Patron Saints of Nothing

“Does anyone truly get anyone, Jay?”

This weed-induced wisdom offered by Jay’s friend Seth, while the two exchange joints playing hooky on the roof of a nearby elementary school, sets the agenda for Jay’s painful education into the stubborn mystery of others, the impossibility of understanding people.

“I don’t want to be another one of those people who just pretend like they don’t know about the suffering, like they don’t see it every single day, like they don’t walk past it on their way to school or work.” 

In one of his earliest letters, Jun, only 12 at the time, responds to an encounter with a homeless woman on the street who is trying to sell her baby for food. Jun, as indignant as he is compassionate, unintentionally defines exactly who Jay is in his suburban life of drift.

“Truth is a hungry thing.” 

The news of Jun’s death impacts Jay in ways he cannot entirely explain. He has been stirred from his indifference to confront the real world. His first reaction is to find out what he can about the Filipino government’s crackdown on drug abuse using the reach of the internet. He finds that the more he learns, the more he wants to learn.

“You’re basically white.” 

Seth intends this offhand remark as a compliment to Jay’s uncanny ability to fit into the very white, very American suburban world. Until the death of his cousin, Jay has almost completely neglected the part of him that is Filipino.

“The possibility that Jun died like one of the people from this article transforms my sorrow into white-hot anger.” 

Jay’s reaction to Jun’s death reveals both how far Jay has come and far he has to go. His emotional reaction measures how his cousin’s death has stirred him from his life of drift. His certainty that Jun was a victim, however, indicates his lingering need for simplifications, for a world cleanly divided into good guys and bad guys.

“Sometimes I feel like growing up is slowly peeling back these layers of lies.” 

During his flight to Manila, Jay ponders how parents lie to their kids and tell them the importance of college, studying hard, and getting a job. Shaken by Jun’s death, which dispels Jay’s indifference and restructures his priorities, Jay begins to suspect the essential lie of that promise.

“I didn’t expect to find all the answers here, but I expected to find something of what used to be. I didn’t think that they would have erased him from their lives so thoroughly.” 

Until he meets Mia, Jay plays detective. Staying in Jun’s old room, Jay expects the room to be a trove of clues just like in the movies. What he finds is chilling—an empty room devoid of life and personality. As far as his family is concerned, Jun simply ceased to exist.

“It is very difficult to describe what the slums are like […] it is the kind of thing you need to experience for yourself to begin to understand. Like a full moon or a typhoon or love (so I am told).” 

Jun’s letter reveals the strategy through which Jay will become educated. First-hand experience will teach Jay the reality of life in the Philippines and, in turn, his responsibility for that world.

“Engineering.” 

Jay lies to his uncle. Rather than admit he has no life plan, or that he thinks it might be cool to study video game design and create digital funhouses that provide escape for other gaming addicts, Jay says he is off to college to study engineering. Unlike game design, engineering suggests a practical major designed to improve the world.

“There is more to Jun’s story than anyone here is letting on.” 

When Jay figured out that Grace sent the anonymous post that encouraged him to come to the Philippines, Jay felt he was a detective. Now he suspects there might be more here than a whodunit. He suspects that perhaps Jun was not a victim and that those who appeared most antagonistic to Jun might not be villains.

“Isn’t that better than spending four years studying something you don’t care about to get a job you don’t really want to do for the rest of your life?” 

Mia, two years older than Jay and already using her education to help the world, confronts Jay with the question he long resists asking himself. In posing her critique of his wasted life as a question, Mia compels Jay himself to confront her loaded question and engage in self-reflection.

“You can hold on to me if you need to.” 

Jay maintains an on-again-off-again relationship with a girl back home. Mia offers something startlingly different. They go figure skating and, ironically, Jay, from Michigan, falters while the tropical-born Mia glides across the ice. Her offer to help extends far beyond assisting Jay in skating.

“At the same time, though, Jun spoke of his belief in God a lot. I remember in one particularly long letter he wrote that if God existed at all, it probably wasn’t in the way everyone assumed.” 

The novel uses Catholicism as a symbol of the centuries’ old foreign occupation of the Philippines. The church suggests moral hypocrisies, gaudy pretense, and blatant uselessness. Young Jun voices such criticism through his question about the irony of a loving, caring God.

“I know you knew nothing when you arrived, but have you learned nothing today?” 

Uncle Maning says this after Jay finally confronts him with his suspicions about Maning’s involvement in Jun’s death. Maning’s disdain for Jay’s arrogant assumption that Jay has “solved” Jun’s murder exposes how much Jay still needs to learn.

“If we do not hold people accountable for their decisions, then we leave them free to destroy our society.” 

Jay must learn the two sides to the problem of drug abuse in the Philippines. However, what Jay wants is simplification. He wants to deny that his cousin was involved in drugs. Then he wants to make Jun the victim and the Duterte government the villain. Here his uncle explains the impact of drug abuse and the need for drug users to be held responsible.

“What happened to Jun is a tragedy whether or not he was a drug pusher […] But he is dead. We cannot bring him back to life. You need to accept that.” 

Aunt Chato, a formidable civil rights lawyer who works to protect the rights of the underprivileged, gives Jay a matter-of-fact assessment of Jun’s life and death. Acceptance, Chato knows, begins the process of addressing the social, economic, and political wrongs that made Jun’s death inevitable.

“If you are going to figure things out, you can’t hide from them. Silence will not save you.” 

Mia acts as Jay’s mentor. She shows him the courage that honest engagement requires. Jay begins to understand the importance of investigation and of asking questions.

“But then again this feels important and part of me is sick of never doing anything of significance in my life. I go to school. I do homework. I play video games. I’ll be going away to college in the fall, where I’ll pretty much do four more years of the same—and for what?” 

Jay steps beyond the reassuring confines of his life and suburban world to see the importance of activism as a necessary part of accepting his bicultural identity. As drift gives way to purpose, complacency gives way to involvement.

“It strikes me I cannot claim this country’s serene coves and sun-soaked beaches without also claiming its poverty, its problems, its history.”

When Jay’s aunts take him on a day trip to the swanky beach resort and Jay bobs about in the sapphire water, he is briefly the ultimate tourist, a visitor. Just as quickly, however, he admonishes himself in a moment that reflects his growing awareness of the contradictory nature of embracing his status as a hyphenated American.

“If we do not live according to what we feel is right in our hearts, then what is the point of any of this?” 

Jun asks a simple question in referring to his decision to stand up to his family and assert his right to be vegan because his conscience can no longer accept the moral implications of slaughtering animals. Jun’s conviction in his beliefs shows Jay the importance of taking a stand.

“We stay like that for a few minutes. I wonder at our hidden depths. We all have this same intense ability to love running through us. It wasn’t only Jun.”

Jay comforts Grace, confides in her, opens up to her. If Jay’s interest in Mia signals his evolution into an adult relationship, his friendship with Grace, his cousin, signals his appreciation for the community, support, and love that a family offers, an idea he never appreciated in Michigan.

“I imagine souls trapped overhead, bouncing against the steepled ceiling like invisible balloons whose strings have slipped from careless hands.” 

Jay is initially devastated by his awareness that Jun was a drug addict and a street pusher, and that his death was part of a government campaign to combat the drug problem. Jay’s Catholicism taught him that every death brings with it the sense of a soul saved. But with Jun’s death, Jay cannot find that comfort. He is ready to step away from the faux-comfort of religion and engage in the real-world problem-solution dynamic.

“None of us are just one thing, I guess. None of us. We all have the terrible and amazing power to hurt and help, to harm and heal.” 

In the letter Jay writes for Jun’s memorial service, he completes his education. He reveals the difficult lesson he has learned: People are contradictory and complex.