The Conflicts of Child Custody in Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere

Abstract

This research use the novel as the object of this study. The novel used in this study is The Little Fires Everywhere. The purpose of this research is to find out how the conflicts of child custody discourse are presented in the story. This research is interesting to analyze because the conflicts of child custody under racism in United States in 1990s. The conflicts of child custody in Little Fires Everywhere mention that there are two families come from different ethnicities. Mrs. McCullough as an adoptive mother and she is a rich white family in Shaker Heights. Meanwhile, Bebe Chow as May Ling’s biological mother and she is Chinese immigrant. The child custody that happens in Little Fires Everywhere looks unfair. The racism that impact social class makes all laws in The United States to the minority. White as a majority, has more privilege in the court. The majority get the first right over immigrants, especially in child custody. Therefore, White people get their rights as a parent-child of immigrants more than their biological mothers. In order to analyze the conflicts of child custody as the subject matter from this novel, this research uses the theory of representation that is written by Stuart Hall and connects to Foucault’s discourse. Furthermore, this research is categorized as a qualitative research. There are two kinds of data in this research. First, primary data are taken by narration and dialogue that are related to the topic of child custody in Little Fires Everywhere. The secondary data are gained from several books, journal, article to support primary source. As the result of discussion, this research concludes that conflict of child custody presented in Little Fires Everywhere is caused by the racism condition. Additionally, child custody appeared in novel is also caused by the financial problem. In this case, child custody that happen in novel cause Asian immigrants who do not yet have economic stability in their families are considered incapable of good parenting, so no matter how strong Bebe's reasons are to keep her baby, her efforts will still be rejected by the court. The last conclusion, the author wants to give critic that the an Asian-American who wants to show the unfair condition of child custody issue in the 1990s because of racial background.