Book: The Leavers by Lisa Ko
Meeting Date and Time: Wednesday, May 1, 2024 at 2:00 p.m.
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, Lisa Ko’s The Leavers shares a vivid examination of borders and belonging, which earned it the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice. – Amazon
Copies of The Leavers are available at the Circulation Desk. Large type books are also available. For an e-book or e-audiobook version of this book, please download the Libby app or go to Media on Demand. If you have any questions, please contact Veronica Villagómez at vvillagomez@hillsidelibrary.org.
