Just because I no longer live in the Philippines does not mean I should stop caring. This book did not only help me understand more about the country I was born in but it also stirred my heart to start genuinely caring about the world around me. To say that any aspect of it is part of me is to say that all of it is part of me.” Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing “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. However, he realized that there were so many things he no longer understood about the Philippines even though he was born there. He goes back to the Philippines to try to discover the truth behind his cousin’s death. Jay used to be close to Jun and could not believe that his favorite cousin would be involved in drugs. In this novel, Jay’s cousin Jun who lived in the Philippines was killed during President Rodrigo Duterte’s war against drugs. Jay, the main protagonist in Patron Saints of Nothing, shares the same struggle that I believe most children of immigrants feel. I struggle with finding balance between being American and being Filipino. Although I am still fluent in Tagalog and still keep up with Filipino pop culture, I admit that there are many aspects about life in the Philippines that I no longer understand. I was born in the Philippines and spent the first eight years of my life there. Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay is a novel that I discovered very recently (beginning of January 2020).
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