The Mango Tree

February 19, 2024
Restaurant critic Tometich’s witty, open-hearted debut recounts growing up in a mixed Filipino-American household in the Sunshine State. She begins in a Florida courtroom circa 2015: “Rows of orange people sit handcuffed,” she writes, “ one of them is my mother.” Josefina, who immigrated from the Philippines to work as a nurse, has been arrested for shooting at a man she claims was stealing from her mango tree; none of her three adult children are surprised. Though all the ingredients are in place for the “most Florida of Oh, Florida stories,” Tometich instead shifts gears to unfurl a complex coming-of-age chronicle set in a household buffeted by marital strife. At the center is Josefina, who married the white ne’er-do-well son of well-off Northeasterners. Tometich describes her parents’ harrowing fights and the moments of refuge she found with her paternal grandmother. Amid it all, Tometich yearned for her family to be “normal,” before eventually learning to embrace the abnormalities that “make us less vanilla and... more tangy green mango dipped in bagoong.” Tometich writes with awe and humor about her irascible mother, who provided her children with a middle-class upbringing, while never underplaying the emotional toll extracted along the way. It’s a moving account of coming to terms with the forces—good and bad—that shape a person. Agent: Kayla Lightner, Ayesha Pande Literary.

February 15, 2024
A food writer's account of her mother and her influence. Tometich opens with the extreme yet amusing lengths that her mother, a Filipino immigrant, has gone to in order to protect the fruit of her beloved mango trees. That story serves as an entr�e into the more general volatility and stubbornness of the author's mother, who arrived in the U.S. from Manila as a nurse and married the only child of a well-to-do New England family. Her immigrant determination clashed with his lack of direction and urgency, creating a childhood for Tometich and her siblings that was marked by the storms of violent tempers. One might expect the memoir of a food writer to discuss how either food or writing were cornerstone elements of her youth, reprieves from chaos and grief. But the sense that Tometich gives of having almost fallen into her career (in which she has enjoyed a fair amount of success) as a restaurant critic belies the skill with narrative and language that she displays. Her showing is stronger than her telling; with power and resonance, the author recalls vivid and visceral details that gave contour to her childhood--some perhaps expected in the narrative of a first-generation American, others more severe and startling. As the writer ages, starts her own family, and builds the distance and perspective required to contextualize her mother's story and character, certain passages seem to rush to a tidy conclusion, with almost clich� reflections. However, these attempts at a clean resolution counterbalance a text that, on the whole, leans into the struggles of both mother and daughter, without forcing peace between or within either of them. Tometich's measured tenderness and understanding grant complexity and authenticity to a story about finding one's identity and owning its source. A well-paced, nuanced memoir by a practiced storyteller.

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March 15, 2024
The Mango Tree is a candid account of half-Filipino, half-Yugoslavian Annabelle Tometich's coming-of-age in Fort Myers, Florida, and her love-hate relationship with her mother. The book starts in 2015 with a court hearing involving the author's irrepressible Filipino mother, who unapologetically fired a BB gun on fleeing perps who stole some mangoes from her backyard. The author, the eldest of three siblings, mentions that the mango tree felt like her mother's fourth child. Tometich's narration, interspersed with sardonic bite, feels a little clunky, switching time frames and subject matter at a frenetic pace. Tometich's life is filled with frustrations and she frequently asserts that she is a nobody, even though, with her mom working as an ICU nurse, the family lived a comfortable life, and Tometich had strong family support from Filipino relatives who stayed with them (Tometich's Yugoslavian dad died when she was nine). An American-born teenager living with an immigrant tiger mom--readers have seen this before as familiar fodder in family relationship dramas, especially in households with Asian matriarchs.

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