Thank you too, Lauren Flores Fantauzzo (My Heart Underwater)

“When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Press, 1999)

One day my lola made a sharp zip­ping sound with her lips and tongue, and sliced her point­er fin­ger down. I real­ized she was evok­ing bombs lac­er­at­ing the air. The sounds of Japan­ese and Amer­i­can destruc­tion in the Philip­pines were still so vivid in her mind, decades lat­er in Cal­i­for­nia. These were his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ries I had nev­er seen depict­ed in fic­tion, until Manguer­ra Brainard’s 1994 nov­el. Nine-year-old Yvonne Macaraig lives in a hap­py fam­i­ly in Cebu, until the inva­sion by Japan­ese forces dur­ing World War Two. Her father is an engi­neer who suf­fers from a bru­tal cap­ture, and Yvonne wit­ness­es the unspeak­able loss­es her neigh­bors endure. Through­out the 1941 to 1943 years of occu­pa­tion, Yvonne is buoyed by reminders of super­nat­ur­al Philip­pine beings and pow­ers. Lay­dan, a domes­tic work­er essen­tial to the fam­i­ly, cooks their meals, and shares oral his­to­ries of folk­lore and sur­vival, help­ing her to thrive.

My mom hand­ed me the book when I was a year old­er than the nar­ra­tor. When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept was a first les­son of the human­i­ty and res­cue inher­ent in sto­ries. The nar­ra­tor in my own YA nov­el is trau­ma­tized in more sub­tle ways, but as Yvonne’s rela­tion­ships car­ried her, so too is my nar­ra­tor restored by fam­i­ly and friend­ships. Brainard first taught me how to depict a young Pinay, and gave me the courage to add anoth­er to read­ers’ shelves.