Jack G. Wigley. Falling into the Manhole: A Memoir. Manila: UST Publishing House, 2012. 140 pages.

• Main Author: Jugo, Celeste Aïda Abad
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2014
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/paha/vol4/iss1/7; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/paha/article/1096/viewcontent/PAHA_204.1_207_20Book_20reviews_20__20Jugo.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Excerpt: There may be no better way to get acquainted with Jack G. Wigley’s Falling into the Manhole: A Memoir than to read the first entry, “A Writer’s Journey to Memoir Writing.” As Wigley expresses his love for reading and writing, he also uncovers the main hurdle in his life: growing up poor, fatherless, and different, because he is the illegitimate gay son of an American serviceman and a Filipina. In the same essay he also classifies the sixteen narratives as drawn from his interest and experiences in “film (Nora Aunor and Meryl Streep), music (Madonna and Lea Salonga), Broadway Musicals (Miss Saigon), pageants (Miss Universe), and stage (the CCP)” (9). The narratives are relatable, accessible, and broken into bite-sized fragments, rather than presented as one long, whole and organic narrative. Wigley offers his own definition of the memoir as “literary representations of memory” (7), and because memory is not linear or progressive, he presents his memoir as a series of roughly chronological “vignettes—fragments of a perceived life story” (10).