Issue 14: Nutella babka + Patron Saints of Nothing
A rich twisted bread full of chocolate hazelnut spread, and a coming of age story set in the Philippines
Welcome to Good Book/Good Bread! Every two weeks, I recommend a book I love, and bake a delicious bread that fits with an aspect of the story. This week: Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay and Nutella babka.
Part 1: Good Book
Patron Saints of Nothing (2019)
Setting the tone
Forever Young by Youth Group, here.
In a nutshell
Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay is a beautiful book about a teenage boy growing up and learning difficult truths about the world and his family. Jay is a Filipino-American high school senior living in Michigan, where he is looking forward to spending his upcoming spring break hanging out with his best friend and playing video games. Then, his dad delivers the news that Jay’s cousin in the Philippines, Jun, is dead. When Jay’s family used to visit the Philippines during holidays, Jun and Jay developed an especially close bond, remaining pen pals afterwards for years before losing touch. His dad’s terseness means Jay is only left with questions about how Jun died, until an anonymous Instagram message suggests his cousin was a victim of President Duterte's brutal war on drugs.
Jay convinces his parents to let him travel to the Philippines over spring break, staying at the home of Jun’s parents, his aunt and uncle. Jay tries to unravel how his cousin wound up a statistic in the drug war, a mission made difficult by his aunt and uncle’s refusal to talk about Jun. Ribay provides a broad look into the horrific approach to drug control in the Philippines, and shows its complexity through the different views of Jay’s relatives and an intrepid student journalist he befriends.
Why I was drawn to this book
I knew a little bit about President Duterte’s violent war on drugs because I’d read this very graphic 2016 multimedia piece in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize. After taking office in 2016, Duterte’s brutal crackdown on drugs led to 12,000 Filipinos being murdered, according to Human Rights Watch, with other data indicating the number may be closer to 20,000.
I was shocked when I learned about the methods being used to justify police killings of citizens, some solely based on hearsay that they were drug users or dealers. Since reading the above piece, I hadn’t learned anything more about developments in Duterte’s anti-drug campaign. I was intrigued by the concept of this book, and liked the idea of learning more about this issue alongside the protagonist.
Three things I liked about Patron Saints of Nothing:
1. Makes a sociopolitical issue feel personal
Some of the books I’ve connected with the most are those that take a real-world issue and filter it through a fictional family, These kinds of stories give a personal face to stories we read about in the news or hear about as an overarching issue, often taking place far away. American Dirt is a perfect example. When I read news stories about the migrant crisis in Central America, I often think of the young sisters in that novel and the immense struggles they faced trying to get to the U.S. border. Similarly, Patron Saints of Nothing takes a troubling real world political decision that affected an entire country, and shows how it rippled through one family. While the specific family in the book is fictional, it is conceivable that thousands of Filipino families experienced similar struggles following the murders of their relatives. Instead of thinking about the surreal, hard to conceptualize statistics of the drug war in the Philippines, I think of Jun and the genuine and optimistic letters he wrote to his cousin.
2. We get to watch Jay learn people can be multifaceted
This is a true coming of age book, and it is satisfying to observe Jay rapidly maturing while spending time in the Philippines, his first trip there without his immediate family. He has quick judgements about his relatives, who he has not seen since he was a boy, and who are hosting him shortly after learning of their son Jun’s death. Jay finds his uncle tyrannical, his cousin aloof, and his aunt cold, and clings to these impressions. In his investigation of Jun’s murder, he peels back the years leading up to his death, and the change in his relationship with his parents. He finds a family in deep mourning, all dealing with their love and loss of Jun in varying and surprising ways. By the time his trip to the Philippines ends, we get the sense Jay has had his mind blown by the way people can surprise us when they invert our pre-conceived notions.
3. Jay gets to make up for his disconnection
A through line in Patron Saints of Nothing is the regret Jay has that he stopped writing letters to Jun. After their closeness on Jay’s family’s visits to the Philippines, the two became pen pals, but the effort was always greater on Jun’s side. Eventually, Jay stopped writing, and Jun’s letters to him begin to convey sadness that he hasn’t heard from his cousin. They lose touch, and soon after, Jun begins having a difficult time with his life and family. This guilt is in part what seems to compel Jay to go to the Philippines in the first place, and through both his dogged search for answers, and in providing comfort to his aunts and cousins, Jun’s sisters, he’s able to find some relief from his guilt. At the end of the book, despite the difficult truths he’s uncovered, Jay seems to be able to forgive himself for disconnecting with Jun.
Notable passage:
“But there are good things I can hold on to and there are other things I have the power to change. My family, myself, this world—all of us are flawed. But flawed doesn’t mean hopeless. It doesn’t mean forsaken. It doesn’t mean lost. We are not doomed to suffer as they are, silent and alone. We do not have to leave questions and letters and lives unanswered. We have more power and potential than we know if we would only speak, if we would only listen.”
Part 2: Good Bread
Nutella Babka
Why this bread for this book?
A notable character in Patron Saints of Nothing is Jay’s uncle, the brother of his father. He is a commanding, authoritarian figure of few words who shares little, even with his family. The secrets he knows about Jun and the days and years leading to his death take tremendous work for Jay to unravel. I thought the twisting, intertwined babka strands, filled with Nutella that inevitably escapes from the dough, was a great representation of how even tightly bound secrets must come out.
Recipe
Babka is a rich braided bread often containing a sweet filling, like chocolate, cinnamon or fruit. Its origins are the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, and it is also very popular in Israel.
I used a recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction, which you can view here. I didn’t have any whole milk, so used cashew milk in its place, which worked fine. I really like braided and twisted bread recipes, and while this one gets a little bit messy as the filling spills out, it’s pretty simple. The butter, sugar, and cinnamon topping is SO good; don’t skip it. I also just watched the newest season of The Great Canadian Baking Show, and they make circular babkas which look beautiful. Once you do the twists in this recipe, you could just firmly attach the ends to each other to make a babka wreath, and then bake on a sheet pan.
Works well with:
Misadventure. On the Canada Day long weekend, my partner Steve and I had an ambitious plan to hike with our ski gear to a backcountry cabin near Pemberton, sleep there for two nights, and ski slushy summer snow. The snowpack was huge this year in British Columbia, and the snowline is at about 1300 meters, so there is still skiing to be had for the determined. We schlepped our ski gear attached to our packs for many hours, before the heat and a dangerous, roaring river crossing forced us to change plans. We camped by said roaring river, slept in, and headed home in the morning, our planks sadly never touching the snow. I brought a half loaf of the babka I’d baked the night before we left, and it was a true morale booster on this accidental epic.
Looking forward…
Book I’m looking forward to reading:
The Naked Don’t Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins
Bread I’m looking forward to baking:
Deep dish pizza bread from the cookbook Mooncakes and Milk Bread
New album I’m looking forward to listening to while doing both of the above:
Jack White’s Entering Heaven Alive
Have other books, bread, or music you’d recommend I check out? Reply to this email or leave a comment. And, if you liked this issue, feel free to hit the heart button (it helps other people find my newsletter!)