The protagonist of Patron Saints of Nothing, Jay Reguero, was born in the Philippines but moved to the United States when he was one. As a result, he feels stuck between two worlds and two cultures. The fact that he’s about to graduate high school exacerbates this feeling, as he isn’t sure what he wants to do after he finishes school or where he wants to live. Meanwhile, other people constantly try to tell Jay where he does and doesn’t belong, both in the United States and during his trip to the Philippines. After the events of the novel, Jay decides to take a gap year after high school and travel in the Philippines to better understand his identity and heritage. With this ending, the novel suggests that it’s up to an individual to decide where they belong, and that it’s okay for the answer to be complicated.
At home in the United States, Jay feels some degree of alienation from those around him. He has just been accepted into the University of Michigan but isn’t excited about going to college. He has no idea what he wants to do career-wise, but he feels that he’s expected to know. There’s no one he can talk to about this, because he and his best friend, Seth, never have “deep” conversations. Jay feels alone, because he doesn’t know where he belongs or what his future will look like. Later, Jay’s alienation becomes cultural as well as personal. After Jay learns about his cousin Jun’s death, he begins reading about drug war in the Philippines and is alarmed to realize how much he doesn’t know about his home country. Seth amplifies this alarm when he refers to Jay as being “basically white” because Jay acts the same as white boys at school. This upsets Jay, who feels that Seth can’t understand him or his experience. Even Jay’s parents can’t fully understand the specific position he’s in. Jay’s mom, who is white, insists that Jay doesn’t know and can’t fully grasp what’s happening in the Philippines. Meanwhile, Jay’s dad says that the family left the Philippines so that Jay could have a life in the United States, so Jay shouldn’t fixate on his home country. Jay’s older siblings are no longer living at home, so Jay is stuck in between his parents, who can’t seem to relate to his feelings of isolation and alienation.
Later, after traveling to the Philippines with a plan to investigate Jun’s death, Jay feels some degree of cultural dissonance, even as he also believes he belongs there. Jay doesn’t speak Tagalog or know much about the Philippines, which leads him to believe that he only knows “half of [himself].” When he stays at his Tito Maning’s home, these barriers lead to him being intentionally left out of conversations and resented by his uncle, who feels that Jay’s father abandoned his Filipino culture when he moved to the United States. In fact, his uncle thinks that because Jay doesn’t know the Filipino language of Tagalong—his “mother tongue”—he can’t know himself. As a result, Jay feels alone even when he’s with his Filipino family.
After Jay learns that Jun was murdered, he immediately wants to learn who killed him and seek justice. However, others—including his aunt—constantly tell him that not only doesn’t he understand the situation in the Philippines, but that he can’t understand it because he grew up in the United States. This frustrates Jay, as he feels that doing the right thing should “transcend nationality.” Still, Jay’s lack of understanding about Filipino politics does in fact prevent him from separating truth and lies: when he confronts Tito Maning, Jun’s father and a police chief, about Jay’s death, Tito Maning begins to defend the government, and Jay can’t tell whether Tito Maning is telling the truth or lying. Jay’s separation from the Philippines leads to him feeling not only alone but helpless. At the same time, Jay feels that he belongs in the Philippines as much as any of his family does. He resembles everyone else in the country, and he was born in the country, even though he moved away when he was too young to really remember. Still, he feels like “that first year mattered,” because he recognizes the Philippines on some innate level, even if he doesn’t necessarily remember it. Although Jay feels isolated from his family in certain ways, he also feels that he belongs in the Philippines, which leads to some internal confusion. Jay is at home in two countries, but he doesn’t quite fit in in either place.
Ultimately, Jay realizes that only he can decide where he belongs, and that the answer isn’t necessarily simple. While he doesn’t end the novel with a perfect understanding of the Philippines, he comes to identify himself both as Filipino and American and decides to return to the Philippines for a gap year before—possibly—going to college. Jay embraces his own in-between identity and uses it to assert his belonging in two different places, something he had to decide to do.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Culture and Belonging ThemeTracker
Culture and Belonging Quotes in Patron Saints of Nothing
She takes a deep breath. “Jay, it's easy for us to pass judgment. But we don't live there anymore, so we can't grasp the extent to which drugs have affected the country.”
[…]
“So I'm not allowed to have an opinion? To say it's wrong or inhumane?”
[…]
“That's not what I'm saying, Jay.”
“What are you saying?”
“That you need to make sure that opinion is an informed one.”
There's obviously no way to argue that point without sounding like an idiot, but knowing that doesn't dissolve my newfound anger. “So what's your informed opinion?”
“That it's not my place to say what's right or wrong in a country that's not mine.”
“But you lived there. You're married to a Filipino. You have Filipino children.”
“Filipino American children,” she corrects. “And it's not the same.”
“Man,” he says, shaking his head, “I forgot you're Filipino.”
“Huh?”
“You're basically white.”
I stop, stung. “What do you mean by that?”
[…]
He lets out an exasperated sigh. “I just meant you act like everyone else at school.”
“You mean like all the white kids?”
“Dude, our school's all white kids, so, yeah.”
Except it's not. The majority are, for sure, but his generalization—spoken with such confidence, such ease—makes me feel like he's erasing the rest of us.
“It's easy to romanticize a place when it's far away […] Filipino Americans have a tendency to do that. Even me. Sometimes I miss it so much. The beaches. The water. The rice paddies. The carabao. The food. Most of all, my family.” He closes his eyes, and I wonder if he's imagining himself there right now. After a few moments, he opens them again, but he stares at his hands. “But as many good things as there are, there are many bad things, things not so easy to see from far away. When you are close, though, they are sometimes all you see.”
He sighs. “It is a shame. When your kuya was first starting to speak, I said to your tatay, ‘You must teach him Tagalog and Bikol,’ and do you know what your tatay said to me?”
“No,” I respond, not wanting to know.
“‘The boy does not need to be confused,’” he says in a feminine, mock-American accent meant to imitate my dad. “‘Christian will be going to America, so he needs only good English.’” He lets out a sarcastic laugh. “And what is the result? None of his children knows their mother tongue. And if you do not know your mother tongue, you cannot know your mother. And if you do not know your mother, you do not understand who you are.”
Since he already knows, I may as well ask about the contents of the note on the back of the list I found in his desk, about how he told his subordinate who located Jun to proceed. But I feel drained, lost. A compass missing its needle. What would be the point when I can't sense whether anything he says is truthful or not?
Tito Maning reaches the car and turns to me. “I am disappointed my brother did not teach you to respect your elders.”
He expects an apology. I stay quiet.
“You do not live here. You do not speak any of our languages. You do not know our history. Your mother is a white American. Yet, you presume to speak to me as if you knew anything about me, as if you knew anything about my son, as if you knew anything about this country.”
Tita Chato puts out her cigarette. “What happened to Jun is a tragedy, whether or not he was a drug pusher.” She pauses, gathering her thoughts, then continues. “But he is dead. We cannot bring him back to life. You need to accept that. There is nothing we can do about it except mourn.”
I clench my jaw.
She's not all that different from Tito Maning. Though her words were delivered with more compassion, they were the same: I am not truly Filipino, so I don’t understand the Philippines. But isn't this deeper than that, doesn’t this transcend nationality? Isn’t there some sense of right and wrong about how human beings should be treated that applies no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak?
I'm alone in this. Somebody needs to clear Jun’s name even if nothing comes of it. We failed him in life. We should not fail him in death.
But standing here with my feet in the water, listening to the sound of Tagalog and maybe other languages mixed with laughter and the crashing of the waves, smelling the chicken inasal or pork inihaw grilling behind me as swallows flit past overhead to their nests high in the surrounding cliffs, I feel like that first year mattered in a way I've never felt it did before.
[…]
It strikes me that I cannot claim this country's serene coves and sun-soaked beaches without also claiming its poverty, its problems, its history. To say that any aspect of it is part of me is to say that all of it is part of me.
