The Halo-Halo Review is pleased to interview authors in the aftermath of their books’ releases. This issue’s featured authors include Mignon "Migs" Bravo Dutt.
When was it released?
Room 216 (Penguin Random House SEA) was released globally in April 2024, and in late 2023 in South East Asia.
What has been the response/what has surprised you most about the response?
That it was a full house during its Singapore launch and it was sold out during a Women’s Month event at Fully Booked in BGC, the Philippines.
I am also overwhelmed with readers and author friends telling me that the story and structure could lend itself to film adaptation, and is “Netflixable”.
It’s the story of four university roommates and how they navigate life in the diaspora and dealing with complex issues that modern-day women grapple with. This includes sibling rivalry and family conflict; work-life balance and divorce; inter-racial marriages; ideals of physical beauty and coming to terms with bodily scars; among others.
Tell me something not obvious or known about the book.
The book can be read as four different stories, representing the lives of the four roommates, Tintin, Sandy, Serene, and Issa. I started the project as character portraits of the roommates, but it soon developed into independent but interconnected novellas. In my mind, Tintin, Sandy, Serene and Issa are real women, and each of their facets are something that I and most women can probably relate to:
· Tintin’s story is about the broken bond of sisterhood and how two sisters with privileged childhood have grown poles apart: one is mired in domestic issues while the other has seemingly conquered faraway places. The sibling rivalry is further complicated by the discovery of a deception and how the sisters respond differently to the sins of their dead father. This story is also an eye-opener on the lives of those in the diaspora, i.e., the biases, prejudices, and microaggressions that they must routinely face. Overall Tintin’s story is about redemption, reconciliation, and rediscovery.
· Sandy’s divorce is like a curtain that reduced her life into a ‘before and after’. Divorce becomes more complicated when a child is involved. Sandy reflects on how the power balance shifts with the birth of a child and how the burden of childcare falls on women, even when they have a career of their own. This story is an honest assessment of a marriage gone wrong, triggered by a husband’s infidelity, but a fissure that could have been impending anyway because of the unfair distribution of the weight of responsibility at home. It’s also about second chances, forgiveness, and acknowledgment that we can’t have it all—we’re only human after all.
· Serene breaks away from tradition and is shunned by her conservative Chinese family in Manila. Serene doesn’t regret anything especially when she realizes that life is too short—as a doctor she knows this only too well. But the impasse in her family starts to dissolve when her daughter, Chrystal, is born. In time Chrystal becomes the glue between Serene and her mother, who had never developed a bond earlier because of a series of mistranslations, not just of language, but also of emotions.
· Issa deals with the ephemerality of beauty and the female body. She struggles to come to terms with how cancer could deform and scar a once stunning and flawless body. It is also a story of how love can transcend deformities. And how despite modern medicine, sometimes things are beyond our control.
What are you working on right now.
I’m working on my third book, which is a coming of age story of childhood friends. I was inspired by My Brilliant Friend, but this one is with an Asian perspective. As with my two novels, The Rosales House and Room 216, my third book tackles diasporic struggles, this time with greater focus on the US experience, where I was living during the pandemic.
*****
Mignon ‘Migs’ Bravo Dutt is a writer and researcher who has published work in several countries, regions, and cultures. She is the author of the contemporary novel, The Rosales House, and the interlinked novella collection, Room 216, both from Penguin Random House SEA (PRHSEA). Migs has also published several essays, including one in the Washington Post about her pandemic experience in the USA. She has contributed prose and poetry to anthologies and journals and has been featured in literary interviews and programs in Asia, Europe and the USA. Her short fiction was selected for 22 New Asian Short Stories, Kitaab’s The Best Asian Short Stories, and Growing Up Filipino 3. Migs has co-edited Get Lucky: An Anthology of Philippine and Singapore Writings in 2015 and its sequel Get Luckier: An Anthology of Philippine and Singapore Writings II in 2022. She has co-authored Dreaming of the Divine Downstairs, a poetry collection.
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