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I received this book for free from Penguin Teen in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay Narrator: Ramón de Ocampo, Jesse Inocalla, Manny Jacinto & JB Tadena
Length: 6 hours 41 minutes
Published by Penguin on August 27, 2024
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Family / Multigenerational, Young Adult Fiction / Historical / United States / General, Young Adult Fiction / People & Places / United States / Asian American & Pacific Islander
Pages: 288
Format: Audiobook, Hardcover
Source: Penguin Teen
Buy on Libro.fm
Goodreads
From the author of the National Book Award finalist Patron Saints of Nothing comes an emotionally charged, moving novel about four generations of Filipino American boys grappling with identity, masculinity, and their fraught father-son relationships.
Watsonville, 1930. Francisco Maghabol barely ekes out a living in the fields of California. As he spends what little money he earns at dance halls and faces increasing violence from white men in town, Francisco wonders if he should’ve never left the Philippines.
Stockton, 1965. Between school days full of prejudice from white students and teachers and night shifts working at his aunt’s restaurant, Emil refuses to follow in the footsteps of his labor organizer father, Francisco. He’s going to make it in this country no matter what or who he has to leave behind.
Denver, 1983. Chris is determined to prove that his overbearing father, Emil, can’t control him. However, when a missed assignment on “ancestral history” sends Chris off the football team and into the library, he discovers a desire to know more about Filipino history―even if his father dismisses his interest as unamerican and unimportant.
Philadelphia, 2020. Enzo struggles to keep his anxiety in check as a global pandemic breaks out and his abrasive grandfather moves in. While tensions are high between his dad and his lolo, Enzo’s daily walks with Lolo Emil have him wondering if maybe he can help bridge their decades-long rift.
Told in multiple perspectives, Everything We Never Had unfolds like a beautifully crafted nesting doll, where each Maghabol boy forges his own path amid heavy family and societal expectations, passing down his flaws, values, and virtues to the next generation, until it’s up to Enzo to see how he can braid all these strands and men together.
Review: Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay
Thank you to @penguinteen for the gifted copy and for @librofm for the ALC. I have been looking forward to Randy Ribay’s book, Everything We Never Had. I’m so glad I got the opportunity to read it early!
Everything We Never Had is definitely a book that I will be recommending to English teachers left and right! This was an amazing second book by educator and writer Randy Ribay. I wish that I had put pen to paper a little earlier in the week. Then I could have added a triumphant “I told you so!” stamp to my book reviewing record. Because this book was just nominated for the long list for the National Book Awards!
Father-Son Relationships
I found myself wrapped up in the different stories and experiences of each man in the book. Their hope and desires for their futures are illustrated so well when they are young men even as it feels like those hopes and dreams conflict with their fathers’ wishes, absence and/or presence. A generational tale woven with history and emotions. Stories that span from one continent to another; a migration tale and an Americanization tale. Each son wants to move on with their dreams, but they must contend with a father who is still actively pursuing his own.
The culmination of three generations of fathers and sons, Emil, Chris and Enzo being under one roof, forces a reckoning between them all. Healing that has been needed for years must find its way to the surface during the pandemic that brings them together. The timeline goes back between the past and present as the trio develop an uncomfortable relationship with each other that makes each man confront their grievances with one another.
Filipino-American History
Filipino-American history in California is intertwined with the migrant farmworkers in the region. Francisco, the young man who begins the Maghabol family journey in the United States, faces racism and violence as a farmworker. A 16 year old who left the Philippines behind for what many call the American Dream. But there are so many racist restrictions that he barely makes any money picking apples. It’s the only job he can get as a Filipino. It’s the beginning of a generational story where he becomes a labor leader and organizer who spends more time away from home than with this his son, Emil.
I found the story between Francisco and Emil to be especially powerful. Francisco is choosing between his people and his family. Emil feels pain and rejection of not being more important than “the people” to his father. Each young man is shaped by not only his experiences with his father but how they want to do the opposite of their fathers in order to “be better.” It is a layered part of the narrative that also contrasts the difference between an immigrant parent and a first-generation American child.
The American Dream
One chapter that especially hit me hard was “A Country of Broken Promises.” It was so powerful when I was listening to it that I immediately paused the audiobook and re-read it on my own. The power of perception, history and hope is spoken to in this chapter.
I hope many educators will consider using this book in their classrooms. There is so much richness and depth! You can focus on characterization, POV, generational relationships, history and historical context, psychology and so much more.
Filipino American History Month is in October. So, if you need additional motivation to pick this book up and read it, there you go.
About the Author
Check out his website: https://www.randyribay.com/
| Randy Ribay is an award-winning and NY Times bestselling writer of young adult fiction. He is the author of Patron Saints of Nothing, which was selected as a Freeman Book Award winner and as a finalist for the National Book Award, LA Times Book Prize, Walden Book Award, Edgar Award, International Thriller Writers Award, and the CILIP Carnegie Medal. He also contributed a short story to the Printz Award-winning anthology edited by A.S. King, The Collectors. His other works include Project Kawayan, After the Shot Drops, and An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes. His most recent novels, Avatar, the Last Airbender: The Reckoning of Roku (Amulet/Abrams) and Everything We Never Had (Kokila/Penguin) were published in the summer of 2024. Born in the Philippines and raised in the Midwest, Randy earned his BA in English Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Ed.M. in Language and Literacy from Harvard Graduate School of Education. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, son, and cat-like dog. (You can pronounce his last name correctly by saying it like REE-bye.) |
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