But Vincent “Vince” de los Reyes, the first runner-up and an honors graduate of University of Hawaii in Manoa, gets to visit the Philippines for a week, including a live interview with Kris Aquino.
De los Reyes’ return to his homeland after 13 years takes place in 1991, when the country is beset with power blackouts, the specter of the return of Marcos, and the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo after 600 years.
“Leche” is Vince’s account of his stay in the Philippines at that time, complete with tourist tips, snippets from a book (“Decolonization for Beginners: A Filipino Glossary,” written by his UH teacher Bonifacio Dumpit), his bangungot journal and vintage postcards bought from National Bookworm.
The novel “Leche” (355 pages, published by Coffee House Press) is by Filipino-American R. Zamora Linmark, who holds a dual citizenship. It is a fitting follow-up to “Rolling the R’s,” his 1997 novel about the young Vince, his siblings and classmates as they adapt to Hawaii after living in a town in the North. Now Vince has gone out of the closet and supposedly wizened up to the world. But not Manila, as Vince’s misadventures will show us in the novel.”
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