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Friday, March 29, 2024

Elaine Castillo’s ‘America Is Not the Heart’

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THE title of Fil-American writer Elaine Castillo’s novel riffs off the Carlos Bulosan classic from 1946, “America is in the Heart”—but the similarities don’t end there.

Both are stories of Filipino immigrants trying to make new lives for themselves in America, particularly California. Both portray the hardships faced by people of a minority ethnicity settling into a different culture. Both show how strong and warm relationships with family and friends are the key to survival. 

However, Bulosan’s is a memoir and Castillo’s a novel. Still, the latter draws on personal experiences to shape her narrative that’s set in the ‘80s. Like Roni, one of the characters in the novel, Castillo had eczema and was born in the Bay Area. The solid rooting in a place—Milpitas—helps anchor all the various stories of the characters. 

The novel’s protagonist is Geronima de Vera, an Ilokana who comes to live with her Tito Pol’s family in the Bay Area after crushing experiences as a doctor in the New People’s Army. The Philippine military captured her, subjected her to torture, and broke her thumbs, before she was released upon the plea of her wealthy and prominent family. 

As regimented her life was with the NPA, so her life drifted in the US. Even her identity was fluid—known as Nimang by the family, in the States she is known as Hero. She had not finished her medical degree, and so settled for work in a carinderia, whose owners become a second family to her. 

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Hero’s uncle Pol was a brilliant surgeon in the Philippines, but is a security guard in the US. His patient and martyr-like younger wife Paz, a registered nurse, gives birth to her “American morena” daughter Roni—her real name also Geronima—in a US hospital. Paz is glad to have escaped her poverty in the Philippines, glad to have brought her daughter into a better world, and works hard to provide her family with material things.

Hero, upon joining their family, takes to the eight-year-old Roni with deep affection and acts as her babysitter and confidant. Roni battles pre-teen angst and a severe case of eczema that covers much of her body. 

The story weaves back and forth, from the past to the present, as the characters’ backstories are presented and motivations for their actions explained. 

Hero and Roni first visit the carinderia because its owner Adela is a faith healer and might be able to help ease Roni’s skin ailments. It’s not clear, however, what Adela does exactly in this regard. There isn’t much faith healing that takes place (later it is learned that Paz has been slipping Roni some strong medication), but Adela and her family provide friendship to both Hero and Roni. 

The carinderia is also where Hero meets Adela’s granddaughter Rosalyn, a makeup artist and who will later be Hero’s lover.

Hero, perhaps suffering from PTSD, and grieved that her parents have disowned her, glides adrift and unanchored for most of the book, indulging in a series of one-night-stands but finds stability in her relationship with Rosalyn and her affection for Roni, Pol, and to some degree, Paz. 

There are a few passages that explicitly describe the intimacy between Hero and Rosalyn that will be an eye-opener for those who have not read any queer literature before. 

Structurally, it seems that the novel could have ended at any point and drags a bit about three-quarters in, simply because the reader can’t see where everything is going. But patience will be rewarded and the story is wrapped up on an optimistic note.

The novel is rich with Filipino references—places, social details, history, and particularly words and sentences in Tagalog and Pangasinan, some of which are left untranslated. There are hardly any non-Filipino characters and the story takes place within the Filipino community in Milpitas at the time. 

As a snapshot of Filipino immigrant life and experiences, it’s a valuable addition to literature and we look forward to more such stories that bring to life the narratives of those in the diaspora. 

America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo, 2018. New York: Viking. 406 pages, paperback.

Dr. Ortuoste is a writer and communication consultant. FB and Twitter: @DrJennyO

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