Noël Alumit

This novel is loosely based on the 1999 racially motivated shooting of Filipino-American postal worker Joseph Ileto and several people at a Jewish community center in the LA area. Alumit uses a fictionalized version of that event as a departure point for the story of a Filipino-American family (father, mother, adult gay son, and dead brother) where loss, spirituality, and sexuality are major themes. It's a compelling story, and the characters and the relationships between them are fairly well developed -- this was the book's strong point. Unfortunately, it could probably have gone through a couple more rounds of revision, because there are a lot of typos and minor errors (hopitilization instead of hospitalization? How did they miss that?). The writing could also have been a little more imaginative/less cliched at times. But I was pleasantly surprised by the parts set in the Philippines, which were more nuanced than I usually find in Filipino-American fiction.… (mehr)