Everything We Never Had

 Stars: 5 like his other YA book Patron Saints of Nothing, this one should be in the classrooms. 

My Thoughts:

Like Patron Saints, Ribay gives us another deeply complex look at family, toxic masculinity, and the Filipino iexperience in America through the Maghabol males. 

With multiple narrators, we see the four Maghabol males as young men and as fathers and grandfathers in each other's stories. As narrators to their own stories, they don't understand the motives and intention of their fathers, however, this was a satisfyingly sorrowful read for me. I found myself waking up to read more because I wanted Enzo to talk to his lolo Emil and share things that Enzo's dad Chris never knew/understood, or even wanted to hear. I wanted Francisco to find some kind of happiness and success that I knew must have happened through Emil's story, but we don't see the in between times. We just know from the other stories. I love that strategy. As a reader, it helps me to stay fully engaged, which is why there is so much to do with this book in the English classroom. 

From the Publisher: 

Watsonville, 1930. Francisco Maghabol barely ekes out a living in the fields of California. As he spends what little money he earns at dance halls and faces increasing violence from white men in town, Francisco wonders if he should’ve never left the Philippines.

Stockton, 1965. Between school days full of prejudice from white students and teachers and night shifts working at his aunt’s restaurant, Emil refuses to follow in the footsteps of his labor organizer father, Francisco. He’s going to make it in this country no matter what or who he has to leave behind.

Denver, 1983. Chris is determined to prove that his overbearing father, Emil, can’t control him. However, when a missed assignment on “ancestral history” sends Chris off the football team and into the library, he discovers a desire to know more about Filipino history―even if his father dismisses his interest as unamerican and unimportant.

Philadelphia, 2020. Enzo struggles to keep his anxiety in check as a global pandemic breaks out and his abrasive grandfather moves in. While tensions are high between his dad and his lolo, Enzo’s daily walks with Lolo Emil have him wondering if maybe he can help bridge their decades-long rift.

Told in multiple perspectives, Everything We Never Had unfolds like a beautifully crafted nesting doll, where each Maghabol boy forges his own path amid heavy family and societal expectations, passing down his flaws, values, and virtues to the next generation, until it’s up to Enzo to see how he can braid all these strands and men together.

Publication Information:

Author: Randy Ribay

Publisher: Kokila (August 27, 2024)

Hardcover: 288 pages

ISBN-13: 978-0593461419

Grade level: 7-9

The Summer of Bitter and Sweet

 

My Thoughts:

This book about Lou, a Métis young woman living in Canada, is lots of bitter. Readers need to be warned that this may be triggering. There is radical racial violence, sexual violence, and emotional violence.  The author has a trigger warning at the beginning that warns us about the trauma coming, including traumas faced by Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people. The author does this because according to Ferguson, "Your health, happiness, safety, and well-being matter more than reading this book." She even says that if readers are not ready, it is ok to stop reading or even never read this book. As a teacher, I appreciate that last part. Young adults, even middle level readers need to understand that books can be too much of a mirror, a window, even a sliding glass door (Rudine Sims Bishop). Reading, at its best, should be a visceral experience. So if a book just does not grab you, or if a book grabs you too much and starts to push you into dark spaces that you do not want to go into, then abandon the book. According to the author, that is fine, even encouraged. For teachers, it should be ok for our own students to abandon books too. When we force people to read, that is when we lose them. I am just writing this because I know the research. I know the best practices for raising lifelong readers. I appreciate that Ferguson starts the book off in that way.

The problem is, once I started reading, I forgot her advice completely. The voice of Lou, her observations and descriptions, her family, the situation of getting the Ice Cream Shack ready on this, her final summer before college, even Homer, her old dog that surfs on top of the picnic table in the back of her F-150 pulled me in. The niggling warning beep Lou's complex attitude toward her boyfriend does not give me enough warning for the four-alarm fires that are coming in this book. It is graphic and complex. It is a visceral explosion. The bitterness is deep and rotten, but I was already too far in and I forgot to breathe.

Yes, there is sweet. Eventually. And there is an understanding of one's self, eventually. Lou comes to some realizations much later than the reader, but it did make me look up the Ace Umbrella spectrum again. I read all kinds of stories because love is love, however, this one gave me pause. I am rethinking that mantra. I did not understand the difficulty Lou has, however, it was good to read about it. Someone that passes into your own classrooms will need this book.

From the Publisher:

Lou has enough confusion in front of her this summer. She’ll be working in her family’s ice-cream shack with her newly ex-boyfriend—whose kisses never made her feel desire, only discomfort—and her former best friend, King, who is back in their Canadian prairie town after disappearing three years ago without a word.

But when she gets a letter from her biological father—a man she hoped would stay behind bars for the rest of his life—Lou immediately knows that she cannot meet him, no matter how much he insists.

While King’s friendship makes Lou feel safer and warmer than she would have thought possible, when her family’s business comes under threat, she soon realizes that she can’t ignore her father forever.

The Heartdrum imprint centers a wide range of intertribal voices, visions, and stories while welcoming all young readers, with an emphasis on the present and future of Indian Country and on the strength of young Native heroes. In partnership with We Need Diverse Books.

Publication Information:

Author: Jen Ferguson (Métis and White)

Publisher: Heartdrum (May 10, 2022)

Hardcover: 384 pages

Hungry Ghost

 

From the Publisher:

Valerie Chu is quiet, studious, and above all, thin. No one, not even her best friend, Jordan, knows that she has been bingeing and purging for years. But when tragedy strikes, Val finds herself reassessing her priorities, her choices, and her body. The path to happiness may lead her away from her hometown and her mother’s toxic projections―but first she will have to find the strength to seek help.

This beautiful and heart-wrenching young adult graphic novel takes a look at eating disorders, family dynamics, and ultimately, a journey to self-love.

My Thoughts:

Sometimes when perspective and culture gets in the way of how we feel we need to be loved and nurtured by those who mean the most to us, like mothers, that miscommunication, or mis-translation causes so much trauma that it takes us a lifetime to recover. Along the way, we break and break and break again. 

This is another one of those stories. Although this is not a memoir, if your readers want to read more/similar send them to:

• In Limbo: a graphic memoir by Deb J.J. Lee
• Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao 

Publication Information:

Author/Artist: Victoria Yang

Publisher: First Second (April 25, 2023)