When the Hibiscus Falls
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Seventeen stories traverse borderlines, mythic and real, in the lives of Filipino and Filipino American women and their ancestors.
Moving from small Philippine villages of the past to the hurricane-beaten coast of near-future Florida, When the Hibiscus Falls examines the triumphs and sorrows that connect generations of women. Daughters, sisters, mothers, aunties, cousins, and lolas commune with their ancestors and their descendants, mourning what is lost when an older generation dies, celebrating what is gained when we safeguard their legacy for those who come after us. Featuring figures familiar from M. Evelina Galang’s other acclaimed and richly imagined novels and stories, When the Hibiscus Falls dwells within the complexity of family, community, and Filipino American identity. Each story is an offering, a bloom that unfurls its petals and holds space in the sun.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Galang's masterly latest (after Her Wild American Self) takes on xenophobia, racism, and other ills via stories of strong Filipino women. In "America, Still Beautiful," elderly Faustina watches the 2016 election returns with her granddaughter Mahal and imagines her late husband, Orlando, is there with them. While mulling over the candidates—the "lady" and the "bully"—she reflects on Orlando's persecution as a journalist in Manila and their struggle to start a business in 1990s Milwaukee, and assumes Orlando would have supported Trump. Only after Trump's victory does Faustina grasp its implications, when a white woman tells her, "We won. He's deporting all of you. Comprehendo?" "The Typhoon Is a Hurricane" follows a Miami nurse named Celit on the eve of Hurricane Irma, as she cares for her elderly uncle Tito Pat, who has dementia. Tito Pat, like Faustina, is lost in his memories of the Philippines, often mistaking Celit for his mother or father and crying out in the night. Galang revisits Faustina and Mahal in "Fighting Filipina," as Mahal travels from Miami to Milwaukee to be with her grandmother during the early days of the pandemic. During Mahal's flight, fellow passengers refer to her by racial slurs and ask to be moved away from her ("The virus runs people's hate to the surface like a fever," Mahal thinks). What makes these stories so powerful and poignant are the inner lives of the characters, a complex blend of nostalgia, desire for assimilation, and defiance. This is a winner.
