Monstress, By Lysley Tenario

1462 Words3 Pages

In Lysley Tenario’s book, “Monstress,” we see how the short stories, “The Brothers,” “Felix Starro,” “L’amour, CA,” “Monstress,” and “Save the I-Hotel,” connect to an overall theme on how society creates identities that negatively impacts people’s relationships. We first see how Erica’s relationship with her mom is negatively impacted because of Erica’s identity as a transgender in “The Brothers.” Erica knows herself pretty clear that she is transgender, but her identity is not readily accepted by Erica’s mom. Erica’s mom, when seeing Erica publicize his transgender identity on national TV, looked “like someone had hit her in the face” (p. 28). She later tells “ Eric[a] that [she] was dead to her” (p. 29). From these quotes, we can only imagine …show more content…

Felix Starro the III wanted to escape to the Americas with his lover, Charma, in hopes of finding opportunities and in hopes of escape Papa Felix’s business, in which Felix Starro the III knows is a business that cons its customers by extracting negativities, or chicken liver, from their bodies and afterwards giving the customers, like Mrs. Delgado, false hope that by extracting their negativities will heal them of their diseases. In a way, the words of “You don’t belong here,” (p. 56) said by a member of a studio, when Felix Starro the III was ten and was watching Papa Felix’s Exclusion of Negativities backstage, are the emotions that Felix Starro the III possesses about his identity as a Filipino man, who is in want of a “good and honest life” (p. 59) and in want of job opportunities in a mainly white-dominated society. The implication we see here in “Felix Starro” is that to be Filipino means to be able to live thinly on resources, such as traditional Filipino practices and, in the case of their Exclusion of Negativities business, “old connections to help [them] build a client list in California….where there [are] plenty of Filipinos in need of healing” (p. 56). Felix Starro the III wants to run away from this life, even if it means to give up his identity as a Filipino person. When he receives his new name, John Arroyo Cruz, from Flora …show more content…

In a society where “Manila moviegoers” are more interested in watching “imported Hollywood romance [than]...Checker’s low-budget horror,” (p. 2) Reva and Checkers struggle to compete with their competitors in the movie-making business. While Checkers hopes for a better future where people will love his Filipino films again, Reva is disillusioned by his hope and undermines his “minor local fame” by saying that “his movies [are] shoddily produced, illogically plotted, [and] clumsily directed” (p. 3). It is only when Reva meets Gazman from Hollywood that she feels like a woman again, an identity that society creates for her. Gazman also calls her a “Monstress” and not a “Monstrous” to feed her that image (p. 13). Yet, she acknowledges that when she played as a Squid Monster in Checker’s “The Squid Children of Cebu” horror film, her role “felt like [her] own skin” (p. 13). She was comfortable taking monstrous roles, yet, the roles she has now are unfamiliar and new. Even so, Checkers knows Reva so well that he tries to stop her from working with Gazman by telling her that, “‘On film...you will look like a whore’” (p. 21). In the end, their relationship is negatively impacted and Reva “slap[s] Checkers hard across the face” and tells him to leave her (p. 21). The identity in which Reva is seen as a woman and the identity that she takes on when acting

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