A Futuristic America

The overall setting of Our Missing Hearts is a version of America some time in the recent future. Individual cities and locations remain accurate to present-day (for example, Cambridge and New York City are the primary settings), but the culture has been shaken by an economic Crisis that resulted in a rise in xenophobia and racist tension. This society is characterized by racist government surveillance, further reinforced by community members themselves, who monitor and report each other’s behavior to the government. Children are removed from their families if the government mandates it and are “re-placed” in supposedly more patriotic homes. The government strictly enforces a broad law called PACT, which it uses to justify a range of racist policies, including restricting access to books written by Asian authors. The setting is further characterized by income inequality – wealthy people like Domi, and to some extent Margaret...