Name: Nadine 's review of The Leavers (National Book Award Finalist) by Lisa Ko
Item: The Leavers (National Book Award Finalist)
Rating: 4
Author: Nadine

Lisa Ko

FINALIST FOR THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, Bustle, and Electric Literature “There was a time I would have called Lisa Ko’s novel beautifully written, ambitious, and moving, and all of that is true, but it’s more than that now: if you want to understand a forgotten and essential part of the world we live in, The Leavers is required reading.” —Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth 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.

A Novel

The Leavers (National Book Award Finalist)

Nadine 

Colton Ray

A wonderful and exquisitely written book. I loved the beginning and the end, but the middle did seem to drag a bit. I also wish that it was more challenging to find his mother; it wasn't as dramatic as it could have been the way it happened. Still, Ms. Ko knows how to write and to pull you along on an emotional journey without resorting to melodrama. She also knows all the the aspects of a great character study novel: how to show you both sides of characters, the faces we present to the world, the inner monologue, the way we see ourselves versus the way others see us. A moving and personal book.

Nothing in this world is unique including our stories.  Seeing Fuzhou and Fujian through the same exact lens, down to the mom as a nail tech hit too close to home. I’m scared I’ll end up like him someday. 

Athiyya adristi

Deborah Mabilde

“Maybe it wasn’t about moving to new places, but about the challenge of staying put.”

"The Leavers" é uma narrativa emocional, profunda e muito estarrecedora sobre passar a vida procurando por um lugar em que você sinta que pertença de verdade. 

A história conta com dois personagens principais, a Peilan, ou Polly Guo, e seu filho Deming Guo, que são imigrantes chineses morando nos Estados Unidos. Um dia, quando o Deming tem uns 11 anos, a mãe dele vai trabalhar um dia e desaparece, e ele é então adotado por um casal americano, que mora no subúrbio de Nova York. Distante da vida que ele conhecia, ele recebe um novo nome: Daniel Wilkinson. Enquanto o Deming/Daniel cresce procurando entender quem ele é, e onde ele pertence, a história transita entre os dois personagens principais e nós podemos entender um pouco melhor sobre o passado da mãe dele, a Peilan/Polly, e o porquê dela ter desaparecido. 

A primeira coisa que eu senti ao ler essa história foi uma sensação intensa de estar à deriva, perdida. Em seu romance de estreia, Lisa Ko faz um trabalho fantástico em nos colocar no centro da história, sentindo muito bem o que os personagens sentem; a sensação de não pertencer a lugar nenhum, de tomar decisões sem um propósito e sentir as consequências de ações que não são apenas ruins, mas tomadas sem um rumo. Isso é sentido especialmente na primeira parte da obra, que relata a vida de Daniel aos 20 e poucos anos, cerca de 10 anos depois de sua mãe sumir e ele ser adotado por Kay e Peter, seus pais adotivos. (view spoiler)[ Expulso da faculdade pelas suas notas baixas, viciado em jogos online e brigado com uma de suas únicas amigas de infância, Daniel busca encontrar um lugar que ele pertença, ao mesmo tempo que tenta agradar seus pais, que desejam que ele volte para a faculdade, e seu melhor amigo, que quer Daniel em sua banda. Como ele não se encontra verdadeiramente em nenhum dos caminhos, ambos acabam dando errado e ele se encontra mais uma vez perdido. A verdade é que, sem se conectar com Deming, Daniel nunca vai conseguir se sentir pertencente a um lugar.  (hide spoiler)]

Esse livro me fez sentir angústia pela sensação desprendida que os dois personagens principais emanam, mas as revelações sobre o passado de Peilan/Polly desvendam o motivo desse sentimento, e é muito surpreendente e chocante perceber todo o caminho e as dificuldades que levaram ela por esse caminho. O livro também traz relatos muito verdadeiros e cruéis que denunciam a realidade que imigrantes enfrentam, e o quão pior ela pode ser se a pessoa for uma mulher sozinha, grávida e sem falar língua. 

Mais do que isso, a história conta sobre a ânsia de não conseguir se sentir plenamente satisfeito em um lugar só, de estar constantemente procurando por um lugar onde você pertença de verdade. E, quando não encontra isso, precisar estar sempre indo embora, começando de novo. E como, talvez, essa sensação nunca seja satisfeita plenamente em um lugar, uma casa, uma pessoa, se ela não estiver acomodada dentro de nós.

Arturo Hernández

This novel shares the story of a Chinese American family that gets separated against their will. It talks about the consequences of growing apart from your real family, it narrates the tale of immigrants living in horrible conditions previous to their deportation and overall it lets you enter the mind of a child that goes through all of this against his will. Quite an incredible book.

alina s

The Leavers

Fraser Simons

A fairly nuanced accounting of the years of a young boy from Vietnam and his mother who are separated after immigrating to the U.S. We first get the perspective of the boy, then it begins to vacillate between the two, answering some questions, while posing more. 

I found this to be more nuanced than I expected. The change is point of view was welcome too, as I didn’t find the boy’s perspective nearly as interesting, just because of his personality. And it also adds so much more texture and complexity when we get the mothers perspective. I felt it was quite rewarding.

Well paced, well written. Important story, especially when it came out, as it goes into the myth of the American dream. ICE, racism, misogyny, nepotism, extortion. The two encounter so many different barriers to every endeavour, but I wouldn’t say it is a bleak tale, either. There’s plenty of comfort and love - even when it’s echoes of memory. Still feels quite relevant and I found it touching via the moments I like the most: the innocuous and those memories roaming the peripheral.

This book was like a punch to the gut! I'm really crying here! Please read this book! Wow!

Very complex set of ideas in this book. I alternately intensely disliked the protagonist and totally "got" what she was about. On the one hand she's a woman with ambitions and drive and on the other she has a child who she's responsible for. Who gets in the way of her success. 
She's a fierce resilient mother who both knows her child but doesn't cut him much slack. This is contrasted with the needy helpless mothering of his adoptive mother. And of course Deming / Daniel is messed up by all this random mothering...

Magdalene Lim

It was not a book I stayed up to read but it's not a bad story either. What does it mean to be an adoptee, an adopter of a child who's so different and what it's like to be in the racial minority - this book made me think about those things.

When you read chick lit, the characters are usually floaty aka unreal but I read them for entertainment value. With The Leavers, you don't get the vibe that everything's going to turn out jussst right. That makes it feel very real and I liked the character development. You feel for different people at different points of the story - no one really thinks they're doing the wrong thing.

Lisa Miller

Wonderful dense novel about a Chinese-American boy Deming who's mother suddenly disappears one day in NYC. He's adopted by a white couple up-state who rename him Daniel and try to give him the picture perfect all-American life. Unsurprisingly Deming/Daniel is bereft of his identity and forever wondering what happened to his mother.

Sameer Vasta

The leavers, and the left behind

The news recently has been heart-wrenching. I can not help but be destroyed when I hear stories of children torn from their families not for any rational reason, but because of a political ideology based on hatred of the other.

It is one thing to “protect” a border—the whole notion of border protection is problematic in a globally-networked world, but let’s leave that one alone for now—and another to act in malice and separate children from their parents and to leave them in a physical and psychological limbo.

Listening to the recent “Divided” series on The Daily, I’ve been thinking about a lot about how one of the biggest horrors that these children have to go through is the lack of knowing: they do not know where there parents are, but more saliently, they do not know why they are gone, or what they have done to be separated.

I’m reminded of reading Lisa Ko’s The Leavers last year, and how I was so shook by one of the central questions in the novel: how is someone supposed to feel when they are the one being left behind? What happens when your parent leaves, without explanation or even saying goodbye, and you’re left to piece together the answers to questions you never should have been forced to face?

These children—even the ones who have been or will be reunited—will grapple with this every day: “I was left, and my parents were the leavers.”

The fact that there was no choice in the matter, that it was forced separation won’t matter to them, especially at this age: they just know that, all of a sudden, they were alone.

A world where children have to face those thoughts is a horrid world indeed.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)

Colleen Purll

Patricia B

'Sensational' Guardian 'Utterly immersive' Daily Mail 'There was a time I would have called Lisa Ko's novel beautifully written, ambitious and moving, and all of that is true, but it's more than that now: if you want to understand a forgotten and essential part of the world we live in, The Leavers is required reading' Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth 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. 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. 'As relevant as ever as the future of immigrants in America hangs in the balance' TIME 'A rich, multifaceted portrait of displacement and the trauma of not belonging' Independent 'One of the most engaging, deeply probing, and beautiful books I have read this year' Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account 'Instantly compelling' Stylist 'A must-read' Marie Claire FINALIST for the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2017 WINNER OF THE 2016 PEN/BELLWETHER PRIZE FOR FICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2017 BY OPRAH, NPR, BUZZFEED AND HUFFINGTON POST

Nadine &
The Leavers (National Book Award Finalist) by Lisa Ko

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Nadine &The Leavers (National Book Award Finalist) by Lisa Ko

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Nadine &
The Leavers (National Book Award Finalist) by Lisa Ko