The Leavers is a modern epic about the intertwining of Chinese and American society. The story is told through the voices of a Chinese immigrant to the United States, Peilan Guo, and her son Deming. When Peilan becomes pregnant as a teenager, with a man she doesn’t want to marry, she flees China in search of the freedom of New York City. Though she intends to terminate her pregnancy, she winds up waiting too long, and gives birth to Deming, taking care of him as best she can as a single woman earning poverty wages. Under mysterious circumstances Peilan disappears from his life, and Deming eventually winds up in an adoptive home in upstate New York, living out his teenage years with two college professors under circumstances starkly different from his childhood.

It’s a sweeping story, and one that catches in its grasp a whole fleet of social issues - globalization, immigration, the plight of the working class, ethnic identity, and on and on. We wind up inhabiting a series of different worlds in turn: rural China at the dawn of modernization; New York City in the 90s; the hushed and WASPy world of a small college town; New York City as it is today, through the eyes of a grown-up Deming; and finally China in the modern day. This methodical tour of Chinese and American life over the past couple of decades is perhaps the most interesting contribution of this book, as it allows the reader to inhabit these spaces and feel the tempo of change as time and geography change.

Money plays an interesting role in this story. Peilan takes out a loan to fund her trip to New York, and extends the line of credit for various reasons along the way. It winds up being an albatross around her neck - shaping her worldview and ultimately changing the course of her life. There’s a magical quality about this loan, since without it the story wouldn’t be possible, and it seems to be as flexible as the narrative needs it to be; it’s a kind of deus ex machina. And it’s made all the more magical because, although it must have been a tremendous financial burden, made all the more onerous by high interest and the like, Peilan’s roommate Vivian manages to pay it off when Peilan disappears. That’s remarkable, considering that Vivian can’t afford to support Deming and ultimately abandons him to the foster care system. It’s as though there’s a kind of trade-off between the debt payments and Deming’s upbringing. Vivian chooses to satisfy the loan sharks instead of keeping Deming with his family and allowing him to maintain the identity he’s known throughout his childhood.

This exchange is a kind of microcosmic dramatization of the entire story of globalization. On paper globalization is an economic force described by very abstract terms - the movement of manufacturing industries across borders, import/export imbalances, exchange rates, tarriff wars, and so forth. But in lived experience it’s about the intermingling of cultures, the blurring of national boundaries and confusion of identity that naturally follows. The ending of this story is more or less like the spoils of globalization: prosperity, when it does arrive, turns out to be hollow and challenging in its own right.

Music also plays a role of sorts in this story, and in particular in Deming’s life. Deming’s struggles in the classroom are matched only by his skill with the guitar, and he spends quite a bit of time pursuing a career as a musician. That pursuit is at counterpoint with a gambling addiction which he conquers - more or less. But it’s not entirely clear where this musical passion, or the addictive gambling, comes from, and how it relates to the rest of the story. Deming is a character defined by a troubled childhood and a confused identity. Neither music nor gambling has any real roots in that past, though it’s easy to imagine how the narrative could have been written to integrate these two themes into Deming’s life more closely. Ultimately these elements feel very much tacked-on and superfluous.

I’m glad I read this book - I found it to be very eye-opening and insightful, if a bit uneven at parts.