One morning in the Bronx, eleven-year-old Deming Guo’s mother, Polly, an undocumented Fuzhounese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon and never returns home. After months of uncertainty, Deming is placed into the foster care system and adopted by a white, academic couple in upstate New York who rename him Daniel Wilkinson. The narrative alternates between Daniel’s adult life as he struggles with displacement and heavy debt, and Polly’s experience in an immigration detention center followed by her forced deportation to China. The plot centers on the involuntary severing of family ties and the friction between Daniel’s flattened American identity and the suppressed memories of his childhood.
Readers interested in the logistics of the United States immigration system and the psychological effects of transracial adoption will find this a detailed study of cultural erasure. It attracts those looking for a technical look at how state policies dismantle immigrant households. You walk away with a clear understanding of the bureaucratic mechanisms behind deportation and the lifelong internal conflict that follows when a child is stripped of their original language and heritage to fit a suburban mold.
Inward-looking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Story Seeker. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2017
- Language
- EN
