Patron Saints of Nothing

When Jay first arrives in Manila and is processing through customs, the customs agent asks whether he is visiting. Is he a visitor or a native? Jay hesitates to answer. Until the death of his cousin, Jay never confronted his status as a hyphenated American, a Filipino-American. At the center of Jay’s identity crisis is his uncertainty over his cultural identity. Born in the Philippines but brought to the United States when he was one, Jay has long ignored critical questions over his cultural identity. He is biracial—his father is a Filipino who proudly embraces his identity as an American, and his mother is a white American. Yet Jay is dark-skinned, too Asian-looking to entirely fit into his wealthy parents’ upper-class suburban world. As his only friend Seth tells him, “You’re basically white” (37) When Jay goes to Manila, however, he is too light-skinned, too obviously American in his manner and his speech to entirely fit into the Philippines.

Jay’s maturation into adulthood centers on his reconciliation of his complex cultural identity, to embrace what he has never acknowledged, to learn what he has never been curious about, to be proud of his hyphenated identity. When he arrives in Manila, Jay is a stranger in a strange land.