2014-22348

The Mango Bride by Marivi Soliven

Feminism & Postcolonialism Paper
May 28, 2018

The mango is a fruit popularized by its sweet taste and among its best-known features is its
bright yellow color. In the Philippines, it is the national fruit. In the book, The Mango Bride by Marivi
Soliven, the women who put their pictures up in the fictional dating website called Filipina Sweetheart
are called “mango brides” because they are “all so sweet.” What does this say about the female
characters in the novel, then? Are they truly as sweet as they are described to be? The Mango Bride is
a story that tackles decades of family drama centered around Amparo and Beverly, two women of
different backgrounds whose stories intersect in the middle because of lost relations, and America. This
paper shall tackle Amparo, Beverly as well as other female characters’ experiences, their role in society,
as well as their experiences being a Filipino who lives in America or are associated with those from
America.
The first character to be discussed in this paper is Amparo, a Filipino woman living in California.
She is an interpreter for Filipinos who cannot expend their abilities in English anymore. Her
introduction to the story comes right after the stabbing of Senora Concha, her mother, by Marcela, her
housemaid, one who she sees as her actual mother. In Chapter 1, we learn that Amparo did not come to
America over her own accord, but was sent away there by her mother, and that she interprets Filipinos
on the phone. In fact, she has been doing her job so often that it became second nature for her because
whenever she picks up the phone, she assumes her professional voice.
In America, Amparo is shown to be a mature woman – a woman of sensibilities, but she also
kept a sense of humor intact. She knows how to handle her clients well because she is used to her job,
but also because she has heard and experienced much in America.
The first on-the-job phone call the readers witness is with Josefa Santos. She came to complain
to Triple A, but since the African-American woman at the reception could not understand Josefa’s
words, they called up Amparo. During the entire conversation, Josefa was being slightly racist,
becoming paranoid that the black mechanic who failed to fix her car would kill her, despite the African-
American in front of her. Amparo showed professionalism and bit her lip to prevent herself from
berating and calling Josefa out for her racism. She did not go off script for this conversation, but instead
she merely thought about how confronting people worked in America. In the Philippines, because her
family is of a high stature, there would be nothing strange a high-ranking woman rebuking someone of
the lower class for not doing his/her job well, but in America it is different. It puts things into perspective
– a Filipina is much more empowered in her country than she will ever be in America. During that time
period, it is frightening for a Filipina to raise her fist at an American, because they all depended on their
green cards to stay there. Filipinas had to behave, lest their green cards be taken away from them. Not
only that, but the conversation also showed that Filipinos feared those whose skin colors were not white,
they grow more paranoid and untrusting towards them.
Then, the second phone call set her up with a social worker named Ashley, and a battered wife
named Monina, who was also four months pregnant, though she was not showing just yet. This
conversation triggered something in Amparo, which led her to become engrossed in the conversation.
This perhaps shows the way women resonate with the problems of other women. For Amparo,
pregnancy is a sensitive topic, because it was one of the reasons why she was banished to America. This
is, then, a shared experience between women. Only women know what it feels like to be pregnant, only
they can understand each other in this case, and Amparo finds herself completely engrossed in Monina’s
story. The internal monologue remarked that Monina’s story was similar to many calls Amparo had
received before, like “a woman cowering behind a table or door, (…) while a man pummeled her with
shoes, skillets, belts and a river of profanity that drowned her cries.” The Filipina women at the time
were being beaten to a pulp by their husbands, simply because they could not fight back, and because
there were so many things to fear if she does. As Monina put it, “nakakahiya.” She would lose her green
card, and her social status in society would pummel. To go back to the Philippines when the Filipina
has situated herself in the States with a foreign husband is nakakahiya, or “shameful” because then she
will be the talk of the town. The neighbors would chat about her and discuss why she came back. She
would then be subject to “I-told-you-so’s” by her peers. Monina is very affected with being shamed in
public, as she did not even call the police because she thinks it would be shameful of her to do so. On
the other hand, Amparo is well-versed with shame.
Before Amparo went to the States, she was a college student, who fell in love with Mateo, a
debonair playboy who came from Madrid, sporting European views and ideals as well. As described in
the narrative Mateo was “a pretty boy with a working intellect,” as well as a “poseur, coño-kid preppy
pretending to be punk.” Something that girls loved, and especially Amparo. She lost her virginity to
Mateo, and she used sex with Mateo as an outlet for her depression for when her father died. They slept
together often, but this backfired for Amparo. She got pregnant, with Mateo’s child.
Amparo was raised in a conservative family, and of course when her parents found out about
her pregnancy, they were enraged. In fact, when Senora Concha found out that not only did Amparo
get pregnant, fornicated with Mateo, but she also had the child aborted. She was livid and “she lunged
at her daughter, sunk now to the level of a promiscuous maid.” An illegitimate child, especially for such
a high-ranking family, would have been a great shame, but being raised in a Catholic family, the scandal
would have been easily remedied had Amparo and Mateo married, but they did not. Instead, Amparo
had the baby aborted.
Of course, with the discovery of the pregnancy, Amparo’s first thought was to marry Mateo,
but Mateo instead led her to an abortion clinic. This would show Amparo’s lack of power in the matter.
She had no power over what to do with her baby, but it was the man who instead chose what should be
done. Amparo brings this decision with her for years to come, not only because it almost killed her
because of internal bleeding, but because she was robbed of a special experience that was her first
pregnancy. Not only did she lose a lover, but she lost her first child as well – the beauty of that
experience, especially when she thought that Mateo would be with her through the journey, but instead
as soon as the baby appeared, Mateo’s only solution was to abort it – without letting Amparo have a
say in it, as seen in this dialogue:
“It’s the only way, ‘Paro.” Mateo stared at the card.
“Aren’t we going to discuss this before –“Amparo reached for Mateo’s hand, but he leaned
ever so slightly away.
Mateo does not even give Amparo a say in the situation, which shows that she is the silenced
one in the relationship. Mateo is one who chases pleasure, so when Amparo gives the clue that she
wants to sleep with him, he bites the bait. During sex, it is Amparo who decides her own pleasure, but
the narrative punishes Amparo’s pleasure by letting her get pregnant with Mateo’s child.
In fact, the narrative punishes many of the women in this story for being with child or bearing
a child. For Amparo, it’s scandalous, and she had to abort it, even; For Monina, who was mentioned
earlier, it was something that chained her to her abusive husband. In this story, pregnancy is not seen
as a beautiful thing, which is an interesting view for the author, who is a woman. Perhaps she knows
that pregnancy is not simply just the glow and baby kicks, it is a terrifying experience that could define
a woman for her entire lifetime. Thus, in the narrative, pregnancy punished more than it is praised. For
Beverly, and her mother Clara, the narrative punishes them with death.
Moving on to the second main character, Beverly. She is the titular “Mango Bride” in the story.
She was a girl of terrible luck and circumstance. She was born on All Soul’s Day (which is a day of bad
luck to be born on) and her mother died when she was only fifteen years old, and since then she had
only herself to look out for because her aunt, Marcela, was busy with her own work.
Beverly’s mother, Clara, was the lover of Amparo’s uncle, and Beverly was conceived in the
States. This left Beverly’s mother in a state where she kept on thinking about that instance with Aldo.
She named Beverly after Beverly Hills, which shows her fascination for America. This also reflects
how Filipinos love naming their children with Western names, because ever since the colonization of
the Philippines, there has been a disparity between what is an actual Filipino name and a borrowed
name. One could think that “Maria” and “Clara” are Filipino names, but they are of Spanish descent,
and only feel Filipino because those are the most common names that we hear in the country. At the
same time, one could be named “Elizabeth” and still be considered a Filipino, even if it is the name of
an English queen, but “Chittaphon” is a name that is clearly not, because it is not Western, but Thai.
Going back to Beverly, the girl meets a friend named Lisa, and her American fiancé, Lydell,
who was a good twice her age. It is Lisa who introduces her to the fictional website, “Filipina Sweetheart”
where profiles and pictures of Filipina women are put up for foreigners to pick from. If there is a Filipina
that is to a foreigner’s liking, then they shall be pen pals. Filipinas being married to foreigners is hardly
a shocking thing. In fact, in their youth, Filipinas are told to marry a foreigner, meaning a white
American. Why is that though? Perhaps because the mix of American and Filipino genes would produce
beautiful offspring, or perhaps because marrying a foreigner would immediately raise a person’s social
status. Marrying a foreigner is often glamorized and romanticized to be the perfect life, especially for
someone of a lower statue in life, as put in the novel, “Thanks to Lisa, [Beverly] could see everything
more clearly now: a big house in America, a husband more handsome than Lydell, pale-skinned children
with high-bridged perfect noses.” This is what every Filipina woman wants to have in a marriage to a
white man, encapsulated in one paragraph. But in Beverly’s case it is the exact opposite of that. Instead,
she got into an abusive marriage with Josiah, who hates everything Filipino and anything to do with
being anything other than white.
The character of Beverly symbolizes homesickness. This passage:
The familiar sweet fragrance lifted Beverly back to long-gone childhood Sundays when
Marcela would visit, bearing home a basket of carabao mangoes.

Is a clear indication of how much Beverly truly misses the Philippines. Mangoes symbolize the
sweetness of Filipinas, but they also symbolize the Philippines as well. A “mango” bride could mean a
sweet bride, but it could also mean a Filipino bride. When Beverly visited the mango section in the
grocery store, all she found there was nostalgia.
The Mango Bride is a story of two women. They did not struggle together, nor did their paths
truly cross until the end of the novel, but this shows how difficult it is to be a Filipina living in the
United States. The different kinds of women who are pummeled in to the kind of lifestyle that resides
with Americans. Behind every woman, there is a story but they are not as sweet as mangoes might be.