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A review by books_with_mana
The Groom Will Keep His Name: And Other Vows I've Made about Race, Resistance, and Romance by Matt Ortile
5.0
Concepts like imperialism, colonialism, homophobia, xenophobia, and the model minority myth feel like grandiose ideas that only people with fancy humanities degrees from prestigious universities can discuss. Ortile breathes humanity into these -isms in his essay collection “The Groom Will Keep His Name.” Ortile shows the reader how a colonial mentality can affect romantic, personal, familial, and professional relationships.
Ortile writes about his desire for acceptance in America by dreaming of marrying a white man and taking his name for an easier life. As if a union with someone undeniably American by anyone standards could by proxy make us also undeniably American. We see this occur with so many other model minorities. Ortile GOES there with all of these topics by effortlessly weaving anecdotes, history, and cultural analysis.
Right now, there is a specific discourse about decolonization: learn about precolonial history, question colonial structures, and call out white supremacy. These are all vital steps to radical love (self and all its other forms). Ortile’s personal anecdotes encourage the reader to confront our own personal histories with institutional violence: how we weaponize it against ourselves and to others.
I cried from cover to cover. This book demanded a level of self-examination and healing that I thought I already accomplished. Every Filipinx/e must get their hands on this book because there are so many conversations our community needs to have.
“Even at my most polished, respectable, and eloquent, worthy of basic citizenship, I am held at arm’s length in the framework of white supremacy, commended and marginalized at once, patronized for how beautifully I speak a language that their empire has beaten into my tongue.”
“Because no matter what we do, there is an America that will never count us among their lot, never believe we are like them. Because this is true. We are no just like them. We have paid too much in the currency of our bodies, our emotional labor and fucksweat, to persist in appealing to an America that tells us to retreat.”
Ortile writes about his desire for acceptance in America by dreaming of marrying a white man and taking his name for an easier life. As if a union with someone undeniably American by anyone standards could by proxy make us also undeniably American. We see this occur with so many other model minorities. Ortile GOES there with all of these topics by effortlessly weaving anecdotes, history, and cultural analysis.
Right now, there is a specific discourse about decolonization: learn about precolonial history, question colonial structures, and call out white supremacy. These are all vital steps to radical love (self and all its other forms). Ortile’s personal anecdotes encourage the reader to confront our own personal histories with institutional violence: how we weaponize it against ourselves and to others.
I cried from cover to cover. This book demanded a level of self-examination and healing that I thought I already accomplished. Every Filipinx/e must get their hands on this book because there are so many conversations our community needs to have.
“Even at my most polished, respectable, and eloquent, worthy of basic citizenship, I am held at arm’s length in the framework of white supremacy, commended and marginalized at once, patronized for how beautifully I speak a language that their empire has beaten into my tongue.”
“Because no matter what we do, there is an America that will never count us among their lot, never believe we are like them. Because this is true. We are no just like them. We have paid too much in the currency of our bodies, our emotional labor and fucksweat, to persist in appealing to an America that tells us to retreat.”