america is not the heart elaine castillo

With exuberance, muscularity, and tenderness, here is a family saga an origin story a romance a narrative of two nations and the people who leave home to grasp at another, sometimes turning back.īaggage means no matter how far you go, no matter how many times you immigrate, there are countries in you you’ll never leave. In a voice as immediate and startling as those of Junot Díaz and NoViolet Bulawayo, America Is Not the Heart is a sprawling, soulful telenovela of a debut novel.

Illuminating the violent political history of the Philippines in the 1980s and 1990s and the insular immigrant communities that spring up in the suburban United States with an uncanny ear for the unspoken intimacies and pain that get buried by the duties of everyday life and family ritual, Castillo delivers a powerful, increasingly relevant novel about the promise of the American dream and the unshakable power of the past. Only their daughter, Roni, asks Hero why her hands seem to constantly ache. And his younger wife, Paz, has learned enough about the might and secrecy of the De Vera family to keep her head down. Her uncle, Pol, who has offered her a fresh start and a place to stay in the Bay Area, knows not to ask about her past. How many lives can one person lead in a single lifetime? When Hero de Vera arrives in America, disowned by her parents in the Philippines, she's already on her third. Three generations of women from one immigrant family trying to reconcile the home they left behind with the life they're building in America.

America is not the heart elaine castillo