This novel about the immigrant experience is told from the points of view of both mother and son. It moves between the past and the present which does make it feel a little disjointed. Themes of parental expectations, identity and belonging are done well but some of the writing is quite flat.

"Junior year of high school, he had seen a Chinese woman in the Littletown Mall. Thin, with permed hair, gripping plastic bags with the handles twisted around each other. She'd honed in; there was no hiding his face, and when she spoke he understood her Mandarin. She was lost. Could he help? She needed to make a phone call, find a bus. Her face was scared and anxious. Two teenage boys, pale and gangly, had watched and mimicked her accent, and Daniel had said, in English, "I can't speak Chinese." Afterwards, he tried to forget the woman, because when he did think of her, he felt a deep, cavernous loneliness."


Apologies for the long opening quote, but I felt this one small scene beautifully captured the feel of The Leavers. It is a sad book about immigration and identity, made even more poignant by the lack of emotional manipulation. It doesn't feel driven by an agenda; it just feels like a story about some people. And, because of that, it feels true.

It is a quiet tale, driven by its characters and subtle exploration of race and belonging. There are two stories being told-- that of Deming Guo, whose mother disappears one day and leaves him to be adopted by white, upper middle class Americans, and that of his mother, Polly Guo, who comes to America from Fuzhou to find a better life for herself and her then unborn son.

At its heart, The Leavers is a story of constantly feeling out of place. Even when Deming Guo becomes Daniel Wilkinson and attends the schools his adoptive family choose for him, he is still not quite American enough for the world he keeps trying to adapt to. His parents, Peter and Kay, are well-meaning but participate in and encourage racial microaggressions, believing their disdain for poor Mexican workers to be harmless banter; believing their American "Chinese" food to be an adequate way to bring Deming/Daniel closer to his birth culture.

But when Deming later finds himself in Fuzhou, he realizes that his home isn't there either. Looking Chinese but talking American means he doesn't really fit in anywhere.

And Polly, too, feels out of place. Her options as a single pregnant woman in China are poor, but New York is a terrifying and often unfriendly city. She watches her son become better and better at speaking English, and feels herself left behind, struggling to communicate with him as he becomes ever more part of a world she will never belong to.

Then, beneath the issues of immigration, race and identity, there is simply the story of a mother and her son, the love between them, and the effects of them being ripped apart. As a daughter, the worst thing that could have possibly happened to me at Deming's age was to lose my mother. I would have lost my anchor, my constant, my entire world. Now, as a mother, there is nothing worse I can imagine than losing my child. To have someone else raise him and, perhaps, most torturously, offer him better than I could... it brings me an almost physical pain to just imagine it. This book tapped into that.

The Leavers somehow both sheds a light on the reality of the immigrant experience for many, AND manages to be a universal, painfully-human story. It is at once eye-opening and relatable, and it affected me deeply.