Identity: Heritage, Assimilation, and Transience Theme Analysis

Little Fires Everywhere is a book that makes deep and difficult inquiries into what, exactly, makes up a person’s identity. Throughout the novel, Ng again and again makes the argument that identity is not easily sought or discovered. Her characters struggle to identify themselves internally from one another through the places they were born and raised, the people who raised them and loved them from afar, the families they were given or chose, and the things they were taught as children in opposition to the hard lessons they learned as adults. The characters suffer as they attempt to make—or discard—their identities, and through their sufferings Ng argues that identity is not something so easily pinned down, and that the search for an authentic or permanent identity often leads to frustration and pain.

For Mia Warren, the search for identity is bound up in the transience of her life. Though the narrative does not immediately make the reason for her transient nature clear, it presents her and Pearl’s way of living as alternately fun and bohemian, or lonely and rootless. Mia is estranged from her family, and it is truly her and Pearl against the world. Pearl learns to find refuge in her mother and in their unique, special relationship as they move from place to place, though deep down she truly longs for friends her own age and for a place she can feel at home in and a part of. She also yearns to know her true heritage, but any time she asks Mia about her parentage, her past, or the reason for their nomadic lifestyle, Mia dodges her questions. Mia wants to erase her identity, and has built her life—and her daughter’s life—around escaping her past, who she was, and the people she once knew who made her into who she is. Though strong in her personal identity as an artist, Mia has adopted an artist’s transient lifestyle largely in part because she hopes to lose herself within the vast landscape of America, and to hide from anyone who might still be pursuing her on behalf of the Ryans, the family whose baby she carried and ultimately refused to surrender. Mia’s identity has been built on so much secrecy that her search for privacy and her constant, repetitive erasure of her past has, in a way, become her identity itself.

Pearl, unable to get any answers regarding the roots of her mother’s identity or her family’s identity—and thus, by proxy, her own identity—observes and longs for the Richardsons’ comfort in their identities as she grows closer to them, both as individuals and as a family. They have deep roots in Shaker Heights, and the familial identity their ancestors built has influenced the present identities of their whole clan. Pearl, a shy teenager often uncertain of herself, wants that kind of built-in identity as well, and her mother’s inability—or unwillingness—to give it to her pushes her toward attempting to assimilate herself into the Richardson family, dreaming of the day they accept her as one of their own.

The questions of assimilation raised subtly through Pearl’s desire to join the Richardson clan are brought more forcefully to the forefront of the narrative as Bebe Chow’s case against the state for custody of her daughter, May Ling, begins to intensify. Ed Lim, Bebe’s lawyer, intensely questions Mrs. McCullough as to her ability to keep May Ling—or Mirabelle—“connected” to her Chinese identity. When Mrs. McCullough states that she takes Mirabelle out to eat at Chinese restaurants and bought her a panda rather than a brown bear for her first birthday, her statements come across as completely tone-deaf and rather offensive, if well-intentioned. Though Mrs. McCullough loves Mirabelle—“[no one] has any doubts about that,” Ed Lim says—she is woefully unprepared to sensitively or meaningfully raise her adoptive daughter within Chinese culture. Though Ed Lim’s arguments are valid, and reveal to both Ng’s audience and characters the nuance and difficulty of transracial adoption and the potential of assimilation to completely erase cultural identity, the McCulloughs are awarded custody of May Ling. They proceed with the adoption—and with the change of May Ling’s name to Mirabelle—until Bebe Chow, inspired by Mia’s comforting but confusing advice to “always” remember that she is May Ling’s true mother, steals the child right out of her crib and books a flight back to China, where she herself will raise her child in her own country and her own culture. All of the fighting over May Ling’s identity throws the child’s emotional well-being into the background of the case. One of the most complicated and hotly debated issues throughout the novel, Ng’s tug-of-war between Bebe Chow and the McCulloughs seems to suggest that though assimilation should not be the “cost” of a child’s being raised in capable, loving hands, the attempt to predict, litigate, or pin down identity itself is not the right course of action, either.

Ng’s characters struggle to create identities for themselves without ever realizing that identity is inextricably linked not just to heritage alone, transience alone, or assimilation alone, but an ever-changing combination of the three. The search for identity plagues many of the novel’s main characters, and it’s only when they relax into the identities that their life experiences have formed for them that they can begin to find peace with their own identities, and the identities of those around them.