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‘Little Fires Everywhere’ Blazed a Path for a Real Convo on Race and Class
The hit show took on the intersections of racism, White privilege, and motherhood
Warning: spoilers ahead.
Hulu’s limited series Little Fires Everywhere is a deliciously venomous treat for television lovers everywhere. Based on the novel of the same name by Celeste Ng, and starring powerhouse actresses Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, the tense period drama fits mountains of story into just eight episodes. The show tackles issues of race and class in keeping with its source material. But the story’s main focus is the obligations of motherhood and the ties that bind — and the show’s decision to cast a Black lead pushes that theme into sharp focus.
The show begins as a mystery about a recent crime. Who burned down the perfect home of Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon)? Through flashbacks, we are introduced to Elena’s husband and four children, and we watch as she fixates on the arrival of Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) and her teenage daughter Pearl (Lexi Underwood). As a Black and apparently low-income mother, Mia sticks out like a sore thumb in the affluent White neighborhood of Shaker Heights, Ohio. Elena goes out of her way to “adopt” Mia and her daughter in an act of misplaced benevolence, and their children’s budding friendships entangle them deeply, even as their values collide into each other.
As they spar over their own involvements with a high-profile custody case in their town — two mothers in conflict with two others caught in their crosshairs — they reveal the ways that their very different experiences with race and class have shaped their relationships to motherhood and their understanding of who deserves to experience its privileges or bear the brunt of its burdens.
Elena’s lifestyle is easy to dismiss as privileged and easy because it is. But the key to understanding her comes in the series’ sixth episode. Elena has four beautiful children who came to her easily. Too easily. She never wanted quite so many, and she felt trapped by what she saw as an inescapable obligation to project complete and total perfection. She dreamed of being a journalist for the New York Times, and had to settle for the Shaker Times instead in order…
