The Leavers Themes

In The Leavers, a novel about the mysterious disappearance of Deming Guo’s undocumented mother, Polly, Lisa Ko dissects what it’s like to have a multicultural identity. More specifically, she suggests that a person’s sense of cultural belonging is rarely straightforward or black-and-white, but nuanced and difficult to parse. This is true for Deming, who struggles to maintain his Chinese identity when he’s adopted by a white family in the wake of his…

A novel about migration and relocation, The Leavers provides an in-depth look at the human tendency to associate change with happiness. At first, Polly has to emigrate from China to get what she wants, since she doesn’t make enough money in her rural hometown. In America, she makes better wages, but the journey requires her to borrow tens of thousands of dollars from loan sharks, plunging her into debt. Ko uses this situation to illustrate…

Because many of the characters in The Leavers trick themselves into ignoring their own shortcomings, the novel itself showcases how eager people often are to delude themselves. In particular, Ko illuminates the process of self-deception that characters like Deming use to rationalize their actions, even when their justifications are quite obviously out of touch with reality. This dynamic is a large part of why Deming has such a hard time dealing with his gambling addiction…

In The Leavers, Ko illustrates how feelings of obligation and “indebtedness” often hinder relationships between parents and children. For example, Polly feels a crushing sense of responsibility as Deming’s mother, seeing parenthood as a sacrifice and a burden. Because his mother has this attitude, Deming later feels like he’s nothing but an inconvenience. Of course, Polly’s eventual disappearance has nothing to do with her parental discontent, since the only reason she leaves Deming…