Mayor Of The Roses: Stories

by Marianne Villanueva

In this collection, award-winning writer Marianne Villanueva writes of the contrary beauty, ugliness, and violence of her native land, the Philippines, as well as of the myriad contradictions of immigrant life in the new landscapes of America. In the title story, a Filipina-American emigrant living in Silicon Valley tries to make sense of her native country by following the trial of a provincial mayor accused of gang raping a teenage school girl, a "gift" from his nephew. In the tropical Gothic story, "Rufino," the narrator learns of the death of her family's driver who has lived for lonely decades "caged" above their garage. From the heart-breaking "Infected" to the brutal "Sutil" Villanueva brilliantly blends past and present in a seamless undercurrent of emotion and longing.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Marianne Villanueva, a former Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford, has been writing and publishing stories about the Philippines and Filipino Americans since the mid 1980s. Her critically acclaimed first collection of short fiction, Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (Calyx Books 1991) was shortlisted for the Philippines National Book Award. Her work has been widely anthologized. Her story, Silence, first published in the Three Penny Review, was shortlisted for the 2000 O. Henry Literature Prize, and The Hand was awarded first prize in Jukeds 2007 fiction contest. She has edited an anthology of Filipina womens writings, Going Home to a Landscape, which was selected as a Notable Book by the prestigious Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. She currently teaches writing and literature at Foothill College and Notre Dame de Namur University. Born and raised in Manila, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. You may view her blog at http://anthropologist.wordpress.com/.

"

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d previously been perusing the stories in Marianne Villanueva’s Mayor of the Roses, and I have also heard her read different stories from this book at various Bay Area literary venues.

I think this collection is effective in plumbing the particulars of the narrator’s world, and even her neuroses. Throughout the collection, there are linked narratives: the world of Malou, her husband Vic, their son Johnmel, her husband’s co-worker the sexy Selena. It is and isn’t unclear whether Vic and Selena are having an affair, but it is clear that he is fixated on her, that they’ve moved far beyond “harmless flirtation” (as if there were such a thing for married people) into the realm of inappropriate physical and emotional intimacy.

At least in Malou’s mind, Vic would do Selena if he could, and so his being out of the house without explanation or late home from work becomes cause for Malou to speculate. It’s this kind of neurosis that creeps under your skin as a reader. You want to tell her to stop it, stop making herself crazy, but you also know she’s justified in imagining the lengths to which Vic would go just to smell Selena’s aggressive, animal musky perfume, or touch her hair, or brush up against her thigh. Incidentally, Selena is an Asian immigrant as well, and she is also married.

So I actually find these kinds of stories admirable; Villanueva is giving us immigrant in America narratives. They are about struggling through Silicon Valley job layoffs, the boredom of suburban life, going crazy in cubicle farms. These are average, middle-class people, living, working, thinking that perhaps their son’s schoolteacher is racist but being unable to pin it down to any blatant actions. Vic and Malou love each other, fall out of love with each other, raise a family together, experience middle age together.

There are some stories here which feel more like journal entries that are musings and observations on a few related topics then strung together into a story. I find myself at the end of these stories wondering if I missed something, or thinking, wait, that’s it?

Then there is the title story, “Mayor of the Roses,” which is a Balikbayan woman’s perspective of a brutal gang rape of a local young beauty queen and the double murder of her and her boyfriend, perpetrated by the mayor of a small Philippine town, and his men. The perspective of the Balikbayan woman is important here, in the way she understands the thorough corruption of a system of which she is no longer a part but a spectator, which not only allows this kind of brutality as sport, but also rewards its perpetrators. The role of the speaker is as witness to the crazy Philippine media spectacle of the trial. She is so distanced or removed that even outrage is almost abstract to her.

So this here is a Balikbayan narrative that I also appreciate; little of this stereotypical pilgrimage to the idyllic motherland suspended in mythic time. In fact, her other Balikbayan stories are also rife with unromantic themes; the narrator’s married brother’s domestic violence, her father’s diabetic amputations, the illness and decline of the family’s longtime driver. What does an employer family do with their longtime servants who are no longer useful to them? What is the family’s obligation?

So returning to a “home” that is foreign and surreal, brutal and suffocating, in which the Balikbayan can only be an ineffectual witness and a spectator.

[Valerie Miner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marianne Villanueva is a provocative and versatile writer. I fell in love with MAYOR OF ROSES when I first read it. Since then I have taught it in several university classes and the student response has been very enthusiastic.

The title piece, in it's unblinking painfulness, draws the readers right into the narrative and also leaves us reeling with the truth Villanueva bravely tells about women's lives. I love the family stories--genuine, deep and moving. This is a haunting, dramatic, tender book which I highly recommend.

[Nick Pappas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was just okay. The prose was well crafted, but the stories left something to be desired. This is a collection of uneven short stories that ranged from the amazing (Lenox Hill, December 1991) to the unintresting. Maybe it can all be sumed up by the culture gap. I did enjoy that some of the stories were linked, and wished this was a device that was employed more. Worth a shot, but don't get your hopes up.

[Paolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someday Id like to adapt several stories from this collection into a quiet indie feature. Yes, these portraits are of Filipino Americans falling out of love, but not without a struggle (nor each other). Not since Ben Santos' fiction has contemporary Filipino life in the U.S. been mined with such clarity and precision.

[Mikey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Lynda Barry infused me with a fascination for Filipino culture, so that helped. The title story is pretty brutal, but worth reading. I was less taken with the rest.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gothic, haunting undertone to these stories.