(#gifted @librofm) I went on somewhat of a non-fiction audiobook kick in July, and honestly they were all great! The Groom Will Keep His Name by Matt Ortile is a collection of essays arranged in a sort of memoir. Ortile reflects on all sorts of aspects of his life so far, but mainly on sex, power and the model minority myth.
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I loved how open and honest Ortile is throughout the book. He bares all when it comes to relationships, from Grindr to steam room encounters at his gym, and he lays his learning and unlearning for everyone to see. As a young boy, Ortile moved from the Philippines to the US with his mother, where he then grappled with his identity as a gay Filipino immigrant. He outlines his journey thus far to decolonising his mind, from originally wanting to marry a white man and erase his Filippino name to unpacking later relationships with white men and the ways they might think about him.
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The essays have a distinct millennial flavour which I enjoyed - the essay structured around the time he started crying while eating a individual pecan pie really resonated for some reason. But although he makes jokes and funny observations, the book was a lot more serious than I anticipated, and I liked it all the more for it. I did think some of the essays overlapped a bit. It wasn’t quite repetitive, but maybe it could have been tighter as a straightforward memoir narrative.
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Ortile’s musings on the model minority myth were particularly compelling. The system is designed to keep BIPOC pitted against one another, while white people remain comfortable at the top. I also loved his point on selective forgetting in America, and the west in general. White people are so keen to remind others 'never forget' when the tragedy concerns white suffering and death, but slavery? Genocide? Internment camps? That's all in the past, can't we just ‘forget about it already?’
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Ortile is only young and as he himself says, still has a lifelong journey of unlearning and decolonising to do. I'd definitely read another collection of essays from him later in life!