Intersect: On Being Lost and Found

A review of Elsa Valmidiano’s essay collection The Beginning of Leaving 

By Juanita E. Mantz

Being a voracious reader, I’ve noticed that some books touch me deep inside, and change me, leaving an imprint, almost a like birthmark, that only I can see. For me, an example is Elsa Valmidiano’s most recent book, the beautifully crafted hybrid essay collection The Beginning of Leaving. It begins with a poem, quite fittingly titled “What We Were Meant To” and with the lines, “Are we born feet first/to hit the ground running/our hearts already exposed/slashed open to bleed?”

From there, Valmidiano begins a discovery and excavation of the self along with a deep questioning of family and a search for home. Part memoir, part travelogue, with an interspersing of her lyrically stunning poetry, Valmidiano lifted me up, taking me on a literary trip that I won’t soon forget. Falling into the book was like diving into a crystal blue pool of water; I was immersed and transported and at times, even held my breath until I could remember to exhale. Then I would breathe, and read and read some more, savoring it and admiring Valmidiano’s ability to convey such depth in her words.

In the first essay First Home, Valmidiano eases us into her story, telling of her birth in what she deems “the Motherland”, deftly describing her infant years in Las Piñas in the Philippines. She speaks of her beginning, and then of her leaving at the age of sixteen months. After describing her bloodcurdling screams on the plane, Valmidiano questions, “Could I have been missing Motherland but just couldn’t say in words?” 

This theme of returning home resonated so much with me and as a memoirist who herself writes about leaving home then returning, it struck a deep chord. You see, as a kid with a chaos filled and turbulent home life, I always yearned to be somewhere, anywhere other than my hometown of the Inland Empire (located in Southern California, a region about fifty miles east of Los Angeles). 

But I, much like Valmidiano with her Motherland, eventually realized that the Inland Empire was calling me home and I would return to my community in my thirties when my father got sick and passed away. It is also where I would stay, to this very day.

The Inland Empire is ultimately where I would find my calling as a lawyer (by moving from corporate law to public defense) and even more importantly, I would find my voice as a writer (my memoir is titled “Tales of an Inland Empire Girl”). And ironically enough,I would also recreate these locations in my memoir, thus returning home, like Valmidiano, both literally and figuratively.

Valmidiano’s book is also much about family and on her visit home, she describes where her father grew up, in a barrio once known as Lapog, but now known as San Juan. Reading her lyrical words, it reminded me so much of my own father, who died about seventeen years ago, My dad was not from the Philippines, but instead he was a “white” cowboy from Montana whose parents were so poor that his parents put him and his siblings in an orphanage for a time so the state could feed them. Valmidiano’s words and the images she constructed of her father and his past, reminded me that lack of economic privilege crosses racial lines and is systemic and generational but that I, like Valmidiano (who is a lawyer turned writer like myself) broke the cycle of poverty through education.

As a nonfiction writer and poet, Valmidiano is exquisitely precise in her details, and even tells us how one showers here, in this place, and how one must crouch and “pour cold buckets of water over one’s head”. It is the simplicity and beauty of the language which conveys the most. And we hear her voice and the voice of those who came before in her stunning prose and we see, as Valmidiano says, “Ghosts of our ancestors linger within these walls . . . .”

This book is both about the present and the past and Valmidiano reminded me of how words can encapsulate and recreate time and place. A friend of mine once compared writing memoir to building a time machine and the beauty of Valmidiano’s work lies in how she expertly pilots her figurative paper made time machine through her craft, transporting me to a time and place I recognized well, one that resonated and reverberated in my soul, to a time of childhood, and a time of memories, both experienced and retold. As Valmidiano states, “Maybe your daughter and I both dream of your memories and all those family, friends and detractors who told you theirs.“

Valmidiano has much to say on femininity and the body which is of such crucial importance in these post overturning of Roe v. Wade times. She is able to write about the complexities of being a feminist and struggling with the trauma of terminating a pregnancy. As she writes, “On the outside, I was charming and unstoppable, while inside, I felt like I was dying.” Valmidiano ultimately shows the reader that one can be conflicted and yet pro choice, which she definitely is.

And later, Valmidiano chronicles her own struggles with fertility, which mirror mine, highlighting the effects of a toxic workplace and over demanding work life on fertility. As she writes so eloquently, “In fertility speak, you cannot successfully plant in dry, cracked soil and expect anything to grow. All the fertility drugs in the world could not defy what Mother Nature was trying to tell me.” I found it refreshing to hear the issues written about in such complex and intersectional ways. 

The book is also about family history and a digging into the past. Valmidiano is able to deftly investigate and write about many of her relatives in an honest, yet compassionate, way. This book is about memory, about ghosts, about her ancestors and their history and yet also about the present and the now. As Valmidiano so eloquently writes, “Maybe I eventually live out moments of your life as they first appear in mine.”  Her prose shows that the space time continuum is more than a theory and that in her world, it is her reality.

My takeaway from this hybrid essay collection, one that Valmidiano has wrought so carefully and achingly, is that home is where we say it is. Valmidiano illustrates that home can be a creation in itself and the writing of it is an act of bravery. 

Valmidiano’s book further showed me that home is a treasure chest of memories and experiences that we are writers and creatives can use as fodder for our creative endeavors. There is a reason that the first books of writers, from James Joyce (whose book Dubliners, captures the city he self-exiled himself from) to Sandra Cisneros (whose book The House on Mango Street, details parts of her hometown of Chicago) to Isabel Quintero (who writes in Gabi a Girl in Pieces of a fictional town in the Inland Empire that looks much like Corona, California), focus on their hometowns. I think that is because “home” is a magical place filled with nostalgia and brimming with memories, both sweet and bittersweet and even at times, traumatic. 

This book is ultimately more than just a collection of pieces, it is also a naming and a reframing of home and culture. The Beginning of Leaving is simply a celebration of everything one has loved, lost and left. Much like the life I have lived, Valmidiano has lost and persevered and found a way to make it all worthwhile via her creativity and art. In the end, I realized that Valmidiano was not only taking me home, she was taking me on a journey and I was willing to follow her wherever she is willing to take me. As Valmidiano tells at the end of her beautiful book, “And when It comes to leaving, we have to start somewhere.” 

In The Beginning of Leaving, Valmidiano captivates and mesmerizes and as a reader, I never wanted it to end. Some say home is where the heart is and ultimately, this book is all heart and reminded me to listen carefully to the ever beating heart of my own home.