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A review by ayaminerva
Stray Cats by Irene Carolina A. Sarmiento
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
I appreciated the book's effort to mix the themes of young adult, coming-of-age, magical realism, and social commentary into a compact read. It particularly tackled heavy discussions on human trafficking, poverty, and colonial influences but never veered off from accessibility—which might be a crucial factor in engaging the young Filipino readers.
I went into this expecting the author would utilize the stray cat network as a narrative tool in finding Raquel. When a cat disappears from its neighborhood, we would usually talk to the community strays to help the lost find its way back home. While this doesn't happen, I eventually settled more with the concluding parallelism between strays and children. The ending may not be satisfactory for happy-ever-after-truthers, but it remains grounded in reality. It is, after all, a problem bigger than Eliza and Oscar Santos.
On a sidenote, for cat parents like myself, I'm totally curious with the conscious choice of having a ginger cat play the all-knowing sidekick of Elisa Paz, when oranges rarely have the chance to borrow a single brain cell (an inside joke of sorts), but love this representation nonetheless! :D
(some favorite lines)
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Today, Elisa witnessed a small portion of the darker legacy left by the States....the cast-off junk that did not make the cut for the American market but would likely meet the low standards of brown people across the globe.
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<i> Tsinelas,</i> Tagalog for flipflops, were the unofficial footwear of the Filipino plebeian. High class commercial establishments sometimes required closed shoes to effectively ban the <i>tsinelas crowd.</i>
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To be poor in a poor country is to be punished for your whole life.
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I went into this expecting the author would utilize the stray cat network as a narrative tool in finding Raquel. When a cat disappears from its neighborhood, we would usually talk to the community strays to help the lost find its way back home. While this doesn't happen, I eventually settled more with the concluding parallelism between strays and children. The ending may not be satisfactory for happy-ever-after-truthers, but it remains grounded in reality. It is, after all, a problem bigger than Eliza and Oscar Santos.
On a sidenote, for cat parents like myself, I'm totally curious with the conscious choice of having a ginger cat play the all-knowing sidekick of Elisa Paz, when oranges rarely have the chance to borrow a single brain cell (an inside joke of sorts), but love this representation nonetheless! :D
(some favorite lines)
-----
Today, Elisa witnessed a small portion of the darker legacy left by the States....the cast-off junk that did not make the cut for the American market but would likely meet the low standards of brown people across the globe.
-----
<i> Tsinelas,</i> Tagalog for flipflops, were the unofficial footwear of the Filipino plebeian. High class commercial establishments sometimes required closed shoes to effectively ban the <i>tsinelas crowd.</i>
-----
To be poor in a poor country is to be punished for your whole life.
-----
Content Warnings
Graphic: Trafficking