The Leavers (Ko)

The Leavers 
Lisa Ko, 2017
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616206888


Summary
Lisa Ko’s powerful debut, The Leavers, is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice.
 
One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon—and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her.

With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. But far from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his adoptive parents’ desire that he assimilate with his memories of his mother and the community he left behind.

Told from the perspective of both Daniel—as he grows into a directionless young man—and Polly, Ko’s novel gives us one of fiction’s most singular mothers. Loving and selfish, determined and frightened, Polly is forced to make one heartwrenching choice after another.

Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It’s a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Queens, New York City, New York, USA
• Raised—state of New Jersey
• Education—B.A., Weslyan University; M.L.I. S., San Jose State University; M.F.A.,
  City University of New York City College
• Awards—PEN/Bellwether Prize
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York


Lisa is the first generation of her extended family to be born in American. Her parents are of Chinese descent who came to the U.S. from the Philippines. She was born in New York City's Borough of Queens, though eventually her family moved to the New Jersey suburbs where she grew up.

As the only Asian child in her community, Ko knows what it feels like to be an outsider, a feeling that has informed her fiction. Lonely, she turned to reading and writing for company and comfort. At five she started keeping a journal and wrote her first book, Magenta Goes to College. Magenta was her favorite colored crayon. She also read throughout her childhood and adolescence—as she says on her website, "to escape, to dream."

Ko received her B.A. from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. It was there that she devoured books by writers of color and finally began to write about people who looked like she did. After college she moved to New York City where she worked in book, magazine, and web publishing. Then it was on to San Francisco for five years, working in film production and co-starting an Asian American magazine. At 30, she returned to New York to continue writing a book.

It took eight-and-a-half years for Ko to write and edit The Leavers. Meanwhile, she juggled numerous jobs — from freelancing as an editor to adjunct teaching and full-time office work, writing when she could. In an interview with Flavorwire, she recalled:

I’ve had so many random writing, editing, and teaching jobs to pay the bills. I worked full-time as a web content specialist in a university marketing department while finishing The Leavers, but now I’m back to freelance writing and editing.

In 2016, even though The Leavers wasn't quite ready, she decided on a whim to submit it in a competition, all the while believing she would never win. Months later, author Barbara Kingsolver called Ko to tell her that she had had, in fact, won—the award was the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. (Adapted from various online sources, including the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Thoroughly researched and ambitious in scope, Ko’s book ably depicts the many worlds Deming’s life encompasses.… It is impossible not to root for a boy so foundationally unmoored by circumstance. Moreover, Deming’s feisty mother is compellingly complicated: Polly Guo has an itch for freedom she cannot ignore. Indeed, the greatest strength of the book lies in its provocative depiction of a modern Chinese woman uninterested in traditional roles of any kind. What she makes of herself, and what we might make of her, are of interest from any number of angles.
Gish Jen - New York Times Book Review


One of 2017's most anticipated fiction debuts.… The winner of last year's PEN/Bellwether Prize, which recognizes fiction that explores issues of social justice, The Leavers feels as relevant as ever as the future of immigrants in America hangs in the balance.
Time.com


Beautifully written and deeply affecting, combining the emotional insight of a great novel with the integrity of long-form journalism, The Leavers is a timely meditation on immigration, adoption, and the meaning of family.
Village Voice


[G]orgeously redemptive… Lisa Ko’s debut novel is an achingly beautiful read about immigration, adoption, and the drive to belong. Beyond the desensitizing media coverage, Ko gives faces, (multiple) names, and details to create a riveting story of a remarkable family coming, going, leaving … all in hopes of someday returning to one another.
Christian Science Monitor


[A] dazzling debut.… Filled with exquisite, heartrending details, Ko’s exploration of the often-brutal immigrant experience in America is a moving tale of family and belonging (Book of the Week).
People
 

When Deming Guo was 11, his Chinese immigrant mother, Polly, left for work at a nail salon and never returned. In alternating perspectives, this heart-wrenching literary debut tells both of their stories.
Entertainment Weekly
 

Lisa Ko's The Leavers is the year's powerful debut you won't want to miss. The Leavers expertly weaves a tale of the conflicts between love and loyalty, personal identity and familial obligation, and the growing divide between freedom and social justice. An affecting novel that details the the gut-wrenching realities facing illegal immigrants and their families in modern America, Lisa Ko's debut is the 2017 fiction release you can't afford to miss.
Bustle.com
 

The Leavers describes the devastation caused by forced, abrupt and secret detentions that occur daily under our current Immigration Act. The novel weaves from past to present, from immediate abandonment to chronic loss, showing how the unfathomable disappearance of a mother eats into her son's effort to "move forward.” … [T]he story soars when Ko writes of immigration detention —a civil detention for violation of a civil law­ that is as callous and brutal as the worst sort of criminal incarceration.… [The Leavers] lets us feel the knife twist of sweeping government authority wielded without conscience or control. [Ko’s] work gives poignant voice to the fact the U.S. can, and must, write a better immigration system.
Ms. Magazine
 

Consider this book a must-read: They may be fictional, but these characters have a lot to teach us about the difficulties of belonging and the plight of illegal immigrants.
Marie Claire
 

What Ko seeks to do with The Leavers is illuminate the consequence of [deportation] facilities, and of the deportation machine as a whole, on individual lives. Ko’s book arrives at a time when it is most needed; its success will be measured in its ability to move its readership along the continuum between complacency and advocacy.
Los Angeles Review of Books


[E]ngaging and highly topical… Ko deftly segues between the intertwined stories of the separated mother and son and conveys both the struggles of those caught in the net of immigration authorities and the pain of dislocation.
National Book Review


(Starred review.) Ko’s debut is a sweeping examination of family through the eyes of a single mother, a Chinese immigrant, and her U.S.-born son, whose separation haunts and defines their lives.… [A] stunning tale of love and loyalty—to family, to country—is a fresh and moving look at the immigrant experience in America, and is as timely as ever. (Apr.)
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [A]n emerging writer to watch. Verdict: Ko's writing is strong, and her characters, whether major or minor, are skillfully developed. Readers who enjoy thoughtfully told relationship tales…will appreciate. —Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal


[S]killfully written.… [T]hose who are interested in closely observed, character-driven fiction will want to leave room for The Leavers on their shelves.
Booklist


A Chinese woman who works in a New York nail salon doesn't come home one day; her young son is raised by well-meaning strangers who cannot heal his broken heart.… [T]he specificity of the intertwined stories is the novel's strength.… This timely novel depicts the heart- and spirit-breaking difficulties faced by illegal immigrants.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Leavers...then take off on your own:

1. What relevance, if any, does The Leavers have to the immigration issues dividing much of the world today? What are your opinions regarding immigration. Did this book alter those opinions...or confirm them?

2. How is Polly Guo portrayed in this work? Do you admire her...or not? Does she engender sympathy? Does your attitude toward her change during the course of the novel? Early on she is ambivalent about Deming's birth, placing him in a bag and leaving him underneath a city bench...only to return to him, of course. Is she to blame for her ambivalence?

3. Talk about Polly's turbulent past and how it shapes who she has become. She seems driven by dreams of her own. What are those dreams?

4. How would you describe Deming when he arrives back in the U.S. as a six-year-old? What kind of family do Polly and Leon provide for Deming and Michael? What kind of life do they lead in the Bronx? Consider Polly's job in the nail salon.

5. Deming is utterly bewildered by his mother's disappearance. Talk about the effect it has on him as he grows into adolescence and young adulthood? Consider this observation: "If he held everyone at arm’s length, it wouldn’t hurt as much when they disappeared." Or this one: "He had eliminated the possibility of feeling out of place by banishing himself to no place."

6. What role do Ko's music and his gambling play; how do they help assuage his pain? At one point, after a performance with his band, Deming slips out, thinking to himself, "It felt good being the one making the excuse to get away." What does he mean?

7. What do you think of Kay and Peter Wilkinson? Are they clueless? Insensitive? Well-meaning?

8. Polly's story is told in the first person while Deming's is in the third person. Why do you think the author made that choice? Is Polly's tale meant to be a journal for Deming?

9. Polly is the one who sees the nature of the immigration system firsthand. How is the system portrayed in the novel?

10. Lisa Ko says the novel was inspired by a 2009 New York Times article about an undocumented immigrant from China who spent 18 months in detention. She had been arrested at a bus station on the way to Florida for a new job. Does knowing that the novel has its roots in a true story have any impact on how you understand it?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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