The Procrastinators Book Club discussion

Welcome to the Our Missing Hearts Buddy Read Discussion thread! This thread officially opens on January 3rd and anyone can join at any time. Please keep in mind that spoilers are allowed in this thread but only up to the group's current reading place. Do not spoil the book if you've read further than the group. Any extra days can be used to catch up!

Each day we will be reading by chapters or page numbers. Page numbers are an approximation based on the hardcover or paperback that is the default on Goodreads. The suggested Buddy Read discussion schedule is as follows:

Week of 01/03
January 3: Part I, Chapters 1-2 (pages 1-48)
January 4: Part I, Chapters 3-4 (pages 49-91)
January 5: Part I, Chapters 5-7 (pages 92-141)
January 6: Part II, Chapters 8-9 (p. 142-202)
January 7: Part II, Chapters 10-11 (p. 203-272)

Week of 01/08
January 8: Part III and Author's Note (p. 273-335)

PARTICIPANTS
~ Jen
~ Tayjah

Whenever I read a book for a book club, buddy read, etc., I google for book club questions. This is one to start off Our Missing Hearts:

What are your thoughts about the way the U.S. is presented in the novel and what similarities do you see to our version? Do you view the story as dystopian fiction?

I just picked up my book from the library!! I should be starting in a few days tho

How's it going? Since you said you were starting slow, I've only finished part 1, even though it's our official end date.

I'm not American and have never lived there, so my experiences of the US are limited to visits as a tourist and what I see and hear in the media. Parts of part 1 seem like what it must be like to be in a school district that has fallen prey to one of those groups that is zealously trying to get any book it doesn't like (which seems to be all books) removed from the school system. But then other parts, like the people who resist the system and disappear, are quite totalitarian. I don't think there are very many utopian novels set in totalitarian societies, but it remains to be seen whether this will turn out to be a utopian dystopia (there's hope) or an anti-utopian dystopia (no hope).

I still haven’t started it😥 but in my state they have done that. The government has banned all lgbt books and African American books on colonialism from schools. They also got rid of marginalized studies such as Gender studies and African American studies. The US has also got rid of the right to abortion in some states, even though it was originally protected in the constitution. This country is slowly turning into a dystopian lol.

Okayyy I started it. This book is read by Lucy Liu!!! I hope it’s by the actual actress not someone with the same name

Great! I think I'm now halfway through, so we can continue the discussion if you'd like.

Here's another question:

Throughout the story, Bird remembers folktales that his mother used to tell him as a child. What was the significance of these folktales to this story as a whole?

Folktales are often used to illustrate a society's values and pass them down to children. It's not clear yet why Asian Americans have specifically been targeted in this world, but they have, and anything that marks them out as 'different' including their stories, has been repressed. Bird seems to be trying to hold on to or access his own cultural heritage by remembering the tales his mother told him. And for the story as a whole, I think the significance of the stories is to not let go of your origins, you can blend them into a new whole.