Notes from a Wayward Son
A Memoir
Format:Paperback
Publisher:The University of North Carolina Press
Publishing:15th Sep '26
£17.99
This title is due to be published on 15th September, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
In his first memory of his father, Adrian De Leon is four years old. Sitting in front of his family home high above the street in Manila, Philippines, he sees Tatay, a stern man, ascend the stairs before him. Despite Tatay’s pedigree as a college-educated military officer, the best place of employment for a Filipino man trying to support his family is abroad.
A year later, Tatay uproots his family to Canada, where they start a new life in Toronto’s eastern district of Scarborough. While Tatay struggles to find steady full-time work, Adrian learns English, makes friends at school, and begins to drift from the Filipino world his father is fighting to preserve. In an effort to reclaim purpose and pride, Tatay opens a dojo where he teaches a little-known Filipino martial art called kuntaw. The dojo becomes both sanctuary and battleground, a gathering place for the Filipino diaspora and the place where a father attempts to train and discipline his son. As Adrian grows into a restless, defiant young man grappling with masculinity, faith, and the weight of expectations, the tension between father and son sharpens into open conflict.
Set against the backdrop of imperialism and revolution, Notes from a Wayward Son delivers a fierce meditation on inheritance and rebellion, asking what sons owe their fathers—and what it costs to forgive them.
“A lyric coming-of-age story like no other. De Leon uses his singular voice to reflect on migration, masculinity, religion, sexuality, martial arts, music, and more.”—Jen Soriano, author of Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing “A coming-of-age cryptogram for the necessary work of defining ourselves beyond the image of our fathers and returning to the roots of our mothers.”—Minda Honey, author of The Heartbreak Years
“A mesmerizing and critically important chronicle of global immigration that is at once intimate and sweeping, illuminating and heartbreaking.”—Cleyvis Natera, author of The Grand Paloma Resort
“A complex memoir of translation, not only the shedding of mother tongues and traditions that accompanies the complicated and colonialist pressures resulting from migration, but the language of physicality, the ways our bodies both sustain and betray us, and, perhaps most importantly, how that translation succeeds and fails in the ever-enigmatic discourse between fathers and sons. This is necessary reading.”—John Vercher, author of Devil Is Fine
“A tumultuous and tender tale of Filipino family history and coming of age. From martial arts to ’90s gaming to ancestral poetry, the love languages are many in this piercing epistle.”—Yona Harvey, author of You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love
"Enthralling, tender, and heartbreaking. De Leon writes with a keen eye for the pressures society places on men to conform to ideas of masculinity.”—Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of The American Daughters
“This is one of the finest memoirs I've read in years. It demands brave conversations about love and family as it unflinchingly confronts how immigration, racism, class, and gender shape our relationships. I am a better person because of this book.”—Anthony Christian Ocampo, author of Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons
ISBN: 9781469696638
Dimensions: 216mm x 140mm x 25mm
Weight: unknown
288 pages