The Leftover Woman

Rebecca is Fifi’s adopted mother and Jasmine/Lucy’s employer. She is a complex character and one of the novel’s two narrators and protagonists. She is characterized initially through the lens of her career. She is an executive at a prominent publishing house and enjoys the power that she wields within the firm. Her father also had a career in publishing, but Rebecca wants to be judged on her own merit rather than by her family connections. She was involved in a plagiarism scandal with one of her authors and is determined to put that experience behind her by securing the publication rights to an important upcoming novel. She loves her husband, but in the opening chapters of the novel she prioritizes her work and identifies more as a career woman than a mother. She notes that their friends “teasingly” refer to Brandon and her as “the beauty and the brains” (48), and she relishes this characterization for the way that it reflects her intellect and abilities. She is content to let Brandon be known for his looks.

Rebecca struggles in many of her interpersonal relationships, both professional and familial. She is deeply jealous of the bond that Brandon, Lucy, and Fifi share. She knows that as a white woman who does not speak Chinese, she is outside of their cultural and linguistic bubble, and although she wants Fifi to be aware of her heritage, she resents her husband and nanny for their Chinese cultural knowledge. She feels that she spends too little time with Fifi, but she is initially unwilling to prioritize her daughter over her work. She is also unwilling to prioritize her marriage, and she is both dismissive of and dishonest with Brandon. She keeps the kiss that she shared with her troubled author a secret from him, and in part because of her own secrets and lies, she becomes convinced that Brandon is also dishonest.

Rebecca is also characterized by her privilege. Born into an affluent family, she has rigid ideas about race, gender, and class that reveal a deep, unexamined set of prejudices and biases. She judges Lucy for her frumpy wardrobe, lack of English skills, “bad” manners, and a host of other qualities that reveal more about Rebecca’s racism and classism than Lucy’s character. However, when she discovers that Lucy is actually Fifi’s birth mother, she has an epiphany. She realizes that Lucy is indeed a complex, multi-faceted human being and reflects on how difficult it must have been for Lucy to live with the daughter who was stolen from her at birth. She also realizes that her mistreatment of Lucy was rooted in prejudice and vows to change. This characterization is an important argument about the possibility of redemption. That Rebecca is able to recognize her problematic biases is a moment of hope, one that asserts that white women are capable of making anti-racist changes in their beliefs and behaviors.

Anthony is a Chinese immigrant to the United States and Jasmine’s childhood sweetheart. At the beginning of the novel, he is studying accounting at the suggestion of his Chinese American family, but he confesses to Jasmine that animal welfare is his true passion. He tries to save as many animals as he can from euthanasia at the shelter where he volunteers but notes that even when he cannot, he likes to “take them home when [he] can, so they have a little taste of love first” (147). Anthony’s choice to study accounting rather than pursue his passion reflects the reality of many immigrants whose career options are limited by necessity.

Anthony is also characterized by his love for Jasmine. Even after Jasmine marries Wen, Anthony remains devoted to her memory, and although they initially struggle to connect in the United States, it becomes clear that Anthony still loves her. He remains accepting even after she reveals the nature of her work at Opium and her complex adoption story. Because of this acceptance, he represents hope and possibility to Jasmine. Her experiences with Wen and the many sexist customers she encounters at Opium initially sour her on romance entirely, but Anthony’s love, patience, and kindness convince her that it is possible to find “good” men in the world.

Brandon is married to Rebecca and is Fifi’s adoptive father. He was a child language prodigy and as an adult is “a professor of East Asian languages at Columbia” (51). He speaks multiple languages fluently and is particularly interested in Chinese language and culture. Although erudite and highly educated, Brandon is humble and well-liked. He is socially confident and an adept conversationalist. Because of his social skills, Rebecca relies on him at parties and in other situations where her nerves prevent her from conversing as readily and easily as he does. Brandon is also devoted to his family. He is supportive of Rebecca and makes an effort to get along with her, even as she strains their marriage by overworking and accusing him of infidelity. He dotes on Fifi and makes sure that she learns to speak both English and Chinese, and he cultivates her interest in her Chinese heritage and culture.

Although well-intentioned, he is dishonest with Rebecca about Lucy’s identity. He hides that Lucy is their adoptive daughter’s mother because he feels that it would be beneficial to both Jasmine and Fifi to spend time together. He and Wen are old friends, but the narrative ultimately reveals that Brandon is too trusting; Brandon’s drug conviction in China was the result of Wen’s sabotage, and Brandon never considered this as a possibility. Although his character has many positive attributes, his role in an illegal adoption draws attention to such practices and points out the unpleasant truth that adoptive parents are sometimes willing to break the law to obtain their babies. 

Fifi is Jasmine’s daughter who was stolen immediately after her birth and illegally adopted out to Brandon and Rebecca. She is five years old for much of the narrative and celebrates her sixth birthday in the novel. At the end of the novel, she is 21, a student of East Asian languages and culture, and is reunited with her birth mother.

Fifi is a budding ballerina but does not have a passion for ballet and eventually switches to Chinese dance. She is a gifted artist, a talent she inherited from her mother. Because she is just a child, her personality is not fully developed, but her role within the narrative remains important. She feels a sense of loss and abandonment because of her adoption even as a young girl, and her character is meant to speak to the experiences of Chinese girls who were adopted into Western families during the years of China’s one-child policy.

In addition to the abandonment that she feels, Fifi ultimately comes to find her parents’ racial and cultural differences difficult to deal with. At the end of the novel, she observes, “[N]o matter how hard her parents try, they aren’t Chinese” (273). Here, Kwok engages with the complex politics of cross-cultural adoption. Through Fifi, she argues that cross-cultural adoption can place a strain on children who are forced to grow up not only without their biological families but without meaningful connections to their birth countries and cultures.