by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD
On May 24, 2020 - the day before the world witnessed the torture and murder of George Floyd - I saw the eighth and final episode of the prescient mini-series, Little Fires Everywhere. In this Hulu series, based on the best-selling 2017 book of the same name by American writer and novelist Celeste Ng, fires are the metaphor for both family disaster and dangerous, unaddressed festering distrust between the races.
On May 30, in furious protest to Floyd’s brutal murder, I watched from my apartment window as parts of my city, Philadelphia, erupted in flames. As smaller flames followed, set on the numbered street leading to my home, scenes from the mini-series flashed through my mind.
Little Fires Everywhere provides a perfect opportunity for discussion and introspection in schools of social work and social work settings. It shines a strong light on unintended, unrealized, unrecognized community hypocrisy and the necessary work that faces America in addressing racist attitudes and dismantling racist institutions. It offers more examples of microaggressions than I could possibly count. Discussion can extend to myriad relational specifics involving gender issues; marriage; parenting; the inability to conceive a child; intercultural and interracial adoption; and the cost of lost dreams, lost opportunities, and lost loves.
Both book and series take place in the 1990s in Shaker Heights, Ohio, an area that took pride in itself as one of the first suburban communities to integrate. Yet, the drama portrays a frightening gap in race relations and social classes, and a White privileged population oblivious to its condescension, with a fierce determination to convince the outside world (and themselves!) of their progressive, inclusive views. Celeste Ng, whose parents moved to this country from Hong Kong in the late 1960s, was born in Pittsburgh but knew this area and timeframe well. During the period portrayed, when she was 10 years old, she and her family relocated to Shaker Heights.
The series was initiated by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, as was the enormously popular Big Little Lies, each a vehicle for a dominant role for Witherspoon and other talented actors. Although bringing characters of color was clearly essential to Ng, she did not create a Black protagonist. The mini-series, however, developed by HBO’s Liz Tigelaar (“Brothers and Sisters” and “Casual”) relied on a staff of seven writers for character authenticity, and expanded Ng’s portrait of prejudice and disconnection by introducing a Black central character, Mia Warren (played by Kerry Washington).
The series opens as a mystery, and in the process, a complicated array of characters comes together, with several story lines to follow. Central to me is a profound tragedy: racial misunderstandings stand in the way of trusted connection between Mia and Elena Richardson (Witherspoon), two women, united in painful cover-up, each carrying profound, deeply unsettling secrets of betrayal, fear, and lost dreams.
Elena, a mother of four, obsessively insists on the life she has convinced herself is perfection. But her rigidity and insistence on control over others mark a tragic attempt to do all possible not to see all she lost by succumbing to a life that was someone else’s dream, surely not her own. Mia Warren, a gifted photographic artist, portrays her nomadic life as one necessary for renewed sources of creative vision and inspiration. Yet, Mia is actually a woman on the run. As the drama unfolds, there is further impenetrable collision between the women: Mia’s teenage daughter, Pearl (Lexi Underwood), finds stability in Elena’s home and in relationships with her teenage sons and daughters, which grow in complexity. At the same time, Elena’s daughter, Izzy (Megan Stott) - her youngest child, who is not cut from the cloth her mother insists upon - finds comfort and breath in Mia’s bohemian lifestyle and outlook.
The subplot of the series involves an undocumented Chinese waitress (Huang Lu), whom Mia befriends, a woman overwhelmed by poverty, terror, and heartbreak.
An extraordinary strength of both book and series is that while dangers of a racist external world are illuminated, the inner world challenge that unites all of human kind is marked as equally important. We see how the exceedingly complex process of claiming individual identity through a painful, but necessary, parental separation process becomes even more difficult and turbulent (and dangerous!) when parents insist their sons and daughters live, think, and feel as they prescribe.
Little Fires Everywhere culminates in an essential, eternal truth: the impossibility of creating a solid home without a sound internal one. And its extension - you can’t go home again without this home within yourself. And more: this internal growth is necessary to build a community and a country and, in this way, avoid the fire next time.
SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD, whose private and pro bono clinical social work practice is in Philadelphia, is a certified group psychotherapist and family life educator. She is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award (2004) and the Social Worker of the Year (2018) from the Pennsylvania chapter of NASW, and the 2013 NASW Media Award for Best Article. In 2018, she was one of five graduates of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice selected for the school’s inaugural Hall of Fame. SaraKay is the author of Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work.