America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo

Anything but that.”Ĭastillo’s acute awareness of how carefully people mask their past traumas makes for deep characterization. But you couldn’t tell a person you just met: Please don’t be gentle. Most of all, it helped to keep at bay Rosalyn’s promised gentleness - which hurt, just as Hero had known it would. Grounded her, let her know where she was, chased away the muddled, murky feelings.

Rosalyn whispers she’ll be gentle, but Hero clenches her fists as Rosalyn massages in the conditioner: “The pain in Hero’s fists helped. It starts with Rosalyn washing Hero’s hair. There, Hero meets the faith healer’s granddaughter, Rosalyn, who does hair and makeup, and who pulls her into the local community.Īt the heart of the novel is its depiction of a friendship-turned-romance. To address Roni’s severe eczema, Hero takes her to a faith healer who also owns a strip mall restaurant, Boy’s BBQ & Karaoke. During the day, Hero lives an isolated existence cleaning their house and caring for their pugnacious young daughter, Roni. Born into provincial circumstances, Paz works two nursing jobs and serves as the family’s breadwinner. In the summer of 1990, she comes to Milpitas on a tourist visa to live with her beloved uncle Pol, formerly a rich orthopedic surgeon in the Philippines, and his wife Paz, and overstays. When she emerges, her family rejects her. She’s there 10 years before being captured and kept in a prison camp where her thumbs are broken. She drops out of medical college and joins the New People’s Army, an armed guerrilla wing of the Communist Party. It’s a wholehearted and sharply observed family epic that centers on Hero, a young bisexual woman from a wealthy, influential family in the Philippines.

Elaine Castillo’s “America Is Not the Heart” is that sort of debut novel. 1 of2 'America Is Not the Heart' Viking Show More Show Less 2 of2 Elaine Castillo Amaal Said Show More Show LessĮvery once in a while, a book opens a window onto the place where you live and reveals the glory of ordinary things you’d only glimpsed in your peripheral vision.

America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo