Lisa Ko and ‘The Leavers’ (Week 11)

‘The Leavers’ mainly tells the story of a little boy who was abandoned by a Chinese mother in the United States. The reason why Lisa Ko wrote this novel is that she read in the “New York Times” a story about an illegal immigrant entering the United States. Lisa was attracted by this story and she wanted to try to understand why her parents had to deal with each other when immigrating. The children are separated and the children are adopted by other families.

This novel is based on many true stories about Lisa Ko, as well as her own life experiences and thoughts. She noticed that most of the immigration stories came from real, non-fictional stories, so she wrote a story about a Chinese boy who was abandoned by his mother in the United States with the background of fictional towns in New York and China.

Lisa Ko is undoubtedly thinking about the emotions and problems of the characters in the story, which is an accurate description based on her personal experience. Lisa Ko was born into an immigrant family in Queens, New York. She grew up in an American family but has Asian descent because moving to the United States from an Asian country has a great influence on her identity and lifestyle. Ko has been struggling because she became a minority in the United States, and her struggle as a minority seems to help shape the true portrayal of the characters, just like Deming in the story she wrote. As a young boy, Deming had an ambivalent sense of identity, so he returned to Manhattan ten years later and started looking for his mother Polly and clues to prove his identity. So Ko wrote this novel because she wanted to let immigrants recognize her identity through her identity and cultural beliefs as an Asian American.

Messer, Miwa. “Lisa Ko on Immigration and the Inspiration for ‘The Leavers.’” The Barnes & Noble Review, The Barnes & Noble Review, 21 July 2017, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/lisa-ko-immigration-inspiration-leavers.

13 thoughts on “Lisa Ko and ‘The Leavers’ (Week 11)

  1. I think your presentation provides really good information about why Lisa made the characters the way she did and how she came up with the idea for the story. She has clearly been affected by injustice against Asian Americans in the US and wanted to create a story that humanized this group. Her work does an amazing job at doing this, and we get to take a look into what it is actually like to live as the child of immigrants and the struggles that these people face.

  2. Great post! I have definitely witnessed firsthand how immigrating from a foreign country to the United States can impact your entire identity. I was also born into an immigrant family, and I find it really interesting to see how my parents have changed since I was younger. My family was really religious when I was younger, but as time went on I noticed them abandoning some of the traditional customs they used to do because they lost interest, and it shows when we visit our mother country.

  3. This was a great post! I appreciate your insightful context on immigration because it has become one of the most important social and political issues within the country. I think that immigration can have major effects on people and change their identities as a whole.

  4. I really enjoyed reading your post! I appreciate that Lisa Ko speaks about the topic of immigration and how it affects people. It is interesting that Ko understands the feeling of being a minority since she experienced it herself. Even though it is deemed as illegal I believe that we should help those that want to move to the United States. Based off my experience of what people state about immigration they come to the US to obtain a better life. Hopefully we can help people in the future.

  5. This is a great post! It shows the reason why Lisa Ko wrote this novel and how she made this novel wonderful. Those attractive and impressive stories are always based on things that happened in real life, so Lisa Ko can properly describe the characters’ emotions and their conflict inside. Thank you for providing background information on this novel and Lisa Ko, it helps me a lot for reading it.

  6. I loved reading your post. You provided a great context on why Lisa Ko wrote the novel ‘Leavers’. Lisa being born in an immigrant family and as a minority in the US, Lisa has provided great insight into the immigration issue of America and how it has shaped the identity of immigrants.

  7. Great way to incorporate your resources! Perfect way to show the reason why Ko wore this novel. This is new to me for a read, but the background information helped quite a lot. Great job!

  8. This is a great use of your resources as well as an amazing job of explaining the context of why the Novel ‘Leavers’ was really written. Lisa also shared lots of light on the fact that there is a real problem with immigration issues at this time! great post!

  9. Thank you for sharing about the author’s background and story. It helps me understand why she wrote this story and the message behind it. Making her story into the book, we see how Asian Americans struggle trying to live in the US

  10. I love how you highlighted that many children who were born into minority families yet grew up in America and have very different experiences than their peers. I feel as if the ‘Leavers’ was a great novel because Ko was able to channel her personal experiences to provide a more authentic take on immigration problems in America.

  11. It’s rather neat that the struggles in which Ko went and still goes through as a minority is what became a strength in a way and became the basis for one of the reasons why she is so famous. Because of her struggles, she is able to so accurately depict an entire fictional story about something that feels so real.

  12. Thank you for giving more context on Ko’s reason for writing the story! It was nice to see how she created the characters. I enjoyed reading how she brought life to the characters!

  13. I think you are really good at summarizing the overall story and presenting it precisely and clearly. As a reader, I can readily understand how the story goes and why write this story, and the background of the writer. I think you are doing perfectly.

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