5 Dec. 2014, www.glamour.com/story/author-celeste-ngs-debut-novel. Accessed 13 June 2024.
Ng, Celeste. "Novelist Celeste Ng: 'There Was A Period When I Thought I'd Never Write Again.'" The Guardian, 22 Apr. 2023, www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/22/novelist-celeste-ng-there-was-a-period-when-i-thought-id-never-write-again-little-fires-everywhere-our-missing-hearts. Accessed 13 June 2024.
Ng, Celeste. "Writer Celeste Ng Talks About Growing Up in Shaker Heights and Her Buzz Novel of the Summer, 'Everything I Never Told You.'" Interview by Joanna Connors. Cleveland.com, 9 July 2014, www.cleveland.com/books/index.ssf/2014/07/writer‗celeste‗ng‗talks‗about.html. Accessed 13 June 2024.
Review of Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng." Publishers Weekly, 17 July 2017, p. 190. Literary Reference Center Plus, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=124153786&site=lrc-plus. Accessed 13 June 2024.
Laity, Paul. "Celeste Ng: It's a Novel about Race, and Class and Privilege." The Guardian, 4 Nov. 2017, www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/04/celeste-ng-interview-little-fires-everywhere. Accessed 13 June 2024.