Patron Saints of Nothing Study Guide

Randy Ribay was born in Manila and grew up in the Midwestern United States, visiting the Philippines periodically. He received his Bachelor’s in English Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master’s in Language and Literacy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His novels include An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes (2015), After the Shot Drops (2018), and Patron Saints of Nothing (2019), which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. His interest in writing the novel stemmed from his experience growing up Filipino American; he hadn’t read many books that explored that experience. He currently lives in Stanford, California with his wife and teaches high school English.

The events in Patron Saints of Nothing follow the murder of a Filipino teenager named Jun. Jun’s death was tied to Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, as Jun was believed to be either doing or selling drugs and was killed by a vigilante. These events in the novel refer to the very real anti-drug policy of Duterte’s government, which seeks to eliminate illegal drugs in order to make the country safer, but enacts extreme and often unjustified violence in service of doing so. Duterte has sanctioned government murders of individuals suspected to be using or dealing drugs and has also encouraged the public to kill these individuals themselves, offering a bounty for dead suspects. It remains unclear exactly how many people have died because of Duterte’s war on drugs, and Duterte’s policies have been widely condemned by international organizations such as the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. Duterte’s policies, however, seen to be largely popular within the Philippines

Patron Saints of Nothing is a young adult novel about a Filipino American teenager. Ribay was interested in focusing on this specific experience, which he felt was missing from other young adult novels. In interviews, he’s cited Sandra Cisnero’s The House on Mango Street as one of his primary influences. Cisnero’s novel follows a young Mexican American girl as she enters adolescence and learns more about her community and the world around her. Ribay’s protagonist, Jay, is in a similar position at the start of Patron Saints of Nothing, as he must learn about who he is and where he belongs. While there are few novels about Filipino American teenagers, Ribay is one of many Filipino American authors writing today; others include Erin Entrada Kelly and Elaine Castillo.