Dear Lit Loves,
This month I read the memoir, The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony by Annabelle Tometich. The interesting part of the opening of the book is that the reader thinks this is going to be a book about a daughter and her siblings who have to bail their mother out of jail because she shot at the car of a man who dared try and steal mangoes from the trees in her yard! No. This is a book about a quite complicated family.
This narrative revolves around the author learning to find herself through a childhood that was quite heartbreaking and precarious. At one point, her father's mom lived with the family and the grandmother absolutely detested the girl's mother simply because she was someone from a foreign country. Never mind that Annabelle Tometich's mother allowed her mother-in-law to move in with their family in order to help in her caretaking. This is a mother with a generous and devoted heart who believes when it comes to family, helping is essential even if a relative is demeaning to you.
Next, we witness a young Annabelle coping with the fallout of her mother and father's explosive fights. Her dad often leaves home and much of the parenting and household duties fall to Annabelle's mother, Josefina. And then Annabelle learns that her father has died by suicide though she will tell others that her father died in a car accident just to avoid all the stigma that comes along with sharing that a family member has died via suicide.
The author has a contentious relationship with her mom who likes to save everything including broken crayons as she can place them in a balikbayan box to take with her on the next trip made to her home country because the relatives there have so little compared to the abundance the family enjoys in Fort Myers, Florida. Also, the author's mom has a distinct problem hoarding just about everything especially VHS tapes and DVDs of various American television shows and movies. Though Annabelle struggles to keep the house clean, her mom appears to prefer it in a catastrophic state. The truce: live and let live.
Annabelle sees her mother in a whole different light when they take a trip to Manila. While in Manila, Annabelle gets to see how her mother's extended family lives quite poorly. The family in Manila is thankful just to have a roof over the heads and food on the table. Annabelle sees what it is like living in a desolate, poor area of the world where her mom essentially raised her siblings. Her mother brings all the balikbayan boxes with her for her relatives and is generous with her time, money, and profound love.
At one point, life becomes wo overwhelming for Annabelle's mom that she insists they are going to leave Fort Myers, Florida and move to Manila. In order to prevent this, Annabelle must start helping her mom with getting her brother and sister to school, cooking, cleaning, and mowing the yard.
Finally, the reader sees Annabelle go off to college in Florida and befriend people while attending a university. She loves college life so much that she actually stays year-round at the university. This part of the book speaks to the point of how we are unable to choose are biological family, but once we are adults, we can choose who we would like to have in our lives that we treat as family.
Young Annabelle works in the food industry, as a journalist, and by the end of the book, we find Annabelle with her own family at a neighborhood party. When she overhears someone telling the story of how a local woman shot what I believe was a BB gun at a man who was on her property stealing mangoes, Annabelle claims and defends her mom for the strong, independent woman she is and for how much of those same qualities her mother, Josefina, has helped her to also acquire.
What a heartbreaking and dynamic memoir. I found myself at times having to put this book down due to some of the big issues tackled in the book. In the end, I found myself relating to the author in that we all come from dysfunctional families and we are defined by them in ways both positive and negative.
A solid, eloquent, and emotionally moving memoir.
Till my next review,
Grace (Amy)
