- Rachel Egoian
Elaine Castillo's America Is Not the Heart: What Does It Mean to Be a Filipino Woman?
In Elaine Castillo’s debut novel, America is not the Heart, it delves into the themes of Filipino suffering and survival in which we explore a generational story of three Filipino women, each revealing the physical and emotional scars of their past while living in the Philippines and migrating to America.


The story further explores the role of the faith healers in which Roni’s grandma is a bruha or witch doctor, who tries to help her with her eczema skin condition. Again, we see representation of beauty and health emphasizing the issue of difference and otherness as problematic with society. Roni’s grandma believes her eczema and scars are a curse, making Roni believe that she will go to hell because of the engkantos or kapre demons. On other the hand, Hero also shares her experience growing up with her skin condition of eczema along with her injured thumbs, which represents her own physical or emotional suffering, i.e. anxiety and trauma of her past.
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Rachel Egoian - Pleasant Hill, CA
Contributor
Originally from the Bay Area and a graduate from University of California, Santa Cruz in Literature and Education, Rachel has a profound interest in Asian American literature and communities. In addition, she is a recent graduate student at San Francisco State University for the English Literature Master’s program. Coming from a mixed ethnic background as an Armenian, Irish and Filipina, she values the importance of culture and self-identity. Through the foundations of literary criticism, she encourages and stresses the need for diversity in literature.