Page Turners book club meets the second Tuesday of the month at 1:00 PM via Zoom. Contact us at santivaislanders@gmail.com, for questions, to be added to the Page Turners’ email list, and to receive the Zoom information.

The book for discussion on Tuesday, September 10, 2024, is Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich.

Tometich opens with the extreme yet amusing lengths that her mother, a Filipino immigrant, has gone to in order to protect the fruit of her beloved mango trees. That story serves as an entrée into the more general volatility and stubbornness of the author’s mother, who arrived in the U.S. from Manila as a nurse and married the only child of a well-to-do New England family. Her immigrant determination clashed with his lack of direction and urgency, creating a childhood for Tometich and her siblings that was marked by the storms of violent tempers. One might expect the memoir of a food writer to discuss how either food or writing were cornerstone elements of her youth, reprieves from chaos and grief.