This is a YA novel with a powerful message spanning across several thematic thresholds. What is the truth worth? Who is accountable for the lives of the lost? Can we hold ourselves responsible for acts of inhumanity if we are not actively speaking up? If we don’t, then who will?
“If we are to be more than what we have been, there’s so much more that we need to say.”
“I am not truly Filipino, so I don’t understand the Philippines. But isn’t this deeper than that, doesn’t this transcend nationality? Isn’t there some sense of right and wrong about how human beings should be treated that applies no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak?”
Jay, an eighteen-year-old half-Filipino half-American, travels back to the Philippines from Michigan during his senior year in high school after learning about the death of his cousin, Yun, to drugs. No one will answer his questions concerning his cousin’s death, so he chooses to find the answers himself by travelling to the Philippines to visit with his and Yun’s family concerning the mysterious death. While seeking answers in the Philippines, Jay finds a homeland that he no longer recognizes. Jay struggles to identify with a culture that he has forgotten and finds conflict not only within the country, but within his Filipino family. Why isn’t anyone mourning the death of Yun? What really happened, and why won’t anyone tell him the truth?
“It strikes me that I cannot claim this country’s serene coves and sun-soaked beaches without also claiming its poverty, its problems, its history.”
Throughout his trip staying with family members and searching for answers, the reader is taken on a cultural journey. I learned a lot from this piece of fiction, especially about policies enforced by President Duterte, and plan to read some of the nonfiction articles in the “Recommended Reading” section provided by Randy Ribay in the back of this book.
This is a great book for YA readers, and I recommend it.
Topics include: drugs, sensationalism, trafficking, nationalism, injustice, existence, family, poverty, political thought/policies
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