By Brigette Hinnant
Content notes: drug use
The Filipino American experience is a unique one due to the fact that the Philippines have been doubly colonized, once by Spain and once by the United States. A Filipino who grew up in the United States has a drastically different life experience compared to a Filipino born in the Philippines; a U.S. raised Filipino has not witnessed the effects of their culture’s colonization firsthand.
In Randy Ribay’s 2019 novel, Patron Saints of Nothing, Ribay explores the importance of U.S. raised Filipinos connecting with their heritage and homeland through his teenage main character, Jay. In order to connect and critique their culture, Filipino Americans need to both learn from those raised in the Philippines as well as release their western biases, or else they risk perpetrating the same oppressive words and actions that the colonizers once used, especially pertaining to postcolonial issues such as substance abuse. In his novel, Ribay shows that being attuned to one’s culture and history is beneficial for garnering a stable, cultural sense of self that allows for a new decolonial understanding of self.
In Patron Saints of Nothing, Ribay tells the story of a teenage boy, Jay, whose cousin was murdered in the Philippines because of President Duterte’s handling of the Filipino war on drugs. President Duterte’s method to eradicate substance abuse in the nation was to eradicate all drug users and sellers via death. Both police officers and vigilante citizens were legally allowed to execute those with relations to drugs, because the deaths were seen as being done for the greater good of the country. While it may surprise many who are not from the Philippines on how this methodology was approved, a majority of Filipino citizens approved of these deaths because they also saw it as the most effective method to reduce drug use. When Jay receives word that his cousin, Jun, had died, he decides to uncover the true reason for Jun’s death by spending a week in the Philippines without his parent’s approval. While it may seem like a noble cause, in this process of figuring out the truth of Jun’s death, Jay must re-evaluate what it means to be a Filipino due to his American upbringing after immersing himself in Filipino culture.
Jun was murdered over assumed drug use. Jay’s uncle and Jun’s father, Tito Maning, is a Filipino nationalist and police chief who often takes on cases related to substance abuse. However, he is also a controlling man who supports President Duterte and despises the United States because of the Philippines’ history of colonization. Jun was kicked out of the house as a teenager because he started using marijuana, and Tito Maning did not tolerate drug use in his house. Jay believes that Jun was a kind and empathetic person who could cause no harm, so it would not be possible for him to be murdered over drugs, either as someone who used it or sold it. After learning about Jun’s drug use, Jay says in disbelief, “there was no way he would have sold drugs. He was too good.” Jay places Jun on a pedestal because he believes that only bad people used drugs, so if Jun is a good person, then his death was an unreasonable conclusion. Jay is forced to confront his biases towards people who use drugs because his prejudiced thinking prevents the truth from coming to light sooner.
As a postcolonial nation, the Philippines has to deal with the trauma brought unto them without help from other nations to aid in trauma relief. There is a large, impoverished community, and within impoverished communities there are people who use drugs. Jay, as a person raised in the U.S., has a strong stance about drug use and impoverished communities. He believes that people who have a low income cannot be happy and that they seek drugs, so he concludes that impoverished communities are unsafe and depressed. He expresses, “I’m ashamed that I expected more misery.” This is a similar sentiment that many Americans have towards homeless people as well—that it is better to let impoverished people suffer than provide them with support. However, Jay must confront his biases head-on to continue solving the mystery of his cousin’s actual cause of death. Mia, a friend of Jun’s sister, takes Jay to a low-income community to learn more about Jun, and Jay has firsthand experiences of life in these areas. While visiting a rundown part of town, Mia tells Jay that those who live there are “doing the best they can with the best they have, I suppose. Doing the same thing any of us do—only in smaller spaces with much less privacy. They’re finding ways to behave.” This interaction makes Jay realize that the people who live in these communities are not miserable; instead, they are making the best with what they have even if appearances do not reflect what a person may consider to be a good home.
While living by himself, Jun did not have a lot of money, so he had to live in an impoverished community. Due to his lack of funds, he could not afford to eat daily, so he began taking a drug called shabu, also known as meth, because it was cheap and acted as a hunger suppressant. When Jay keeps reiterating his ignorant views that only bad people use drugs, his cousin Grace (Jun’s sister) steps in and says, “Just because he was a user, a pusher, it doesn’t mean that his life was worthless. It doesn’t mean that there wasn’t good in him.” This serves as a wakeup call for Jay; he realizes that he was being unfair to Jun and others who use drugs because he didn’t consider what would make a person use drugs. There are many reasons for people to resort to using hard drugs, such as meth, but there are not enough resources and rehabilitation opportunities to help people not have to resort to using them. As a result of western colonization, many postcolonial communities especially deal with the aftermath of environmental, human, and economic exploitation which keeps postcolonial nations poor rather than able to better their living situations. With the low wages, many people earn a living by having their land and labor exploited. Drugs can then become a method for people to cope with their poor living situations, such as how Jun used drugs to suppress his need to eat, as food can be expensive. Jay realizes that good people can still use drugs as Jun had created a website dedicated to revealing the brutality of the war on drugs with a website called “GISING NA PH!” which translates to “WAKE UP PHILIPPINES!” Despite Tito Maning’s dislike of drug users, Maning did his best to keep Jun out of the police force’s eye. However, even though Jun was trying to expose the brutality of the war on drugs, he ended up meeting the same tragic end due to a citizen vigilante recognizing him as a drug user and murdering him on the spot.
Before the novel begins, Jay had been disconnected from his Filipino culture for most of his life. He is ignorant and imposes his western biases on the Philippines because he does not understand any other way to view what he witnesses. His firsthand experience witnessing the war on drugs and being on the receiving end of losing someone important to him highlights many cultural differences to Jay. The war on drugs in the Philippines is handled poorly and results in unwarranted deaths when rehabilitation and social programs would be a more productive measure to prevent future drug use if privileged countries stepped in to help rather than blaming postcolonial countries for their coping strategies.
Brigette Hinnant is a current graduate student at Washington State University in the MA rhetoric and composition program. Her fields of study are Asian American studies, decolonial theory, and feminist theory.