Exile, third-culture kids, and the alluring concept of home to be explored in: There is no mathematics to love and loss: A novel

• Main Author: Aranal, Lystra Dionisio
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2009
• Subjects: Fiction
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/2586
• Institution: De La Salle University

This is a creative writing thesis entitled There is No Mathematics to Love and Loss- a novel that explores the concept of 'Loss' by tracing it in the life of the main character Jessy Diaz as she remembers a time that had once been nothing but the constraint struggle to hold on to everything lost in an effort to maintain a minute of semblance of a life. The novel would initiially deal with the loss of a homeland before exploring further into Jasy's psyche and behaviors in an attempt to explain the inner struggle involved within someone who does not have a place to call home. Consequently, the novel would also explore the concept of 'home' in accordance with the shrinking world. This work will be relevant in Contemporary Philippine Literature due to the trend of the Filipino Diaspora. Families, when they move, seldom really focus on the repercussions that the move would have on the children. The Filipino youths, having been dragged away from the native-land at a young age, and thus barely knowing theirs noots, would feel a sense of confusion as they try to assimilate themselves into a new culture eventually resulting in youths who in essence does not have a home as they do not completely fit in anywhere - feeling neither Filipino nor foreign. The novel will not only highlight the plight of the Filipino youths who have lost their sense of national identity and feel both detached from their native-land and their current homestead but will also touch on the idea that as much as we may want to deny it, we all still need a place to call home where everything lost will eventually find its way back to us.