The nuances in the adaptation can be attributed to Tigelaar’s determination to build a diverse writers room. On its own, the novel is a fascinating look at class and race and how much and how little society has changed since the story’s late-’90s setting. I think we forget how even just 20 years ago there was so much less support for queer people.” It fit really well with the time period, too. “It matched the themes,” she continues, “those ideas about who you appear to be on the outside, who people think you should be, versus how you know yourself to be on the inside. “When I conceived this character,” says Ng, “she felt so isolated in so many ways, and it felt to me like she might be questioning her sexuality.” Though that character development was not made clear in the book, showrunner Liz Tigelaar and the writers quickly proposed it, again to a positive response from Ng. Izzy Richardson, the youngest daughter and black sheep of the Richardson family played by Megan Stott, was a similar case. “I knew that Kerry and the many Black writers in the writers room would be able to portray a Black woman’s experience in a way that I wasn’t able to in the book.” “I loved that because to me it said that were looking at the book in the way that I wanted it to be looked at: They were thinking about how race and class connect, they were leaning into having those discussions,” Ng says. But when the idea of casting Washington came up, Ng was thrilled. Ng continued to write the book as though the Warrens were working-class white characters. “I didn’t feel like I was the right person to try to imagine a Black woman’s experience in America or a Latinx woman’s experience in America, because I know that some things I might be able to imagine, but other things I know that I don’t know about.” With the Chinese American adoption at the center of the story, Ng felt that another Asian American character would simplify the complex dynamic at hand. “It felt like it matched up with the idea of them being outsiders because class and race are so closely tied together.” “I thought about making Mia and Pearl characters of color,” Ng elaborates. Mia Warren, the character that earned Kerry Washington an Emmy nomination, is not attributed racial indicators or descriptions. None of the other central characters in the book, however, are explicitly people of color - which may come as a surprise to fans of the show.

Though Little Fires Everywhere focuses on two non-Asian mothers and their families, the crux of the plot is their differing views on the contested adoption of a Chinese American baby by white parents.

Author of little fires everywhere