Book Review: The Leavers by Lisa Ko

What a beautiful story! Sometimes the best reads come to us unexpectedly. I picked this one up at my favorite used bookstore here in Nashville. It has been on my TBR list on Goodreads for a while now. Going into this read, I didn’t know what it was about and it really blew me away.

The Leavers tells the story of Deming and his mother Polly. Polly is a Chinese immigrant who moved to the United States at 18. She intends to live the American Dream while sending money back home to her poor, rural fisherman father. The only hindrance in her plan is that she is pregnant with a baby she does not want. After seeking termination services she is told she is too far along for legal medical interventions. Upon having her son, Deming, she feels like two parts of one whole, ashamed she ever considered not having her son. Together, she and Deming, live in a tiny New York City apartment with several other Chinese immigrant roommates. Polly’s American Dream is not becoming a reality and she can barely stay afloat.

Ultimately she decides to send her son back to be raised by her father so that she can attempt to climb out of the large debts she is accruing. Several years later, after her father dies, Deming returns to live with a woman he barely knows and mother and son have to learn how to re-bond. Polly is now working at a nail salon and lives with her boyfriend, her boyfriend’s sister, and the sister’s son. The son, Michael, is near Deming’s age and they become like brother. As a family they are struggling to make ends meet, but they promise to never be apart again.

Until one day Deming’s mother does not come home from work. She is not seen or heard from again. Vivian, his “aunt” leaves him to foster care telling Deming she will return soon. She never returns. Deming is then placed with a White couple in upstate New York. This pair eventually adopt him. Deming is now Daniel Wilkinson, and as his identity changes, his Chinese roots and connection to his mother feels further and further away.

Later at 21, Daniel (Deming) has made some harsh turns in his life. He has never felt like he fit in. He has become too American to be Chinese and too Chinese to fit in in the White suburbs of New York. After reconnecting with Michael from his childhood and greatly disappointing his adoptive parents, Daniel decides to find the mother who left him all those years ago.

What I love about this novel is Lisa Ko’s writing from the perspective of both Deming and Polly. You can see and feel the pain of abandonment and the persisting loss that follows Deming/Daniel as he grows up. Then on the flip side, you experience Polly’s past and the humanity of this mother who is first and foremost a woman. Polly experiences pains of her own while trying to be the best mother she can be to a son she no longer knows.

Overall this book beautifully evokes the human experience. I also love how Lisa Ko weaves issues of racism (especially the “model minority) and immigration into a captivating novel. This fiction work could easily be the story of a real Chinese-American, mother-son pair who are torn apart with no warning or follow up.