72 pages • 2 hours read
Lisa KoThe Leavers
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Hybrid Cultural, Racial, and Class Identities
The novel explores how identities are contingent on race, culture, and class. The narrative presents both Daniel/Deming and Polly/Peilan’s changing names as indications of the change in their identities. In the chapters where a third person narrator reveals Deming’s past and where Polly narrates her own in the first person, Deming is referred to by his Chinese name, the name that Polly gave him. At Ridgeborough, Deming is renamed “Daniel” by the Wilkinsons, a name that is used by his teachers and his peers, even though Deming initially has trouble using it and answering to it. His eventual acceptance of the name indicates Daniel’s uneasy growth into an American identity in the context of the suburban middle-class, white background he has been taken into. This identity is a troubled one, given that at various points it clashes with how Daniel is seen by others. This occurs, for instance, when a Chinese woman approaches Daniel at the mall to ask for directions in Mandarin and when his friend Cody makes fun of his accent when he first arrives at Ridgeborough.
Daniel’s return to New York City further troubles his identity as “Daniel.” In the city, he meets up with Michael and Vivian, who knew him as “Deming,” and despite his tension with Vivian, Daniel feels at home with them due to having shared part of his childhood and Chinese culture with them. In New York, he manifests his “Deming” identity outside the home in buying food from Chinese vendors and in using his dialect, Fuzhounese. This is the language he uses to make contact Leon and his mother. The “Deming” identity alone is not enough, however. At first, Daniel assumes his discomfort has to do with his loss of ease with the language at Ridgeborough. However, when he moves to Fuzhou and regains his fluidity, he remains conscious of his cultural difference, now as American. Despite his mother and Leon calling him “Deming,” Daniel still refers to himself by his American name. In the end, Daniel finds his identity in the melting pot of New York City, where he can be both Deming, teaching at a community center in Chinatown and living with Michael, as well as Daniel, teaching affluent middle schoolers and playing his own confessional shows.
While Daniel’s fluctuating identity emphasizes his coming to terms with his racial and cultural background, Polly’s identity in the novel brings into focus her struggles with gender and class. Polly’s alter ego, Peilan, is not one she recovers, but one she leaves behind when she leaves her village pregnant with Deming in search of her independence from stifling cultural norms. Her challenges in New York correspond to the tension between herself as “Polly” and “Mama.” Her detainment takes away Polly’s choice to be “Mama,” and Polly remakes herself as an urbanite professional. She does this by erasing her rural roots, i.e., her village accent, and through her work as an English teacher. With this new identity, she marries Yong Lin, becoming Polly Lin, and she ascends the social hierarchy in Fuzhou.
Polly’s background is not so easily cast aside. While rubbing shoulders with the well-to-do colleagues of her husband, their prejudice towards rural migrants make Polly feel uncomfortable with her new life. Likewise, Deming’s reentry to her life calls into question the stability of her identity as Polly Lin, Yong’s wife. To Polly, telling her husband about Deming would mean telling him about being deported and having gone to the States as a poor immigrant, not an affluent student. It would also mean coming to terms with her traumatic detainment and risking being vulnerable again. Polly’s connection to Deming, however, helps her overcome her fears. Deming’s own acceptance of his identity as both Daniel and Deming through his return to New York inspires Polly to overcome her fear of starting anew, independently as Polly Guo. The close of the novel finds her leaving her old life with Yong behind to move to Hong Kong, promising Daniel that she will find a way to visit him in New York someday.
The Vulnerability of Immigrant Families
While urban spaces like New York City provide opportunities for immigrants, including the possibility of forming families, the cultural and economic challenges these immigrants face put the stability of those families at risk. The Leavers shows how an immigrant’s life is beset with concerns over finances as a means to survive. Polly mentions Chinese women around her entering into sham marriages for citizenship in order to secure better jobs and a more stable life. At the nail salon, a coworker tells her to use the fact that she has a son to better her English, another route to a better job and more stability. When Leon invites Polly and Deming to move in with him, Vivian, and Michael, Polly cannot help but wonder if the invitation is not just due to their deepening relationship, but also the fact that Leon and Vivian cannot afford the rent alone.
This concern foreshadows the tumult that Polly and Leon’s family will face. Polly’s detainment by ICE and her deportation has repercussions, not just in the emotional trauma it causes to all, but also in the finances of the family, eventually leading to its collapse. While Leon fills the role of father for both Deming and Michael for a time, when Polly disappears, he finds himself unable to bear the financial strain on him and Vivian. The loss of Polly, Deming’s mother, leads to the loss of Leon, Michael and Deming’s father figure. Left alone, Vivian has no choice but to give Deming up for adoption. In the final instance, Polly’s detainment for being an undocumented immigrant destroys her family. Beyond the collapse of the family, violence also lurks at the margins of the narrative. Although Vivian gives Deming up for adoption, she pays off Polly’s debt. Without her having done so, Vivian claims that Deming would have been dead.
The precariousness of immigrant families also appears with the choices that immigrant Chinese mothers, such as Polly and the women around her, are forced to make with respect to their children. Having to pay back the enormous debts that they take on to come to the United States, these women find it nearly impossible to afford childcare. The only choice left to them is to separate from their children, sending them to live with relatives until they are school-aged. Polly speaks of the heartache in having to make the choice to send Deming away and of her worry when he returns, in how she will transition back into motherhood now that she and Deming are strangers to each other.
The Trauma of Abandonment
The loss of Polly and the breakup of Deming’s family has longstanding repercussions on the relationships that Deming has afterwards. Believing that his mother’s departure was somehow his fault, Deming sees himself as a failure, yet he still craves affection and approval from those he loves. Although the Wilkinsons feed Deming’s insecurity through their unconscious insensitivity to Deming’s cultural and racial differences, Deming himself keeps them at a distance. He desires their approval but also fears that if he becomes attached to them, he’ll only be risking that a mistake on his part might make them leave him the way his old family did. This fear also manifests in how he relates to his friends. Daniel doesn’t want to disappoint Roland, his longtime friend and bandmate, so he continues playing in his band, despite his reservations about the music he’s making. He does this until Roland replaces him. Daniel is also distressed about the loss of Angel’s friendship but cannot let the relationship go. Although Angel tells him not to contact her, Daniel persists, trying to earn her forgiveness.
Daniel’s trauma, in the case of the Wilkinsons and Roland especially, drives him not to feel confident enough to make decisions for himself. Instead, he follows others’ plans for him until these become excruciating. At that point, Daniel turns to self-sabotage, often to gambling. He does this the two times that he goes to college following the Wilkinsons’ plans. With Roland, he drinks too much and ruins a show. He is replaced when Roland assumes that Daniel will leave for college again and abandon the band.
Daniel’s tentative pursuit of his mother brings his trauma to the fore. Although he wants to talk to her, he constantly fears that she will not want to talk to him. Nevertheless, Daniel continues reaching out to her. Even when he reacts angrily at realizing she has hidden him from her husband, Daniel seeks her out, looking to reconcile with her in Fuzhou. His fear of abandonment remains months after he’s been living with Polly and only resolves when he decides to return to New York. His reconciliation and his acceptance that Polly had always loved him despite her circumstances leads him to more certainty about himself and his choices.
Language as a Marker of Identity
The Leavers offers language as a fluid, yet persistent marker of identity and power. Polly is aware of how the languages she speaks mark her. Polly and Deming, the narrative tells the readers, always speak in Fuzhounese, their dialect, between themselves. This dialect and her rural accent are ones that Polly will try to eliminate for how it places her at a social disadvantage, and yet, she gravitates to Leon, precisely for how he reminds her of home.
In New York City, Polly feels self-conscious of her poor English. She holds a grudge against a cashier who laughs at her for it, and she is irritated when Deming speaks to her in English. Improving her English could earn her a better job, so Polly attempts to study it, trying to persuade Leon to join her. Leon, however, is content using his Chinese dialect. Polly’s problems with English compound her suffering when she is detained. Without a translator, she finds it difficult to communicate with other women and speaking out of turn provides the pretext for her deportation. In China, English acquires a different meaning. Polly, regardless of her class status, can speak English better than most and is able to find a job as an English teacher. This opens doors for her social advancement in China.
For Daniel, too, language has a close relationship with power. Even before his mother’s departure, he had spoken to her in English when he meant to take the upper hand. He does so again with Vivian, when he accuses her of coldly giving him up for adoption. When the Wilkinsons go to eat at a Chinese restaurant with the Hennings, Daniel feels a rush of excitement at being able to order in Fuzhounese without anyone at the table understanding. However, during his time in Fuzhou, Daniel’s rustiness with the language makes him feel self-conscious.
Daniel brings into relief how the loss of a language feels like the loss of an identity, but how it is never fully gone. The fact that he doesn’t encounter Chinese during his years as Ridgeborough and that the Wilkinsons encourage him to speak only in English makes him feel like an outsider among his peers. Once he transitions fully into his identity as “Daniel,” attempting to forget his language and his past, it returns, leading to a repudiation. When a woman approaches him asking him for directions in Mandarin, Daniel feigns not knowing Chinese. The memory of this rejection haunt him, making him feel alone. In New York City, Daniel begins using his native language again to buy from vendors, and he uses it to communicate with Vivian, Leon, and eventually, his mother. His return to New York City sees him using both English and Chinese in his professional life as a music teacher and in his personal life, with his roommate and old friend, Michael.
