Summary of The Ones Left Behind by K.J. Chien
Grist, Jan 08, 2025
In a climate-changed future New York City, Grace Chan runs her family’s Sichuan restaurant in PuertoChina, a neighborhood adapted to survive floods and water scarcity. A month after placing her grandmother Nai Nai’s urn on the family altar alongside her parents and grandfather, Grace tends the restaurant alone, serving symbolic meals to their photos and maintaining the silkworm nursery in the backroom—a legacy passed down from Nai Nai, who claimed descent from Empress Leizu, the legendary first silkworm keeper. The restaurant specializes in deep-fried silkworms, creatures Nai Nai began raising forty years ago after planting an avenue of mulberry trees along Mulberry Street.
Grace’s isolation deepens as she retells herself Nai Nai’s stories—how the restaurant opened during the ninth mad cow epidemic when insect-eating became common, how it survived bird flu and Ye Ye’s death, how the neighborhood transformed from derelict office buildings to urban farms with permeable pavement to prevent flash flooding. Without her family’s voices responding, these stories feel less like an anchor and more like a kite string she’s struggling to hold. Her world contracts to routines: checking inventory, serving meals to the dead, and caring for the silkworms whose adult moths, she knows, orphan their eggs after laying them.
Key Plot Points
- Quique Flores, a childhood friend who runs a floating farm on the East River, delivers watercress and brings troubling news: the Grand Street stormwater reservoir isn’t collecting properly, threatening the mulberry trees during upcoming heat waves
- Grace insists on immediately fixing the problem despite being told repairs will wait; she and Quique spend the afternoon clearing blocked pipes of debris, getting covered in mud and grime
- As a thunderstorm arrives, Grace visits the mulberry trees her grandmother planted and whispers “Drink up” as rain soaks the city’s transformed landscape of solar panels, cattails, osprey, and oyster reefs growing on submerged subway cars
- Grace cooks lunch for Quique—her best batch of fried silkworms yet, seasoned with ramps, wild ginger, and chili from his garden
- They discuss their families being “left behind” when the wealthy fled the flooding, too poor or stubborn to leave, and how the neighborhood now feels like a part of them they can’t imagine abandoning
When Grace asks if Quique has seen the silkworm nursery, they squeeze into the warm, dimly lit space where cocoons glow like moons and moths flutter among shelves. The closeness between them becomes electric. When Quique nervously attempts to ask her something, Grace decides to go easy on him for once and kisses him. His response is soft and hungry, and as they bump into silkworm racks sending ivory moths into the air, Grace becomes aware of a space growing inside her—the room of absence she’d been running her hands over, certain it would become her permanent home.
But mid-kiss, remembering her family, Grace pulls away and begins crying. She realizes she was about to share this unexpected joy with them, then remembered they’re gone. Quique holds her as she weeps against his chest, grateful he’s there yet devastated her family is not. After he wipes her face and the moths settle on their clothes, Grace hears a quiet voice inside her body saying “Go on. Live.” The story ends with Grace understanding that joy never asks permission to continue—it simply and stubbornly persists, like the silkworms, like the restaurant, like the ones who were left behind and chose to stay.