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A journalist's powerful account delves into the forces shaping his sprawling Filipino American family, reframing the immigrant experience. As Albert Samaha approaches the age his mother was when she migrated to the US, he questions the belief in a better future that drove her family to leave their homeland. His mother, along with her brother Spanky—a rising pop star in Manila now working as a luggage handler in San Francisco—faces setbacks amid growing instability, prompting Samaha to wonder if their sacrifice for a middle-class life in the Philippines was worth it. He traces his family's history through the region's geopolitical roots in Spanish colonialism, American intervention, and Japanese occupation, situating their story within the broader narrative of global migration influenced by superpower dynamics. Ambitious and intimate, this exploration confronts the unjust legacy of imperialism, the complexities of living with contradiction and hope, and the struggle for the unrealized ideals of an inherited homeland.