FCCNY Readers Guild: The Leavers, by Lisa Ko

When
06/25/2021
7:30 PM - 8:45 PM
Location
Zoom: Register for Link

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THE FCC READERS GUILD

invites you to join our next virtual gathering!

BOOK FOR DISCUSSION:

The Leavers

By Lisa Ko

DATE and TIME:

Friday, June 25, 7:30 pm EDT

Courageous, sensitive, and perfectly

of this moment.

—Barbara Kingsolver

Gorgeously redemptive . . . Lisa Ko’s debut novel is an achingly beautiful read about immigration, adoption, and the drive to belong. Beyond the desensitizing media coverage, Ko gives faces, (multiple) names, and details to create a riveting story of a remarkable family coming, going, leaving . . . all in hopes of someday returning to one another.

—Christian Science Monitor

Register by Wednesday, June 23 to receive a Zoom link to the conversation.

Participation is free, but membership is required.

Adoptees, adoptive parents, and supporters are encouraged to join!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Mary Child and Diane Gnagnarelli

Questions/Comments: programs@fccny.org

ABOUT THE BOOK (from Amazon)

One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon—and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. But far from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his adoptive parents’ desire that he assimilate with his memories of his mother and the community he left behind.
Told from the perspective of both Daniel—as he grows into a directionless young man—and Polly, Ko’s novel gives us one of fiction’s most singular mothers. Loving and selfish, determined and frightened, Polly is forced to make one heartwrenching choice after another.
Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It’s a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lisa Ko’s fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, Apogee Journal, Narrative, Copper Nickel, the Asian Pacific American Journal, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Writers OMI at Ledig House, the Jerome Foundation, and Blue Mountain Center, among others. She was born in New York City, where she now lives.