With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon'”and never comes home. I certainly did '” and what’s more, is that reading The Leavers reminded me of how much listening to narratives of others, both for pleasure and for understanding, I still need to do. Steep yourself in a story that’s different from your own. But I can’t think of a better way to wile away the hours at the moment, so here is my recommendation: Turn off the news. I read this book over the course of a single weekend, so don’t say I didn’t warn you: Once you pick it up and get through a chapter, you’re probably in it for the long haul. In this incredible novel, we get that'”and so very, very much more. So rarely are we allowed to focus on female ambivalence about motherhood. She cannot imagine living without him'”until she has no other choice. Polly adores her son, yet resents the burden he places on her existence. Which brings us to a third theme of the novel: a complex portrait of a woman thrust into motherhood when she isn’t yet ready. He’ll later return to his roots on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (right near Chinatown) as an angry young man seeking to reconnect with his core identity. It’s about immigration and cultural barriers, the promise of the American dream and the less talked about way it can devolve into an American nightmare.ĭeming is adopted by well-meaning but dense parents, renamed 'œDaniel Wilkinson' and moved from his neighborhood to a white suburb upstate, where he stands out as a minority and struggles to fit in. The Leavers is also about the very concept of ''us' versus 'them'' about belonging, and who we are when we lose the people who make us, well, ourselves.

He will spend the next decade carrying the heartache of this abandonment.īut that’s only a piece of Lisa Ko’s provocative story. He is devastated when one day his mother disappears, without explanation or a trace. Deming is a good kid growing up in the Bronx, the child of an undocumented Chinese immigrant. On the surface, The Leavers is a novel about a mother and son who are separated by forces more powerful than their blood bond.

While using fiction as an escape from reality is incredibly rewarding on its own, what’s even better is when a novel’s lessons lift from the pages and inform our lives with renewed compassion. There’s no better time to read a powerful book than when the world feels cold and unfriendly.

The leavers novel