The Famine of Dreams–Kundiman Summary
The Famine of Dreams
Daisy is led through the general’s interrogation camp by a colonel who jokes and touches her at every chance he gets. He leads her to General Ledesma, who is waiting for her with Pepe Carreon. They are listening to Love Letters on the radio, and Pepe offers her a cigarette and water. An interrogator named Dindo begins asking Daisy questions which are simple at first but more invasive as time goes on. Love Letters continues playing in the background. As an advertisement for TruCola plays, Ledesma tells Daisy that her father was a sentimental man, but he was also overly moral and stubborn, and the general suggests that this might have been part of his downfall. Dindo then asks Daisy about Santos Tirador’s involvement in an ambush against Filipino troops. When she does not speak, he shows her pictures of Primativo Zamora, a poet who once sheltered them. His body is mangled, and it is clear that he was tortured to death. As Love Letters continues, the colonel and Dindo violently rape Daisy, and the general implies that he is going to torture her afterward.
Bananas and the Republic
The first lady is being interviewed by a foreign journalist. She speaks about how devoted she is to the Philippines, using the fact that all of her fashion choices are local, rather than imported, as an example. When asked about Orlando (Romeo) Rosales, she puts on a sad face and suggests that the reporter interview General Ledesma or Lieutenant Carreon. The reporter pushes the issue, stating that Romeo had no known political affiliations, and when his fiancée spoke in his defense, she disappeared as well. The first lady claims that they linked a gun that Romeo was carrying to the weapon that killed Senator Avila, and Trinidad was an unwitting accomplice. The interviewer then asks about Daisy, but the first lady says that as far as she knows, Daisy is still in the mountains, and encourages him to interview Ledesma. She then changes the subject to actors.
Aware that he is asking about corruption, the first lady reasons with him that if she were corrupt, she would look ugly, as that evilness would settle on the outside. She continues talking so as to control the conversation, claiming that any corruption present, like the government profiting off of the poor, is sensationalism created to make news. While he knows she is lying, he is too tired to argue with her. He then asks about her thoughts on Senator Avila. She claims that it was the rebels who killed him and then tried to blame the current governmental regime. He decides he will not ask any more questions about the war in the country, as he decides she must be deluded or in denial to be able to make such claims. She then wants to talk about her dreams and begins drawing a picture of moons and stars on a legal pad. She becomes absorbed by this and briefly forgets where she is. When she finishes the drawing, she ends the interview and apologizes for her husband not being present because it is one of his golf days. The reporter packs up and leaves.
Terrain
Boy-Boy allows Joey to stay in his apartment for weeks to avoid the police, and Joey begins developing cabin fever. They watch the news at Boy-Boy’s insistence and learn that Daisy Avila has been let go. That night, a car with Boy-Boy’s friends appears, ready to take Joey away. Boy-Boy puts Joey in the backseat of the car, and a man blindfolds Joey. They...
(This entire section contains 1537 words.)
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drive for a short time, then walk Joey out of the car into a building and remove the blindfold. After using the bathroom, he is introduced to Lydia, Rudy, and Edgar, but these are all pseudonyms. Edgar wants to know what Joey saw. After telling his story, they seem agitated and saddened. A man named Tai appears, and Joey is again blindfolded, put into another vehicle, covered in blankets, and told to lie still.
Joey falls asleep and dreams, first about being a shower dancer at Studio 54, but the audience boos him as men in khaki uniforms lather themselves behind him. Then he is four years old with his mother, who turns into Eugenio/Eugenia, then into Andres. Then he is Boy-Boy back at the club, being surrounded by soldiers who turn into the gang members who tried to accost Joey weeks before. He wakes, but they are still driving, and he drifts back to sleep. When the vehicle finally stops, they are in the mountains. Joey is escorted to a camouflaged hut occupied by two men, one with an M16 slung over his shoulder. The man with the M16 drives the van away, and the other offers Joey and his new comrades some food. After eating dried meat and bananas, they begin a long hike through the jungle until they reach a camp with others. A priest with an M16 and a beautiful woman emerge from one of the tents. The woman then says to Joey that she wants to know about her father’s killer. As a kind of addendum at the end of the chapter, we learn that she, Daisy, was released from detention on the condition that she exile herself, but she returned under a different identity and reunited with Clarita. Her lover had been captured, and she had a stillborn baby.
Luna Moth
Pacita and Delores shop in a US-run SPORTEX supermarket to prepare for a farewell lunch with the American consul’s wife, Mrs. Goldenberg. Freddie is at home recovering from his first heart attack. While the consul is there, Pucha flirts with him, having developed a general taste for older men.
Rio begins menstruating, and to celebrate, she cuts her hair short, which aggravates Pucha.
The party eats a salad prepared by Pacita, and Mrs. Goldenberg complains about being relocated to Saudi Arabia, which she thinks is an anti-Semitic conspiracy. Although Delores does not like this woman, the family puts up with her because Mr. Goldenberg has helped them on numerous occasions, obtaining special diet food for Whitman before he died and putting Abuelita in the American hospital, despite the fact that she was not American.
In 1959 or 1960, Uncle Cristobal pays to have the family genealogy traced. Freddie is entirely uninterested in his genealogy, and Rio never finds out the names of her paternal grandparents.
During the farewell lunch, Rio is with Lola in the bamboo garden. As the rest of the family eats and gossips, Rio examines a snakeskin that she has found. Her mother, noticing her, scolds her and tells her to wash her hands.
In 1960, Rio receives a gift of American rock and roll albums from a potential love interest, Tonyboy. Tonyboy grinds against her and teases her about her dreams of going to Hollywood.
In 1960 or 1961, Rio, Pucha, and Raul see West Side Story at the Galaxy Theater. Raul heckles the screen, and shortly thereafter, he marries Belen Garcia. Over time, Raul and Mikey become delinquents, often having to bribe guards or post bail. After having three children with Raul, Belen leaves him. He remarries and has two more children. Meanwhile, Abuelita dies in Spain but is flown back to Manila to be buried next to her husband. She leaves all of her possessions to the church. Pucha marries Boomboom Alacran, but it lasts less than a year. Boomboom is possessive of her, sometimes locking her in a room and beating her. She eventually escapes and obtains her foreign divorce.
Delores takes up painting and, without warning, sends Rio to school in America and moves there herself. Rio receives letters from Raul and Pucha. Raul becomes a Christian faith healer, and Pucha continues to send local gossip. Eventually, Rio returns to Manila. With Pucha, she revisits her old home against her father’s suggestion. The house is in disrepair, and she is overwhelmed with melancholy when she sees her empty and dilapidated room. She sends Pucha away and wanders the house for an hour before finding Pucha outside and breaking into tears. She tells Pucha that she loves her. Pucha eventually remarries and stays in Manila.
Rio regularly travels, never feeling at home anywhere but in airports. She sometimes dreams that she and Raul are luna moths, swooping toward their destiny, which is to be nowhere in particular.
Pucha Gonzaga
This chapter is a short letter from Pucha, which seems to respond to the events that Rio has described in the book. Pucha complains that Rio has many of the facts wrong: she did not marry Boomboom, Delores and Freddie never split up, and Belen Garcia is still married to Raul, among other mistakes. Pucha chalks these up to Rio’s vivid imagination.
Kundiman
This short chapter is a play on the Lord’s Prayer, beginning with “our mother, who art in heaven.” It lists a series of grievances, full of imagery of decay, overgrowth, and neglect. “Kundiman” refers to a love song for a country, and thus it is likely that this brief chapter is addressing the Philippines as “mother,” speaking about how dangerous, neglected, and neglectful the country is.
