By Audrey Fong
A former Filipina action star, two directionless teenagers, a “grandmaster in the Filipino martial art of escrima”: meet the cast of Lysley Tenorio’s debut novel, The Son of Good Fortune. Like in Tenorio’s 2012 short story collection, Monstress, The Son of Good Fortune centers on characters of the Filipino diaspora.
The Son of Good Fortune opens with Maxima, the former action star, flirting with men online. Pretending to still be in the Philippines, Maxima talks to men in the U.S. through dating sites like “Good Catholic Filipinas,” makes them fall in love with her, and then asks them to send her money – all written with no judgment on Tenorio’s side. As the novel progresses, we meet Excel, Maxima’s son, and learn why he has returned to his mother’s home in Colma, California. Nine months earlier, he and his girlfriend, Sab, had decided to move to Hello City, a fictitious desert community in Southern California, to build a new life for themselves together. However, after a surprise pregnancy and an accidental fire that burns down Hello City’s central square, Excel is forced to move back to his hometown of Colma to both give Sab space to decide what she wants to do with the pregnancy and to make enough money to rebuild the town square he burned down.
The novel travels back and forth between recollections of Excel’s childhood with Maxima and Joker (the escrima master), scenes of his life in Hello City with Sab, and present day, in Colma, where he is now back with Maxima and attempting to save money. The big catch of the story though is when Excel learns on his 10th birthday that he’s “TNT,” or “tago ng tago,” a Filipino term meaning “hiding and hiding” to describe undocumented immigrants. The story of his birth goes like this: After getting pregnant by a useless father, Maxima asks her former escrima master, Joker, for help. He pays for her to fly to the U.S., where she may live with him. However, while on a flight to the U.S., Maxima gave birth to Excel, meaning he could not gain citizenship because they had not landed in the U.S. yet.
While the novel steers clear of politics and focuses mostly on Excel’s life as a semi-aimless teenager, his undocumented status largely shapes his actions in the novel and his personality – why he never got a drivers license, why he’s never travelled, why he’s afraid to get too close to people, and why he has to return to Colma. A tacky and tired spy themed pizza spot in Colma – think low-budget Chuck E. Cheese – called The Pie Who Loved Me is the only business Excel knows of who will hire him despite being undocumented. There, Excel toils away at demeaning and physically dangerous tasks to earn the $10,000, illustrating one way in which undocumented immigrants remain easily exploitable. With no social security number, they are unable to find work at more trustworthy and safer jobs. But without proper documentation, Excel is forced to work dangerous jobs at below minimum wage, and in one scene, goes without pay after an argument with his boss.
Ultimately, The Son of Good Fortune gives face to an often unseen and hidden population; it reframes our understanding of who undocumented immigrants are. By providing a face for this population, the novel forces the reader to look at them as human beings, not some faceless threat, and to understand how being undocumented makes them vulnerable to exploitation. While Tenorio does not outright say he wants readers to leave with a different understanding of undocumented immigrants and his lessons are more of a soft sell rather than glaring and outright, there is a clear sense that Tenorio wants readers to respect these characters as humans, as family members, and as community members. By cushioning the story of an undocumented immigrant in the familiar frame of a coming-of-age story, Tenorio can more easily introduce readers to an undocumented family and have readers relate to them.
The Son of Good Fortune is available from Barnes and Noble, Book Outlet, Bookshop, and Harper Collins.
Audrey Fong is a writer, interested in food, coming of age stories, and Asian American narratives. She earned her B.A. in English from UC Irvine and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing from Chapman University. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.