When the Hibiscus Falls

Starred review from April 17, 2023
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.