Arsenic and Adobo

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of racism, fatphobia, drug addiction, and drug overdose.

“My name is Lila Macapagal and my life has become a rom-com cliche.”

This is the opening line of the novel. The repeated first-person pronoun “my” indicates that the story is told from Lila’s perspective. She also uses the abbreviation rom-com, instead of romantic comedy, which makes the novel’s prose conversational.

“Hence I was working at my Tita Rosie’s restaurant rather than running my own cafe, which is what I’d been going to school for before I found out Sam was a cheating scumbag.”

This quote is an example of how Lila struggles with balancing Familial Pressures and Personal Identity. The familiar insult, scumbag, gives Manansala’s prose a casual, intimate tone.

“In the bowl is ginataang bilo-bilo. Chewy rice balls, tapioca pearls, jackfruit, purple yam, and saba banana cooked in sweet coconut milk. The best thing to eat on a cold day like this.”

Here, Lola Flor tells Derek what it is in the traditional Filipino dish, developing the theme of the Importance of Food. The need for this explanation highlights how Filipinos encounter ignorance about their culture in the United States. Flor is from the Philippines, as is the dish she prepares. Derek, a white man from Shady Palms, Illinois, doesn’t know diverse foods, despite being a food critic.