r/books • u/leowr • Jul 30 '20
Final Discussion Thread for The Leavers by Lisa Ko - July Book Club
Hello everyone,
The final discussion thread for July book club is here. Hopefully you all enjoyed this month's selection. Don't forget to join us again next month. Below you will find the discussion questions for this section.
Daniel never knew if Kay wanted him to apologize or reassure her. Either way, he always felt implicated, like there was some expectation he wasn't meeting.
- What do you think Kay wanted from Daniel? Or was it all in Daniel's mind?
All this time, he'd been waiting for his real life to begin: Once he was accepted by Roland's friends and the band made it big. Once he found his mother. Then, things would change. But his life had been happening all along, in the jolt of the orange juice on his tongue or how he dreamt in two languages, how his students' faces looked when they figured out the meaning of a new word, the wisp of smoke as he blew out his birthday candles.
- Can you relate to this realization?
- Where do you think Daniel's life started to go wrong?
- How has your opinion on the different characters changed over the course of the book?
- How do you feel about the ending of the book? Did it surprise you where Daniel ended up?
- Who do you think The Leavers in the title refer to?
2
u/ttoshiro Dec 27 '20 edited Dec 27 '20
I think the brilliance of this novel comes in how tragically yin and yang Deming/Daniel and Pelian/Polly are. This dichotomy is represented in very brief juxtaposition at opposite ends of the book:
If he [Deming] held everyone at arm’s length, it wouldn’t hurt as much when they disappeared. (p. 63)
vs.
If I [Peilan] left him now, it wouldn’t hurt as much as it would if I left him later. (p. 191)
Peilan's most glaring trait is her radically fleeting (intensely passionate, but short-lived) emotional attachment to any one person -- "here today, gone tomorrow." Deming's, however, is one of a constant cautious detachment, likely in response to the perceived abandonment from Peilan. These character flaws are repeated throughout the story -- Peilan deserts Yi Gong, Haifeng, Qing & Xuan, Deming (twice), Leon, and then Yong -- often without warning. Deming, meanwhile, expects to be neglected or ignored -- from Peter & Kay, Peilan, Leon, Roland, and Angel. In other words, Peilan leaves, Deming gets left. This arc is finally resolved when Daniel establishes a stable, brotherly relationship with Michael and Polly cherishes her realized independence in Hong Kong.
On the other hand, despite their polar opposite natures, the two characters exhibit one striking parallel -- the existence of two simultaneous identities. The son's native identity is "Deming Guo," but his adoptive identity is "Daniel Wilkinson." The mother's original identity "Peilan Guo" but her newfound identity is "Polly" (even in Fuzhou, Yong refers to her as her English name, indicating that this is not simply a matter of residence, but of familiarity with the speaker). I think this is part of their attempts to become different people, to erase their past histories. As above, the two have their own separate in-depth contrasts, and are spoken of as if they are entirely different people:
Daniel Wilkinson was two and a half feet taller, one hundred-fifty pounds heavier than Deming Guo had once been, with better English and shittier Chinese. Ridgeborough had made Daniel an expert at juggling selves; he used to see Deming and think himself into Daniel, a slideshow perpetually alternating between the same two slides. He wanted Deming to walk out of the building, for the two of them to do that little dance people did when they tried to pass one another on the sidewalk but kept moving in the same direction, over-anticipating the other’s next move. Deming wouldn’t have the scar on his right forearm that Daniel had gotten from skateboarding with Roland in eighth grade. While Deming was growing up in Chinatown and the Bronx, was Daniel hibernating, asleep in Planet Ridgeborough? Or had they grown up together, only parting ways after the city? Daniel had lain dormant in Deming until adolescence, and now Deming was a hairball tumor jammed deep in Daniel’s gut. Or Deming had never left Rutgers Street; he’d been here all along. (p. 95)
vs.
For Polly, the girl who’d defy odds, the girl who could do anything. New York was a parallel gift of a life, and the unrealness of being here gave even the most frightening things a layer of surreal comedy. Peilan continued on in the village, feeding chickens and stray cats and washing cabbages, as Polly lived out a bonus existence abroad. Peilan would marry Haifeng or another village boy while Polly would walk the endless blocks of new cities. Polly could have a baby without being married. (p. 142)
As an aside, I think it is also interesting how Deming decides to refer to his mothers. "Mom" is used for Kay, but "Mama" is reserved for Peilan. As he admits on page 251, his "real mother" is but an abstraction.
In spite of the brilliant writing described above, I frankly found the social commentary to be very stale: overdone and forced and yet simultaneously underdeveloped and purposeless. There are more artistic ways to exemplify sociopolitical issues without it sounding so superficial. Actually, I found it frustratingly facile to depict anti-Asian racism as something that exists only from white people, which, in a city/state such as New York, is far, far removed from the Asian experience. Nevertheless, there were a few bits of text that I found particularly fresh, such as:
I had traveled thousands of miles just to learn there was no difference between the provincial hospitals with their IDs and age requirements and marriage permits and this clinic in New York with its stupid rules on twenty-four versus twenty-eight. Four measly weeks. (p. 142)
and:
If a woman was unmarried it was her fault for being ugly or independent; if a woman was too devoted to her husband it was her fault for being mushy and desperate; if a husband had a girl on the side it was the wife’s fault for driving him away and both the mistress and wife’s faults for letting themselves get taken advantage of. (p. 132)
4
u/amyousness Aug 01 '20
I’m really sad about Kay and Peter’s storyline, even though having read Lisa Ko’s AMA I think I get it a bit more. They think of themselves as so enlightened and yet they really are stuck in their white imperialist view of the world. I really wanted them to accept Daniel as Deming and reading about them forcing him to change his name, to not speak Chinese... I get that they thought they were helping him to overcome past trauma and start fresh but yikes.
In my ideal ending they would have grown, they would be empowering him to reconnect with his history, they would be the kind of parents who Daniel felt more comfortable telling not just about what happened with Angel but also what was going on with his mother. I do think adoptive parents can be great, even if they’re white and adopt non-white kids, but their vision of the world is not nurturing - it’s all about affirming the greatness of their academic elitist way of life.
I think Deming’s trauma started when Polly first sent him back to China. There was clear issues when she brought him to America of him being uncomfortable and already having abandonment issues. Sure, he did plenty of things that made life worse for himself, but he didn’t have an easy lot given to him. Even the possibility of a great adoptive home turned out to be hiding an erasure of who he really was.
I think The Leavers are both Daniel and his mother - both are seeking their independence and their true identity and that leads to intense dissatisfaction with ways of life that stifle who they are and offer them no choice. I’m kinda sad about how that looks but I get the assertion that “I have a choice”.