Synopsis for ONE TRIBE
In One Tribe, the death of Isa Manalo’s unborn child stirs wide spread speculation in her small Midwestern suburb. Fed up with the noise of local tsismosas (gossips), she moves to Virginia Beach to teach myth and history to Filipino American youth. Isa Manalo walks into the chaos of drive by shootings, beauty pageants, and community politicking. At every turn she butts heads with youth gangs who distrust her, community elders who disapprove of her loose outsider ways, and a Filipino boyfriend who accuses her of acting too white. Eventually Isa fights back. As Hurricane Emilia brews at the edge of the east coast, Isa opens her house to a local girl gang and nourishes their troubled spirits, instigating change sudden as the shift of tropical winds.
One Tribe is the winner of the AWP Series Prize in the Novel.
More praise for ONE TRIBE
“M. Evelina Galang’s One Tribe is a bold, ambitious, moving, and deeply surprising novel about the necessity and dangers of the human need to belong to other people. Galang writes beautifully and precisely about the world of her wonderful main character, Isabel Manalo—her students, her lovers, her parents, her fears—and in doing so has written a universal book about teaching, fear, parenting, and love.” —Elizabeth McCracken, Judge
“Reading One Tribe, I entered a strange, feminine world—the Yin mind of a caring teacher. A teacher myself, I identify with Isabel Manalo, whose students dwell in an alien country. A poetic book.” —Maxine Hong-Kingston
“This novel deftly navigates the tension over being American and yet not quite so; the conflict between race and personal relations; and the contradiction between the reality of history and that of the present. It adds to the growing body of literature about Filipino presence and experience on this continent.” —Ninotchka Rosca
Reviews for ONE TRIBE
From Our Own Voice
|
