Patron Saints of Nothing

The Reguero family, in America and in the Philippines, is riven by secrets, defined by deep divisions created by the refusal to be honest and open with each other. Within the families, secrets lead to power struggles, suspicion, distrust, traumatizing anxieties, and a false sense of reality.

At home, Jay, 17 years old, a threshold age often defined by uncertainty and questions, is uneasy about even the possibility of an open and engaged conversation with his father. He hesitates to share with his parents his nagging sense of isolation and drift, his inability to find his place in white America, and his curious lack of fulfillment in any of his school endeavors. Rather, the family exists in a kind of artificial environment with the noncommunication of polite chitchat. To secure their permission for his spring break trip to solve the mystery of June’s death, Jay lies. He says he wants to get to know his father’s family.

What Jay finds in the Philippine Reguero family is more evidence of the corrosive effects of secrets. That family is defined by what they won’t talk about. They are divided by unspoken resentments such that difficult family issues are ignored and problematic family members are simply exiled. Uncle Maning’s imposing dictatorial presence closes any possibility of open and honest communication. After Maning discovers the marijuana paraphernalia in Jun’s room when the boy is only 14, he kicks his son out and adamantly refuses any mention of Jun’s name by the family. It is entirely a charade. As Jay finds out, Maning never abandons interest in his son, but he cannot share that concern with his own family, preferring to keep his paternal love a secret. Grace, for her part, must keep her love for her dead brother a secret in a family where his name is forbidden to be spoken. Unlike her aunts, Grace must also keep her sexual orientation a secret. Her entire relationship with her lover Jessa is a secret from her family. Grace is sure that their conservative Catholic mindset would lead to her ostracism. Despite being an adult, and despite being committed to Jessa, Grace must slink around to meet her lover and steal whatever moments she can find.

Jay learns the toxicity of secrets against the backdrop of his awakening to the brutalities and human rights violations of the Duterte regime. Jay comes to see that the vicious campaign directed against poor and disadvantaged Filipinos is conducted in secret from the rest of the world. In his commitment to use social media to get involved in the effort to expose the reality in the Philippines and enlighten the world about the conditions there, Jay endorses the value of honest and open communication even about the most difficult things. Indeed, the novel closes with Jay and his father settling down over morning coffee to finally have an open and honest conversation about Jay’s future.

If Patron Saints of Nothing is a traditional coming-of-age narrative, it is also a call to action addressed specifically to Generation Z of middle-class America, which Ribay, a high school teacher, fears is all but lost to escapism, specifically the lure of supposedly harmless recreational pharmaceuticals like marijuana and the coaxing lure of video games. For Jay, Facebook and the other social media outlets are primarily for posting embarrassing pictures or gossiping about school friends. The reach of social media as an instrument of outrage and a vehicle for real social and political change does not occur to him until he goes to the Philippines.

When Jay first meets Mia, two years older than he is, a journalism major with ambitions to be an investigative reporter, he finally understands the importance of activism and social media’s potential to expose clandestine government activities. Mia tells Jay solemnly, “If you are to figure things out, you can’t hide from them. Silence will not save you” (186). Against the grim evidence in the stark photos that record the Duterte regime’s human rights violations, which Jay sees as he scrolls through Grace’s Facebook timeline, Jay is shaken from his apathy, awakened to the problems in the real world. The long drives through Manila’s most impoverished neighborhoods reveals to him a world he never suspected existed back in the comfortable suburbs. His trip to Jun’s rundown apartment is eye-opening. The deplorable conditions convince him of the realities of Manila’s poor, the desperate conditions the poor endure, and the inevitable turn to the escape of street drugs.

When he is told Reyna’s painful backstory and for the first time understands the cost and impact of human trafficking, Jay moves toward a position of empowerment. He is changed through his association with the vigorous underground movement and through his conversations with his two aunts who run a foundation that fights human rights violations. The experience rattles Jay, who reflects, “this feels important and part of me is sick of never doing anything of significance in my life. […] If I died right now, I will have died having done nothing and having helped nobody” (195). In coming to terms with Jun’s death, Jay understands what he did not back in Michigan—the sociopolitical and economic problems that create a drug culture and his responsibility to be part of a global movement that seeks to fix those problems, one victim at a time.

He decides in the end to return to the Philippines to help his aunts’ important work. He will suspend an education that he now sees will simply continue the tedium and pointlessness of high school. He asserts that an individual not only has the power to change the world but also the responsibility to do just that: “We do not have to leave questions and letters and lives unanswered. We have more power and potential than we know if we would only speak, if we would only listen” (318).