Word: caridad
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Last Time I Saw Mother is a story about identity that loses itself in the complex worlds of four different narrators. The book centers around Caridad, a woman of Chinese, Spanish and Philippine ancestry, and her search for her true roots, obscured by family secrets for over forty years. Her voice begins and ends the novel, but in between, her story is told through those of her mother Thelma, her aunt Emma and her cousin Ligaya. "After all," says Caridad, "do we not all belong in each other's stories...
Unfortunately for Caridad (and Chai), her own story is simply lost among the histories of her family. The novel is only 340 pages long, and the print is large--there isn't enough room to properly treat each woman's complete life story, or even to tell Caridad's correctly...
Aunt Emma has been through poverty, war, widowhood, hunger and impossible choices. She struggles with what to tell Caridad, saying, "When you take the cloth in your hand and pull at this loose thread, there is a danger more stitches will come loose. Telling the truth is like that, it is much like telling a lie-- one leads to another. And soon all the stitches unravel, and the hem falls free because you pulled at just one loose thread. How much can I tell her? When do I stop...
Cousin Ligala's story is also included in Caridad's history, though it is hard to know why. Pressured by familial obligations to marry for money and not love, she lives a life of unfulfilled dreams. Yet even her story, as written, is unfulfilling. We meet the rich man she marries, but there are only a few sentences about the man she truly loves. Her life isn't fully developed, leaving the reader wanting to know more...