Later, after the death of her younger brother—one of the brothers whom she lived with, along with her mother, back in Saigon—the girl (now a woman) looks back on her youth and remembers her Chinese lover. The relationship between the lovers breaks off after about a year and a half, when the girl's family returns to France. Find sample tests, essay help, and translations of Shakespeare. The young man is revealed to be the heir to a great fortune. The story is set in French Indochina in the 1930s. The narrator describes how the mother has the family go to the photographer, always having pictures of the family group but not taking pictures of “Vinh Long . The Leavers by Lisa Ko Plot Summary | LitCharts. Detailed Summary & Analysis Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 … Inspired by a 2009 New York Times article about an undocumented Chinese woman held in predominantly solitary detention for 18 months, The Leavers tells the coming-of-age tale of Deming Guo/Daniel Wilkinson’s loss and eventual reconciliation with his birth mother, Polly Guo. The story is told from the perspective of the girl, many years later, when she's looking back on her youth. She's afraid for her own future, and she accepts his advances.
In her short and powerful novel, which won the Prix Goncourt in France in 1984, Duras recounts the largely autobiographical story of her family’s struggles in Southeast Asia.

She receives a phone call from him, and he tells her he still loves her. When she disappears, he and his family—who include Polly’s boyfriend Leon, Leon’s sister Vivian, and Vivian’s son Michael—are unable to locate her. Leavers are members of tribal cultures that live more simply, following the same basic rules that govern other populations on Earth. The Leavers opens on the day before Deming’s mother Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant working at a nail salon in New York, disappears.
Her family guesses at the nature of the relationship, but they still accept his financial support, partly because they're desperate for it. Memory provides the frame for the novel, which is the recollection of a middle-aged Frenchwoman. He is born in Manhattan but is sent to his mother’s village of Minjiang, China, when he is less than 1 year old to live with his grandfather. Deming Guo/Daniel Wilkinson is the protagonist of The Leavers. The Leavers Introduction + Context.

SparkNotes are the most helpful study guides around to literature, math, science, and more. More people find out about the relationship, and as expected, the public reaction (particularly among the colonial French community) is not positive. .