A few days ago I started to read Randy Ribay’s novel, Patron Saints of Nothing. I was about half-way through when something compelled me to read even though it was already way past a decent hour to go to bed. I ended up reading the novel to the end, closing the book as the sun started to rise, beams of light chasing away the need for a lamp light.
I couldn’t stop reading it. In my hands was the first book I had ever read that mirrored the experiences I, myself, could not write. About the times I went back to the Philippines, the contradictions many of us who were born on the archipelago but grew up in the US feel but can’t describe. The guilt we feel sometimes, the judgments we so easily think and speak, the times we fall silent, the awkwardness as we try to connect with cousins whose life experience feels so separate and strange from our own. The recognition of—or is it the yearning for—belonging in a place we barely remember. I cried and not just because of what actually happens in the novel, but because of how real it was to me, how it took thirty years to read about myself. (Let me confess now: I do have shallow tears when it comes to films, but not with books.)
It was similar to the first time I read Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. I was in high school, I think. My sister had brought the book home after reading it for a college class. I connected to it as an Asian American woman, fighting battles with your family, finding the worth of your own voice. But Patron Saints of Nothing hit me on another level. I’m still trying to find the words to explain. Maybe I don’t have to. I know how much it means to me. I know the moments I stopped briefly, to nod in acknowledgement. Yes, this happened to me too. Yes, I felt this way too.
I will carry this novel with me for a long time. I will carry it with me.
three generations 