Concepcion

community. In recent years the area began sprouting the amenities you might expect from a place with a name like NoPa: a cafe serving seven-dollar toast, a bar decorated with surrealist art available for purchase, a three-floor entertainment center featuring vintage arcade games, one-bedroom condos going for $700,000-a world of luxury just outside my mom's door, but tauntingly out of reach. The contrast was disconcerting. As the neighborhood's prospects brightened, hers only dimmed.

 

She always assured me she was doing fine. She described her days to me as simple and peaceful, and as evidence sent me photos from her early morning walks on Ocean Beach-dogs splashing in the tide, jellyfish washed ashore, messages she wrote in the sand, like "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" with a heart dotting the exclamation point. She collected shells, stones, and sand dollars, some for their unusual colors, some for their smooth, perfect form, some because they bore marks in which she saw the face of Christ. My mother saw miracles everywhere.

 

When she was a kid back in the Philippines, her own mother would wake her and her brothers and sisters at three a.m. on each of the nine days leading up to Christmas, to walk thirty minutes in the dark to a packed church where they would pray the novenas; by the fourth or fifth day, my mom was the only one of the children who could be gotten out of bed. Anytime something good happens, my mom says, "Praise the Lord!" and anytime something bad happens, she says it's part of God's plan. She goes to church six days a week, and on Good Friday she hibernates in prayer from noon to three, the hours Christ hung on the cross. Every time she moves, she has a priest bless her new home with holy water, and when she drives, she listens to a Catholic AM radio station or Christian rock CDs. The background on her cell phone is a portrait of Jesus-not a Renaissance classic or an image of suffering, but a handsome, square-jawed, smiling white Jesus wit

and movement, told through the intimate reality of one Filipino family s centuries-long quest for self-determination within the grip of empire. A landmark in the contemporary literature of the diaspora. My admiration for it knows no bounds.   Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror

An odyssey of history and memory across decades and countries, Concepcion excavates and astounds. Illuminating and epic, a revelation. Bryan Washington, author of Lot and Memorial

For those of us who have admired Samaha's journalism for so long, this jarringly beautiful memoir is the book we've been waiting for. Simply a joy to read. Daniel Alarcón, author of Lost City Radio and At Night We Walk in Circles

Concepcion brilliantly captures the legacy of conquest, the absurdity of empire, and the life-altering reverberations of the American myth. A rollicking, heartfelt, and profoundly edifying epic. Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River

A gorgeous, cinematic epic about how an immigrant family becomes American, and the unfathomable losses they bear in pursuit of the dream.   Adam Serwer, author of The Cruelty Is the Point

Surprising, uplifting, and tragic, at once a history of the Filipino immigrant experience in the United States and a deeply personal family memoir full of hope and loss. What a perfect book. Scaachi Koul, author of One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

A wonder of a book, Concepcion should be required reading for anyone who thinks they know anything about America s past, or wants to understand its present and future.   Elaine Castillo, author of America Is Not the Heart