The Leavers is an interesting and compelling novel about living as an undocumented Chinese immigrant in America and about being caught between two cultural identities.

It is about Deming Guo and his mother, Polly, who is the undocumented Chinese immigrant. Deming was born in New York City, but his mother sent him to live with his grandfather in China when he was about a year old because she could not afford to work and take care of him at the same time. His grandfather dies when he is five, so he ends up back in New York, reunited with his mother. Deming has a close relationship with his mother; they live in a small apartment with Polly’s boyfriend, Leon, and Leon’s sister and her son, Michael, who becomes Deming’s best friend.

One day when Deming is eleven, his mother goes to work as usual at a nail salon, but never comes home. No one knows what has happened to Polly, not even Leon. Deming spends the next ten years of his life wondering if she abandoned him on purpose and where she might have gone.

With his mother gone and no sign that she is coming back, and with Leon gone back to China, Deming is put into foster care by Leon’s sister. Deming ends up being adopted by an older white couple, Peter and Kay, and is moved to a predominately white town in upstate New York.

The Leavers follows Deming’s life from age eleven to twenty-one, which becomes an example of what not to do if you are a white person adopting a child of a different race. Peter and Kay think they mean well, but the first thing they do is give Deming a “white” name, Daniel, and tell him to speak only English. They make a half-hearted attempt to understand his Chinese culture. Deming, or Daniel, does not fit in at his new hometown, which has very few non-white people, and he lives with the casual racism of his peers at school. His closest friend, now that Michael is no longer in his life, is Roland Fuentes; they gravitate towards each other as they are both of a different race, although Roland is slightly more accepted because his mother is white.

Daniel at twenty-one is, to be frank, a fuck-up. He has flunked out of college, has a gambling addiction, and owes a close friend $10,000, which he has no hope of paying back. I was a bit frustrated with Daniel at first because as a child, even before his mother disappeared, he lacks ambition and has no interest in school, even though his mother urges him to get an education. But what if Daniel’s mother had never disappeared, what if he had never been adopted by a white couple and had never been forced to live a life where he feels like he does not belong? Instead, he spends years mourning the loss of his mother, the loss of his cultural and the feeling of community that came with it. Maybe he would have had a happier, more successful upbringing if he could have just been himself, and not constantly try to please others by being someone he is not.

The Leavers is not just about Daniel, though; it is also about his mother, Polly. Her story is a fascinating look at the life of an immigrant. She grew up in rural China, imagining one day being able to leave her small village. She moves to the city to get a job in a factory, but she ends up pregnant at nineteen by a man she grew up with but has no intention of marrying, so she decides to borrow a large sum of money from a loan shark in order to leave China and be smuggled into the US.

Some people may have difficulty accepting Polly’s decision to send her son to live in China when he is just a baby. Who can imagine being separated from their child? Wouldn’t a good mother do anything to keep her child with her? Polly’s story is a portrait of the struggles that illegal immigrants face, people who are just looking for an opportunity for a better life. Sure, they can earn more money in the US then in their home countries, but at menial jobs that hardly pay a living wage, especially when factoring in repayments to a loan shark. So, they must make sacrifices that they think are the best for their children, even if that means being separated from them. And then there is the threat of ICE catching up to them and deporting them back to their home countries. The conditions at detention centers are appalling; these immigrants may have entered the country illegally, but they are not terrorists and deserve to be treated with compassion and with consideration of what might happen to them if they are sent back.

The Leavers could have been a bleak novel, but fortunately the characters have the opportunity to learn and grow and to redeem themselves, and to get back what they have lost.