The Leavers revolves around the story of a young boy, Deming Guo, whose mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, mysteriously disappears one day, leaving him alone in the Bronx. He is later adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors who rename him Daniel Wilkinson to help him fit into his new life in upstate New York. The story explores his struggle with identity, the concept of home, and the harsh realities of immigration and cultural displacement.
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Hi! I'm the author of MEMORY PIECE (Riverhead, March 2024) and THE LEAVERS (Algonquin, May 2017). THE LEAVERS was a national bestseller that won the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. I'm a believer in the long game: I started writing stories when I was 5 years old and published my first book at 41.
