Race
As a mixed-race, biracial young woman, Lara must contend with race for much of her life. At first, Lara can't accept her status as a biracial person. Eventually, Lara accepts who she is and her status as a biracial person. However, she must also deal with many of the things people of color must deal with, including racism, bias, structural racism, and a lack of opportunities which would allow them success (materially or otherwise). These are things that Lara's mother can never understand or help her with as a white woman.
Acceptance
Part of Lara's journey towards becoming an adult is accepting her mother, her family, her situation (to the extent which it is healthy), and who she is—especially her status as a person of color. For much of her life, Lara was deeply uncomfortable with many of the aforementioned things. She never truly accepted her mother for who she was because her mother was consistently mean to her. Not only that, Lara struggled for much of her life to accept her status as a person of color (her mother is white, and her father is Black). Eventually, though, as she meets more people and her life changes, she is able to accept who she is, where she is, and who she associates herself in her life. And that acceptance, the novel argues, is one of the most important things a person can have if they want to lead a happy and healthy life.
Home
The theme of home is a significant theme in A Country You Can Leave. Because they don't have much money to work with, Lara and her mother Yevgenia become homeless at the start of the novel. Quickly, they find somewhere to live in a trailer park in a remote part of California. But neither Lara nor her mother think of the trailer park and town they live in as home. Throughout the novel, the characters question where their home is and ask what home even is in the first place.
