An investigation into Filipino society and its past in this novel set in the Philippines under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte.
THE HUMAN ZOO
by Sabina Murray
Grove Atlantic, August 2021
(chez Sterling Lord Literistic)
Filipina-American Ting Velosa travels from New York to Manila, both to escape her imminent divorce, and to begin research for a biography of Timicheg, an indigenous Filipino man brought to New York at the start of the twentieth century to be exhibited as part of a ‘human zoo.’ But as she speaks with family and friends, and revisits old haunts, she finds modern Filipino society languishing under the capricious dictatorship of Procopio ‘Copo’ Gumboc. To make her way, Ting must balance the aristocratic traditions of her family, seemingly at odds with both situation and circumstance; reconnecting with her high school friend Inchoy, a gay socialist and professor of philosophy; and beginning a new affair with her old boyfriend Chet, a businessman with questionable ties to the regime. All the while, family duty dictates that Ting be responsible for Laird, a cousin’s fiancé, who has come to the Philippines to rediscover his roots, nevermind not speaking a word of Tagalog. As Ting works on her book, she cannot extricate herself from Laird’s insurgent nationalism, nor from the increasingly repressive regime, even as she finds ways to remain on the periphery of lurking danger. Shuffled between history and the unfolding present, Ting finds herself inevitably colliding with the question of whether the country of her birth will ever change.
Sabina Murray is the author of the novels Forgery, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, Slow Burn, and Valiant Gentlemen, a New York Times Notable Book for 2016, as well as two short story collections, the Pen/Faulkner Award winning The Caprices, and Tales of the New World. She grew up in Australia and the Philippines and is currently a member of the M.F.A. faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In addition to the PEN/Faulkner Award, she has also received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant, a UMass Research and Creativity Award, and a Fred R. Brown Literary Award from the University of Pittsburgh, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe, and a Michener Fellow at UT Austin. She is the writer of the screenplay for the film “Beautiful Country,” for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and a Norwegian Amanda Award.
What do you do when you suddenly find yourself confronted with a mortal threat to your society’s fundamental, stabilizing principles? Mildred Harnack chose to stand. Milwaukee-born, she was the leader of the largest anti-Nazi resistance group in Germany, and the only American woman to be put to death on Hitler’s orders. Despite its unmatched vastness, the record of World War II atrocity and nobility will forever remain incomplete. This ever-expanding volume of belligerence and courage is perhaps the most gravely gendered historical document we have; a war perpetrated, suffered and recounted by men. There are periodically polite acknowledgments of the roles played by woman in ‘aiding’ the war effort, but these usually have the hollow ring of tokenism. Mildred Harnack’s short but monumental life shows us just how incomplete that record remains. From 1933-42, with her German husband, Arvid, Mildred led a cell that couriered top secret military intelligence to the Allies, helped dissidents and persecuted minorities escape Germany, and distributed literature that encouraged civil disobedience and exposed Nazi plans. Fusing elements of biography, political thriller, and scholarly detective story, Harnack’s great-great-niece Rebecca Donner brilliantly interweaves family archives, original research, exclusive interviews with survivors, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, enthralling story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.
The world is failing to remain a world. It is coming apart. The ice cubes are melting. Species are dying. People, too―of different things. But what if this world is just a first draft, made by some great artist in order to be destroyed? In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal―to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she’s left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.