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A Novel
by Cherry Lou Sy
A beautiful, tender yet searing debut novel about intergenerational fractures and coming of age, following a young woman who immigrates to the United States from the Philippines and finds herself adrift between familial expectations and her own burning desires.
Love Can't Feed You is a stunning, heartbreaking, and compressed look at coming of age, shifting notions of home, and the disintegration of the American dream. It asks us: What does it mean to be of multiple cultures without a road map for how to belong?
After a harrowing flight, Queenie, her younger brother, and their elderly Chinese father arrive in the United States from the Philippines. They're here to finally reunite with Queenie's Filipina mother, who has been working as a nurse in Brooklyn for the past few years—building a life that everyone hopes will set them up for better prospects. But her mother is not the same woman she was in the Philippines: Something in her face is different, almost hardened, and she seems so American already.
Queenie, on the cusp of adulthood, has big dreams of attending college, of spending her days immersed in the pages of books. But there is not enough money for her and her brother to both be in school, so first she must work. Queenie rotates through jobs and settles, tentatively, into her new life, but her brother begins to withdraw and act out, and her father's anger swells. As the pressures of assimilation compound, and the fissures within her family deepen into fractures, Queenie is left suspended between two countries, two identities, and two parents.
"Astonishing...Sy skillfully lays bare Queenie's wide-ranging emotions, from rage to sadness, and reveals the nuances of the family members' relationships. Rich details of Filipino culture such as folk stories and religious iconography are interwoven with gritty depictions of the compromises made by the immigrant characters...It's a knockout." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"There's a very good novel struggling to emerge from this one." —Kirkus Reviews
"Strong characterizations and heartfelt emotions are well depicted in this engrossing coming-of-age story, full of surprising narratives." —Library Journal
"Love Can't Feed You is a stunningly written, devastating book about all manners of suspension, between countries, between parents, between identities, between what it is to be a woman and what it is to be a girl. Cherry Lou Sy is a brilliant and exacting observer of human uncertainty and desire and this book is an utter thrill." —Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight
"One of my favorite genres is New York City immigrant literature, and so it is extra-thrilling to immerse oneself in a new entry in that canon! Cherry Lou Sy brings her expert playwriting gifts into the realm of Filipina coming-of-age novel and the results are stunning. At every turn, I was struck by our storyteller's stunning precision—that kind of attention to detail is often described as 'cold' and 'sharp' but in Cherry Lou Sy's moving novel the skill is sourced from much warmth and tenderness. Plus, the unwillingness to simplify and spoon-feed identity is key to why Love Can't Feed You works so well; this novel is an intensely engrossing master-class in a most real all-encompassing humanity!" —Porochista Khakpour, author of Tehrangeles
"Love Can't Feed You is a searing, searching, soulful novel of the utmost humanity. An intoxicating examination of desire and shame, at turns sublimely tender and incandescent with rage, it asks who deserves to live with dignity in an America divided by class, color, and capitalism. I devoured this book." —Cecily Wong, author of Kaleidoscope
This information about Love Can't Feed You was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Cherry Lou Sy is a writer and playwright originally from the Philippines currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU and her MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College, where she has been an adjunct lecturer in the English and American Studies departments. Cherry is also a teacher with PEN America's DREAMing Out Loud. She has received fellowships and residencies from VONA, Tin House, and elsewhere. Love Can't Feed You is her debut novel.
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