Summary

Jose Antonio Vargas left the Philippines for America in a hurry early one morning. He boarded a plane with a man introduced to him as his uncle, with the understanding that his mother would follow him to the US in a few months or a year at most. Jose and his mother were very close, but there is much about their parting that he does not remember. He left the Philippines in 1993 at just twelve years old, and since then the gulf between him and his mother has only grown "deeper and wider" (4).

Jose experiences a culture shock when he arrives in America and discovers that it is not anything like the Hollywood movies and televised beauty pageants he has seen. He encounters a "polyphonic culture" but the biggest adjustment is to living with his grandparents, whom he calls Lolo and Lola...