Deming is a young Chinese American boy living with his mother, her boyfriend, his sister and her son in New York City. It is not a life that Deming has grown up with. His mother Peilan (Polly), got pregnant when she wasn’t married and had sent her son back to China to live her father. She brought him back when he was of school age and they lived a life that wasn’t always easy but he was happy. Until the one day she doesn’t come home, he is put into foster care and then is adopted by two American professors. He becomes Daniel Wilkinson but not really. He feels as if he doesn’t really belong in either world.

Across the world in China, Polly has married and is doing very well. Her husband has no idea she has a son. When Deming calls her out of the blue, she is happy and scared. She too feels as if she doesn’t really belong in her world. Deming makes his way to her but can they mend the separation between them? It was such an interesting take on how the cultures look at each other. How well she could do in China and yet have to struggle in America just to get by.

As we find out exactly what happened to Polly when she didn’t come home, we really see the racism and fear that many people have had to deal with. Even with Deming’s adoptive parents, who are trying hard, they look at things in black and white. The story is about both of these lost souls finding themselves. There were times I didn’t like Polly very much and Daniel, for that matter. They were both so locked up in their own wants but as you read more into their stories, they both became so much more understandable. That mother/child bond is immense, even if time and space separates them. I also loved the ending. It was wrapped up perfectly.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Algonquin Books in exchange for an honest review.

This book was confusing to read at times. It would take me awhile to figure out who was narrating because it switches back and forth. It also switches from the past to the present. It just didn't make the story flow very well. However, I did like the author's purpose of this book. The themes of love and sacrifice, family and honor, and the struggles of an illegal immigrant are sprinkled throughout the book. I did not like the way the main character, Daniel, treated his adoptive parents. Being adopted myself, I have always been grateful to the people who took me in and loved and supported me my whole life. I feel Daniel was a jerk to them most of the time. I believe this is Lisa Ko's debut novel and will most likely give her future books a try.

Wow. Yet another book that I wish every American could read. Given our current political environment, this should be required reading for the citizens of the WORLD.

Here is an overview of the book, from Goodreads:

One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her.

With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an “all-American boy.” But far away from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his new life with his mother’s disappearance and the memories of the family and community he left behind.


This book is an exploration of what happens to Deming's mother when she disappeared as well as the impact of that disappearance and what results from it on the identity of Deming. It's such a moving story of identity, immigration and borders. I was so taken with this story of a mother and her child. The writing is beautiful ... there were passages that I read over and over because they totally spoke to me and deserved a more focused read. It's not a fast book. It slowly makes its way through time, showing you the impacts over and over and over. SO beautiful. So impactful. So moving.

Where the book really excels is it's examination of parenthood as well as it's hard look at the hardships faced by immigrants trying to assimilate to a new country. I loved how Lisa Ko shows you, in a multitude of ways, how identity is a struggle. It's not always easy to know your place, regardless of what happens to you. I found the sections about Deming and his adopted family to be especially interesting. Although well meaning, they completely obliterate everything about Deming's past and try to make him over as an "American."

All in all, I just loved this book. I highly recommend it to any and all! It's an important book that will make you think about identity and immigration in new and interesting ways.

I think this is an important book for us now as Americans - if reading fiction is supposed to make us more empathetic, as the studies say it does, then this book needs to reach people who don't see or understand the urgent need for compassion for undocumented persons. This is a very humanizing story, and it doesn't seek to depict pristine martyrs. Ko created characters that are people, not symbols. They aren't perfectly good or perfectly bad - they are three dimensional, and that makes it easier to see ourselves in them.

This was an incredible start to the month of May! I loved this book so much!

It is a captivating life story of Deming Guo and his mother’s immigration into the United States of America. The story telling is not linear, we jump back and forth between characters and between different time periods.

We see the story from Daniel Wilkinson’s point of view, of him struggling to understand what he wants from life, who he wants to be, and then we jump back in time when Daniel was still Deming Guo, living in a poor part of New York with his mom, her boyfriend, his sister and nephew in the tiniest apartment.

The characters were not flawless! More than that they made some very big mistakes in their lives. This made them astonishingly real, someone who I could have known, someone who could have lived next door. They weren’t totally likable, like any other human being. I would sympathize with them at one point of the story and maybe critic and despise their act at the other point, but they made me care and that is what I liked the most!

Immigration is never easy as it is. You need to drop everything and start from scratch somewhere new, somewhere where you don’t know anyone, sometimes don’t even speak the language. There is no need to make it even harder than that. But unfortunately, most of the times, there are dozens and hundreds of challenges created by different governments, by people around you that make you feel like you’ll never overcome them, there never will be a “better life” you were so hardly looking for.

highly recommend it to anyone looking for some new books in Adult or General Fiction genres. It was a full 5-star read for me and I couldn’t be happier for starting this month on such a high note (hopefully it will stay this way).

Slow moving, well written, but short on dialogue. I didn't love it and I didn't hate it.

“It was a funny thing, forgiveness. You could spend years being angry with someone and then realize you no longer felt the same, that your usual mode of thinking had slipped away when you weren’t noticing. He could see, in the flash of worry in his mother’s face as she waited for his reply, like he had heard in Kay and Peter’s shaking voices when they said good-bye to him earlier that his fear of being unwanted had dissipated. Because Mama – and Kay, and Peter – were trying to convince him that they were deserving of his love, not the other way around.” I really can't think of anything that I have read lately that has been this relevant to what is currently happening in our country and that so skillfully offers an unflinching examination of such tender and yet hot button topics as immigration, adoption, family, and belonging. Lisa Ko's book The Leavers, packs a powerful punch and is masterfully executed. It will break your heart and put it back together and I am just in awe that this is a debut novel. I had a few issues with the flow, but I am assuming that is due to the arc format and that it will be cleared up prior to publication. I can't wait to read what she writes next. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Algonquin books for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. 4 stars.

One morning eleven-year old Deming Guo's mother leaves the house and disappears without a trace. After a series of additional abandonments, Deming is adopted by a white American couple who rename him Daniel Wilkinson in an effort to ensure that he becomes assimilated as an "all-American" boy. The book is told from alternating perspectives of Deming and his mother. In the second half of the book we discover what happened to Deming's mother and our hearts act for both Deming and his mother.

On the surface, the novel is about the story of Deming and his mother. It's about how Deming copes with his abandonment, how he tries to understand his own background, and what happened to his mother. Yet, the book is about so much more than just the surface story in its exploration of cultural identify, belonging, and boundaries between cultures and countries. The people in Deming's life are all good people at heart who love him, and act in ways they think best for him. His adoptive parents want him to assimilate into American culture because they think that will make him happier and more successful. But the the ways in which they conceptualize happiness and success don't necessarily work for Deming. And Deming looks Chinese, speaks with an accent, and remembers being raised by his biological mother and his Chinese roots.

The book is filled with flawed characters and many times I wanted to reach into the book and shake some sense into Deming. Yet at the same time, I can empathize and truly connect with Deming and his mother. They both make mistakes (as do his adoptive parents and his friends) but those mistakes are understandable given the circumstances of their lives.

I don't want to say too much about the plot because part of the satisfaction in reading this book is discovering what happened to his mother. I will say that really enjoyed this book. It was brilliantly written, at times humorous and other times emotionally subtle. There's a lot going on in this book and multiple themes centering on how we form who we are and how we conceptualize family and culture. Ko also does a wonderful job painting a beautiful picture of the relationship between Deming and his mother - capturing snapshots of wonderfully touching memories and experiences in his early childhood.

This is a book about identity and family and America and culture and race and love. Beautifully written, sensitively told and immensely satisfying, you'd be well-served by picking up a copy and losing yourself in Ko's prose and the powerful story she's told..

It is hard to believe that this powerful, beautifully written and timely book is a debut novel. It was awarded the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for fiction by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice.

The novel is told from two points of view. We learn about Deming’s life in the Bronx where he lives in a small apartment with his mother, Peilan/Polly, her boyfriend Leon, his sister, Vivian, and her son, Michael. It is a hard life, his mother always struggling to make ends meet on a nail technician’s salary. But Deming has grown used to the life he has and feels as though his mother might finally settle down with Leon and they can become a real family. All of this changes when one day she doesn’t return home from work. No amount of searching reveals what has happened to her. Deming is eventually adopted by two well meaning professors who change his name to Daniel and try to give him a good life in a nice home in the suburbs. Daniel, however never feels that he fits in the suburb of Ridgeborough and this school and when his is almost 18 he leaves. He eventually goes to China to try to find his roots, his mother and eventually Leon.

It isn’t until the last quarter of the book that we learn what happened to Peilan/Polly when she narrates the book in first person. The truth is a revelation in what she has had to endure to survive in China. Deming lives with her for a while but eventually returns to the Bronx and his old friend Michael and begins to figure out where he belongs and what he wants to do with his life.

“An emotionally harrowing debut novel that explores assimilation and loss, immigration and homeland, independence and connection.”

I would recommend this book to everyone, especially those who enjoy historical fiction and reading about issues which are very timely right now.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher, thank you.

(Will also post to Amazon upon publication)

posted to Amazon on May 5, 2017

This book tries to cover enormous ground in child welfare and social justice issues, ultimately falling short as a story. Immigrants with poor language skills and their American-born children are the ultimate outsider stories, ripe with tales of a protagonist's viewing the larger community through a different lens. Layer on the issues of illegal immigration and the suddenness of deportation coupled with the ill-treatment on the path out of the country and the fears for these families are real and present dangers. Now add in the foster care system in the U.S. with the its attendant problems and abandonment feelings for children and we almost have the full range of issues in this book. Not quite, though. Add in a Chinese-American boy to a white suburb and white adoptive parents who seem strangely oblivious to his discomfort on any level. With all of this going on, the story gets lost. Once the author addresses each social issue, what is left to engage the reader? I needed more; I wanted more than the cut-out characters provided. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

I wanted to like this book, but it just fell flat to me. I found one of the protagonists totally exasperating and so didn’t care what happened to her. That lack of emotional connection really affected my enjoyment of the novel.

Deming Guo was conceived in China, born in the United States, lived in China with his grandfather until the age of 6, and reunited with his mother Peilan (Polly) in the U.S. for 5 years until she suddenly disappeared. He is then placed in foster care and raised by two white academics who change his name to Daniel Wilkinson and try to inspire him to follow their version of the American Dream. He grows up to be a directionless young man who struggles with his identity. Then he decides to track down his mother and find the explanation to her disappearance.

Deming’s story is narrated in third person, but we are also given Peilan’s story in first person in what seems to be a journal written for her son. We learn about her coming to New York as a pregnant teenager and where she is in the present; only at the end are we given a complete understanding of how/why she disappeared and had no contact with her son.

I found Peilan an unlikeable character. I understand that she has a restless spirit and so struggles with “the challenge of staying put” and thinks of “the pinch of freedom” as a friend “when the walls start to come.” But her choices are so selfish! We are supposed to admire her fierce determination to get a better life, but she is really concerned only about a better life for herself. She takes pride in her “sacrifices”: “Look at all I’ve done. Look at all I’ve given up” though a friend scoffs at her by saying, “’A mother is supposed to sacrifice for her son, not the other way around.’” Peilan’s efforts to find her son seem half-hearted. For example, she doesn’t use her boyfriend Leon and his sister to help track down Deming! In fact, we are only told by her that she tried to find her son. Telling is definitely not as effective as showing. Her refusal to tell Yong about Deming, even though she had “always known” Yong would be accepting, reveals her self-centredness. And not once does she acknowledge how her choices have negatively impacted her son!

Peilan’s story about what happened after her disappearance is improbable. She can’t remember a phone number? No amount of searching by Leon reveals what happened to her? “Didi had called the police, Immigration, and they said there was no record of her”? And the melodrama of her narrative doesn’t have the desired effect of creating sympathy. After all, Ardsleyville is not a concentration camp, like she seems to want to suggest.

It’s not just Peilan’s selfishness that grates; it’s her hypocrisy. Instead of being grateful that her son was well looked after, she becomes angry that Deming “called an American woman Mom” though she admits she “had given up looking.” Her protestations just don’t ring true: “I didn’t leave on purpose. I loved you more than anyone. You could call another lady “Mama,” but I was your mama, not her. I knew I had forfeited the right to say that, but it was never going to change.” Peilan’s supposed fear of being abandoned and her comment that “Yong was staying, and I would stay, too” reveal her behaviour at the end to be totally hypocritical. We are to think of her as a strong person, but her typical behaviour is to leave, to escape, when things don’t go her way or she becomes bored. So the irony of a leaver being upset when she is forced to leave is over the top.

Deming earned more of my sympathy. He believes his mother abandoned him (and in many ways she did) so he becomes insecure and lonely: “He had lost so much, and he was lost” and he decides, “If he held everyone at arm’s length, it wouldn’t hurt as much when they disappeared.” As someone who looks Chinese but has an American name and white parents, he feels alienated: “He had eliminated the possibility of feeling out of place by banishing himself to no place.” There are times when his self-pitying behaviour becomes irritating, but his tendency to leave is a manifestation of his search to find where he does belong. Music gives him an emotional outlet and it is heartwarming that he does have something to help him with his emotional struggles, but the many repetitions of his synesthesia when listening to music are unnecessary, as are the details of his involvement with the music scene.

I had another major problem with Peilan’s sections. She seems to be writing her story for Deming, frequently addressing him directly, yet she includes passages that don’t seem appropriate. For example, “Once I trailed a man for five blocks, admiring how he walked with his crotch pointed forward like a dare” and “I daydreamed of removing a new man’s pants for the first time, how another man would move his hips against mine, if he would want it quick and hard or slow and sloppy.” A mother would describe her sexual desire to her son?

It can be argued that this book which addresses the difficulties faced by undocumented immigrants is timely, given the situation in the United States. I imagine this is the reason why the novel won the 2016
PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. I just wish the thematic development were done with more finesse.

Note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

This book is 2nd in line for my favorite book of 2017, right behind by Mohsin Hamid. "The Leavers" is heartbreaking, haunting and hopeful ~ the H trifecta of quality literary fiction, in my opinion. It is a story of language, immigration, family, love, addiction, and finding your place in the world. The commentary on being a US-born child of a Chinese immigrant, on being an adopted Chinese child of a white couple, and of being unsure of what home means is incredibly powerful and timely. Required reading for adults and recommended for mature high school students.

Deming is a child when his mother disappears, and not too long after, he is adopted by a childless couple in Upstate New York and renamed Daniel. They don't know the whole story of how he became available for adoption, but neither does Deming, and his entire world that he knows is taken from him. This novel traces the story back to how his mother came to be in New York when he was born (because he is, in fact, an American citizen) and everything that happened to the periphery characters in the meantime.

There is a lot to like about this novel. Lisa Ko is not writing the typical "good immigrant" narrative. Deming's mother suffers from many failures, but so does he. Getting adopted does not save him. Being Chinese does not make him good at math. And living in the United States is not necessarily better. I so appreciated the nuance of the different characters, including the white professors who may not be completely sure adopting a child was the right thing to do! There is also a lot of commentary on identity, how being "from China" means different things to different people, how you don't necessarily escape that identity if you look the part, and finding your own path is a universal struggle.

I did not finish this book. Therefore, I can neither review it or rate it. I got about 20% through and just had to set it aside. A very rare thing for me to do.

I was instantly drawn to this book, particularly in today's political climate of immigration and deportation in America. This story follows the lives of Peilan, an undocumented immigrant from China, and her son, Deming. Deming is in the eighth grade when she mysteriously disappears and he is turned over to White foster parents. The story switches back and forth in perspective from Deming to Peilan as an interesting and painful story emerges--of separation, abandonment, and never fitting in.

I liked this story but felt as if it was just alright. The characters, while sincere, never really grew on me, despite their struggles. I wanted to feel Deming's pain of being the 'token' Asian child of White parents, but we get little of his time with him as a child, we encounter him mostly as a grown up. Peilan's experiences are far more heart rending, but once again, it was hard to understand what was going on because there were considerable gaps in the story. The fact that this is her first novel is apparent, though I'd definitely recommend this story to others and I wouldn't be against reading more of Lisa Ko's fiction in the future.

MY REVIEW

The Leavers is a very compelling and timely read that explores what happens to a Chinese family living in New York when immigration suddenly becomes an issue and one of them is forced to leave the country. It follows the life of Deming Guo, an eleven year old Chinese American boy who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He shares an apartment with his mother, Polly, who is an undocumented Chinese immigrant, Polly’s boyfriend Leo, as well as Leo’s sister, Vivian and her son. Things are a little tight, but they all do the best they can and it’s the only family Deming has ever known so he’s comfortable with the arrangement.

Then one day Polly doesn’t come home from work. No one seems to know what happened to her. Days, weeks, even months go by without a word from her. Deming vaguely remembers his mother talking about wanting to move to Florida for a better job and sadly assumes that she has chosen to do so and just left him behind. Then Leo disappears as well, and soon after, Vivian decides she can no longer take care of Deming and surrenders him so that he can be adopted by someone who can. Deming ends up being adopted by an old white couple and thus begins a new life in upstate New York where the couple lives. The rest of the novel explores how being left behind by his mother shapes basically every aspect of Deming’s life.

LIKES

Deming’s Journey: I just found Deming’s story so heartbreaking because he seems so lost most of the time, like he has no idea who he really is and just doesn’t really fit in or belong anywhere. Even as he moves into adulthood, no matter where he goes and what he tries to do – whether it’s attend college or even to pursue his passion, which is music, the question of what happened to his real mother always casts its shadow over him. He grows up feeling it’s somehow all his fault that his mother abandoned him. In this sense, Lisa Ko has crafted The Leavers into a coming of age story because Deming (or Daniel as his adoptive parents have renamed him in an effort to ‘Americanize’ him) spends much of the story trying to figure out who he even is. This search for identity is a major theme.

Flawed Characters: The older Deming/Daniel gets, the more determined he becomes to find out the truth about why his mother left him. Lisa Ko adds another layer to the story at this point by adding in Polly’s point of view and having Polly fill in the gaps in the original story that we’ve been following. We learn what really happened to her and what she has been doing ever since and why she didn’t make more of an effort to get back to her son. It’s a painful story and Polly definitely made some regretful choices along the way that she has been forced to live with, but her flaws are what make her human and what make her story so moving. Even though I was angry with her at first for not figuring out a way to reunite with her son, by the end of her story, I found myself forgiving her.

DISLIKES

The only reason I haven't given this novel full marks is that even though seeing the effects of deportation on both mother and son made for a powerful read, I felt like it sometimes made the story too broad in scope, especially when there were alternating chapters between the son as a boy, the same son as a grown man, and then partway through, we suddenly had chapters from the mom as well. It sometimes took me a few minutes to figure out who the narrator was as I began a new chapter. Even though it confused me at times, however, I still thought it was wonderful read overall.



FINAL THOUGHTS

With its poignant exploration of how deportation can rip families apart and ruin lives, it’s very easy to see why Lisa Ko’s The Leavers won the 2016 Pen/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

RATING: 4 STARS


Thanks so much to Netgalley, the author, and Algonquin Books for providing me with an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way impacts my view of the book.

Ko's debut novel received the Bellwether Prize, which is awarded annually by Barbara Kingsolver to a novel that deals with issues of social justice. But this isn't a moralizing sort of story; it's a personal story about a young man who feels lost, and about belonging, and about the way cultures intersect and don't. The protagonist is a Chinese-American boy in New York City who, after his mother doesn't come home from work one day, is eventually adopted by a pair of white college professors and moved upstate--and renamed. His story is compelling, but I admit that the second half of the novel--when his mother's story comes into play--was a lot stronger for me. The interplay in their narratives was really well-done. Just a moving and well-written story. A-.


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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on May 2nd.

The novel is interesting in telling these two lives by switching back and forth between their point-of-view. But it wasn’t seamless, sometimes a little jarring as it happened within chapters abruptly. But once past the structure issues of the book, it’s mostly a good story. The frustration with the structure does get amplified by the frustration at some of the character’s choices. Why isn’t Polly more forthcoming about her own life with her son? Why the mystery of why she disappeared? You can forgive Deming/Daniel more as his life was difficult. But it does feel like there’s a gap with his adoptive parents and some of his life with them. The author chose to focus more on his birth mom so that time period is largely missing, with a few exceptions. The beginning is a little struggle as confusion with the character name change not being obvious at first this was the same person. I enjoyed reading the book, and got more into it as it went along, but not for people who easily give up on books.

I am in a bit of a quandary over this book. On one hand, the plot premise is engaging and topical. A young Chinese-American boy, Deming, is abandoned by his Chinese mother and adopted by an American couple who re-name him Daniel. While loving and well-intentioned, these new parents construct a completely unfamiliar new path towards adulthood for Daniel, with unwieldy expectations, a lack of knowledge for his past, and yet a willingness to hang in there during difficult times. The story flips back and forth in time and character, with both Deming and his mother telling the story of past and present. The quandary comes in when I think about the characters, both leading and peripheral. None are particularly heroic or likable, yet perhaps that is the author's point? This is a story of immigrants who are poor, who are buffeted by laws, by racism, by economic deprivation, who are merely trying to survive. The questions I am left with therefore...is it possible to be heroic in these circumstances? Do we ask too much of our children and of ourselves? Are laws supposed to be retaliatory and punishing, or should laws contain compassion? This book provokes thought, and that is the point of literature. I do think this would be a provocative book club choice, as it is a book that does not choose to give answers, but requires us to look at our own selves and our beliefs. Solid debut outing by Lisa Ko, as is shown by the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.