Ultimately, The Leavers is a story of how tragic one’s life can be when one does not know how to settle down and cannot realize where he or she belongs. Many settings are described throughout the book: home and school, the Bronx and upstate New York, and Fuzhou and Beijing. Two people are central speakers in The Leavers: Daniel, or Deming, and Polly, or Peilan. When Deming returns to America, Polly decides to leave Yong and go to Hong Kong, feeling as if she’s only herself when she’s free to go where she wants.One of the hooks the author uses to make the book unusual is the number of narrators and the organization of their accounts.
Deming stays with her and Yong, and she insists that she didn’t know how to find him after she was deported, and though this is true, it’s obvious that this is just something she tells herself so she doesn’t feel bad about having embraced her new life. When Deming finally tracks her down after ten years, Polly is living in an expensive apartment in Fuzhou. Back in China, she teaches English at a foreign language school, where she meets her future husband, Yong. Although Deming thinks his mother has abandoned him, she is actually captured by immigration authorities and held in a prison-like camp for 14 months before getting deported. Eventually, she agrees not to move, but then she disappears.
One day, she hears about a job opportunity in Florida and tells Deming they’re going to move, but Leon refuses to go. For six years, she works at a nail salon and spends time with Deming, constantly wondering what she could be doing with her life if she didn’t have to care for a son. Shortly thereafter, she falls in love with a fellow Chinese immigrant named Leon and moves in with him, his sister Vivian, and Vivian’s son, Michael. As such, she gives birth to Deming in the United States. Unable to get an abortion in China, she borrows $47,000 from a loan shark and makes an arduous journey to New York City, where she learns that she can’t get an abortion because she’s in her third trimester.
When she discovers that she’s pregnant, she decides not to tell her boyfriend, Haifeng, knowing he’ll expect her to marry him. From a village outside Fuzhou, China, Polly is an independent young woman who covets freedom, yearning to leave her village. Deming’s mother, and the second protagonist in The Leavers.
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