Multo, was a finalist in the Best Literary category of the 2024 Silver Falchion Award. Book 2 is titled Sunday or the Highway.
Fazzi applied the Page 69 Test to Danger No Problem with the following results:
These are the first three paragraphs of page 69 of Danger No Problem, which follows Domingo, a Filipino American bounty hunter. Page 69 is the start of Chapter 8. It’s one of several chapters that begin with a first-person narrative by Domingo. He’s writing an advice book for people who want to immigrate to the United States based on his experience as an immigrant and his job finding fugitive undocumented immigrants.Visit Cindy Fazzi's website.THE PRESENTThe Page 69 Test works in this case. It describes the protagonist, Domingo the bounty hunter, in his own words. In just a few paragraphs, readers learn the following:
Assimilation in America: You Are What You Eat
If you are what you eat, you must learn to like what native-born Americans eat. Mac and cheese, hot dogs and hamburgers, pizza, snickerdoodles and cupcakes, mashed potatoes, and lots of cereal. Mind you, I didn’t eat any of these things while growing up in Manila. Mamang still refuses to eat them even after two decades in America. She’s seventy years old; it’s too late to teach her new habits.
In the Philippines, we eat rice at every meal. We’ve thought of all the different ways to eat rice. Garlic rice, steamed rice, chicken rice porridge called arroz caldo, chocolate rice pudding called champorado, a rice cake called bibingka, a rice cake called puto, a rice cake called biko. Do I sound like Bubba talking about shrimp in Forrest Gump? Well, the point is I love rice, but I learned to eat other things here in America.
Unless you’re as old as my mother, your assimilation should include eating like an American. If you want to be accepted, you must embrace the norm. Appreciate the abundance around you. We’re lucky to live in the present America where a halal market sits next to an Italian bistro and an Indian restaurant, where you can buy hard-to-find sauces and spices in a Chinese or Mexican or Filipino store.The two-book Domingo the Bounty Hunter series features the first Filipino American and first brown immigrant hero in the bounty hunter trope. Both books tackle ripped-from-the- headlines immigration issues and themes of identity and belongingness.
- Domingo is from the Philippines; his mother is 70 years old, and she doesn’t like American food;
- He believes that you are what you eat, and therefore, food is an important part of assimilation for immigrants.
- He introduces Filipino cuisine by identifying some popular rice delicacies.
- He’s grateful for the abundance in America, as well as its cultural diversity.
In Danger No Problem, Domingo is looking for the only quarry that has ever eluded him. He’s chasing an undocumented biracial Filipino woman named Monica Reed for the third time. He has tried to catch Monica for different reasons in a span of almost two decades.
The book pits a dogged bounty hunter against a desperate undocumented woman in hiding. They are compatriots. They are both in the United States in pursuit of the American Dream, but their dreams are on collision course.
As a Filipino American immigrant, the topic of immigration is very close to my heart. I wrote the series to introduce readers to Filipino American characters because there are so few of them in books.
I also want readers to get a glimpse of the common struggles and aspirations of immigrants, whether legal or undocumented. For immigrants of color, regardless of status, it usually boils down to the need for respect and acceptance because they are told in so many ways that they don’t belong here.
--Marshal Zeringue