Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, Essay Example

Lauded as one of the best books published in the year 2014, Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You is a crime story in which Lydia Lee, a young teenager, suddenly disappears and is found dead in a lake, presumably murdered or having committed suicide. The author repeats the word “gone” seemingly to underscore the ephemeral nature if human life, and such literary tactics unequivocally enhance the meaning of the work as a whole as the narrative progresses. At the outset of the novel, the narrative begins in the year 1977 in a small town in Ohio, but the various chapters switch back and for through time, often going as far back into the 1960s when another missing person case wracked the Lee family—which was comprised of an American medical school dropout named Marilyn, James who was a history professor at a college in Ohio, and their three young children—and had caused an uproar. Ng’s seminal novel tackles various themes that address the vagaries of modernity and how crime and forensics have profoundly evolved as a result of ideological progress and modernization, which is evident in her deliberate choice of setting. The themes of identity crisis, assimilation, and cultural chasms/fissures within marriage are effectively grafted therein to enhance the meaning of the work as a whole. Ultimately, identity in the context of modernity is unequivocally elusive and oscillates on a continuum that is in various ways wholly unpredictable, which the character of Lydia effectively demonstrates.

Ng sets this crime novel in the 1970s deliberately as a signifier of the depravity wrought by such profound ideological shifts spawned by modern technology from the perspective of authors of crime novels and the plots contained therein. Indeed, this cogent narrative heavily relies on Lydia, the presumably slain teenager, vanishing without leaving any evidence and misguiding her parents about the various relationships and friendships in her life. Doing so from the perspective of the modern reader is seemingly inconceivable in contemporary times because the Age of Information, the advent of the smart phone, and the germination of social media and its widespread popularity has rendered such a feat impossible. The various characters in the novel make decisions that drive the plot narrative that are undergirded by discernible racism that characterized the epoch in which the story took place. Indeed, mixed-race families such as the Lees was frowned down upon, and, in many states, it miscegenation was illegal well into the 1980s (Ngai 34). In comparison, the brand of racism that mixed-race families face today is a far more coded form of prejudice and couched in euphemistic terms in order to veil such antiquated sentiments. This intimation is evident in the newspaper headline that refers to Lydia’s mysterious death and funeral, reading: “Children of Mixed Backgrounds Often Struggle to Find Their Place” (Ng). As such, the themes of identity, racism, and modernity intersect in this scintillating novel to unveil cultural truisms that are relevant within the context of modernity and the environment in which modern readers find themselves in currently.

The title of the novel retains multi-layered meanings and refers not only to the key information that Lydia never conveyed to her parents but also to the marriage between Marilyn and James and the cultural cleavages that form in the aftermath of Lydia’s mysterious death. Language and discursive framing underscore such cultural and racial chasms when she uses the word “kowtow”—an Americanized appropriation of a Chinese word—amidst one of her tense arguments with her husband (Ng), Such linguistic nuance is scanty throughout the novel, although indirect allusions to the stereotypical paradigm of Orientalism—which is guided by the prejudicial notion that Asians are a deferential and subservient people–can be discerned throughout the novel as well. Interestingly, despite the cultural pluralism that characterizes the family, only one reference to authentically Chinese food is mentioned in the scene where an Asian woman prepares a pork bun called char siu bao for James. It is through these various subtleties that the reader can glean that Ng intended to convey how both generational and cultural conflicts that have germinated during the modern era can inflict irreparable harm on the parental/child relationship in addition to the husband/wife dyad. Marilyn reiterates her desire for Lydia to pursue a career in medicine rather than becoming just a wife and homemaker in the future, while her father conveys his desire for her to comport herself as a typical, popular American teenager—especially since she inherited her mother’s prototypical American features such as bright blue eyes—and the proverbial “life of the party,” a social status that he was never able to obtain even though her mixed race background rendered it impossible to do so.

Indeed, her parents so badly wanted her to fulfill the dreams they could never themselves due to their race and gender during the epoch in which they grew up in. Interestingly, Lydia’s father, a renowned history professor, specialized in the history of the American cowboy, a figure that typified ideal manhood and was constructed as the embodiment of the American Dream. Throughout the novel in several flashback scenes, Lydia expresses the reality that her parents dreams for her are incommensurate with reality, and the pressure she faces to live up to their idealized vision for the future ultimately drives her premature demise.

Lydia is not the only character in the novel to suffer from an identity crisis, and it seems that Ng sought to add nuance to this commentary on modernity by giving each of the characters a different sort of identity crisis on an idiosyncratic basis. Nathan, Lydia’s brother, was accepted into Harvard University but is not accepted or received warmly upon arrival (Ng) The death of his sister propels him to accusing Jack, the Lees’ neighbor, of knowing the mystery of how Lydia extirpated, although such a conviction can be read in various different ways: a manifestation of his racism, or perhaps the obvious reality that he is the killer. Clearly, identity crises and modernization are intrinsically linked, which the impact of Lydia’s death on her family demonstrates.

Lydia’s premature death tears the Lee family asunder, and the interactions between the characters enable Ng to explore various themes including cultural divide, gender, generational gaps, and the meaning of the construct of the home within the context of modernity. Ultimately, it is clear through the gaps in the various relationships depicted therein are caused by a lack of understanding of one another, which is a hallmark trait of the processes undergirding modernity and identity formation that ensues. The human need to belong, family pressures/burdens, and cultural fissures guide the plot narrative, and it proves difficult for the reader to truly get an authentic image of Lydia because she has merely functioned as a blank canvas for her parents to thrust their hopes and dreams onto and vicariously live through her. The inexorability of human existence within the context of modernity is conveyed through thematic development within this scintillating narrative.

Works Cited

Ng, Celeste. Everything I Never Told You. United States: Penguin Press, 2014. Print.

Ngai, Mae. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Print.