We know that friends and family are important for our mental health and overall well-being. Recent studies have even shown the reverse: That social isolation can be deadly. A 2023 study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour found that “both social isolation and loneliness were significantly associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality.” Simply put, humans need other people.
While marriage is often portrayed as the paragon in our society, lately we’ve seen a greater emphasis on the importance of friendship. In 2020, the Atlantic published an op/ed titled “What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?” arguing that exact point.
Mia Manansala’s fifth installment of her Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery, Guilt and Ginataan, spotlights the beauty and challenges of friendship – in this case, between protagonist Lila Macapagal and her best friends Adeen Awan and Elena Torres.
The novel takes place during the annual Shady Plans Corn Festival celebrating all things corn in the Midwest. The festival even has the second largest corn maze in Illinois. This time, Shady Palms teams up with its rival town Shelbyville to put on an even bigger and better festival to benefit both towns.
Lila and her friends, all co-owners of Brew-ha Cafe, make sure their cafe is part of the festivities with appropriately corny drinks and treats. When three friends decide to take some time to enjoy the event by racing through the corn maze, they think it’s all fun and games. But in the middle of the race, Lila finds the wife of the Shelbyville mayor stabbed to death with Adeena’s unconscious body next to her, clutching the knife. Now Lila has to use her sleuthing skills to try to clear her BFF’s name. But sleuthing is never easy, especially when she’s not the only one who wants to protect Adeena.
I had a chance to talk with Mia Manansala about Guilt and Ginataan.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Elisa Shoenberger
Where did the idea for this book come from?
Mia Manansala
With Guilt and Ginataan as the fifth book in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen mysteries, I’m always trying to gain inspiration from different things. Very often it’s using Filipino American culture. Sometimes it’s a seasonal thing, like my fourth book Murder and Mamom, which took place during springtime. For this book, I wanted something autumnal. Autumn is really a big thing. Do I do [a cozy mystery] with Halloween? But I thought, “Why don’t you finally take advantage of your setting?” This is a small Midwestern town. What’s more midwestern than a corn festival, which plays into the spooky vibes that I was trying to get into because the vibes involve finding a dead body in a corn maze.
Elisa Shoenberger
You have five books published, or shortly to be published. What have you learned about writing these books?
Mia Manansala
Every book is difficult in a different way. People always want to hear that it gets easier, like you’ve written so much now that it’s easier each book that releases. The answer is yes and no, right? It’s easier because I’m writing a series in the same world with the same protagonist, with a lot of the same ensemble cast. With every book, I go into it with a deeper understanding of my characters than I did in the previous one.
On the flip side, because I’ve spent so much time with them, I don’t want to just keep doing the same thing over and over again. The comfort of the cozy mystery genre is the predictability in a way. That’s why I read these books. But as a writer, I’m always pushing myself to explore different aspects. I will talk about a different theme. I know I’m stretching myself and pushing myself.
Elisa Shoenberger
Having written five books in the series, does Lila surprise you?
Mia Manansala
That’s the fun of writing a series, right? In each book I go in knowing her better and better, because I discovered more about her along the way. I’m like, “I created you. Of course, I know you. You should be doing the things I want you to do.” Then sometimes you feel stuck. You are trying to make your character behave in a way that maybe they would not naturally choose in that moment. That is not how they would respond. You’re making them respond in a way that is convenient to you, the writer, or convenient to the plot, but that is not natural for them. Every time that happens, I learn a little bit more.
Elisa Shoenberger
Could you talk about the role of friendship in this book?
Mia Manansala
In this fifth book, I didn’t necessarily initially plan it this way. I didn’t initially set it up for Lila and Elena to be almost rivals in how the investigation plays out. Both of them are going in thinking that this is the person that they love the best, right? They really want to clear her name. How are they going to react to this? They’re not going to react the same way. They’re not always going to be reacting in a way that is productive or that maybe is even logical, because they care so much about Adeena. Writing those interactions between them was very surprising in many ways. Of course, there are butting heads, because they’re both gonna want to be the one leading the investigation. There’s going to be a weird sort of stakes for them in different ways.
This [butting of heads kept] happening again and again and then it worked into the theme of female friendships. Because female friendships are very, very beautiful, but they can also be messy, right? We’re all human. Friendship can actually push you in directions you wouldn’t think and bring up ugly feelings in you, even if you wouldn’t think that. You’d think “Oh, I thought we just wanted the same thing. But we’re somehow making this about us.”
Elisa Shoenberger
In the series, you touch on some more serious issues like mental health, body image, and predation. Could you talk about that?
Mia Manansala
For marginalized writers, there’s this weird pressure that our marginalized characters have to be perfect. I think that’s really messed up because we’re not allowed to be human. We can only be likable as good characters. Even in a cozy mystery, I want some characters to be at least somewhat realistic.
I don’t want Lila to be a picture perfect protagonist and like a golden pillar of a Filipino American community. I purposely make her selfish. Sometimes I’m selfish. Sometimes we are all selfish. I give her really strong things to kind of balance that. She’s super loyal. She thinks of herself, but her family and her friends do come first most of the time. She’s made bad decisions but she’s in her mid-20s. We’ve all made bad decisions. She’s been jealous and she’s been egotistical.
I’m sure there are people who read my books and they’re like, “Oh, she’s such a Mary Sue because she does everything perfectly.” Are you seeing how judgmental she is? In the first book there is that drug subplot, where she is very judgmental of substance abusers. It makes sense for her, because she has had these negative experiences in the past and it felt very personal to her. But then you try to look at a larger picture, it’s a systemic issue. It’s a governmental issue, it’s a medical issue. Lila’s being close minded. She doesn’t realize that she is biased. Everyone has an unconscious bias, and that’s what I wanted to in these stories. I write queer Brown characters and I want to write them happy because they deserve to be together, but they also deserve to be seen as fully human, which is why they will have these ugly emotions. I want us to be able to be seen and respected and loved as human, even with our flaws.
Elisa Shoenberger
So what’s next? You’ve got your first young adult book Death in the Cards coming out next year.
Mia Manansala
It’s coming out on May 13th. It actually takes place in Chicago proper, and that takes place in the high school that I graduated from. Okay, yeah, this is like my queer Brown Veronica Mars. Danika Dizon is my protagonist. She’s a tarot card reader. One day, she reads the cards for one of her upperclassmen, and the cards are rather ominous. Shortly after that reading, the girl disappears. My protagonist sees this as a chance to take on her very first case.
The sixth book in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery Series Death and Dinuguan also comes out next year.
Check out Mia Manansala’s website and her Ko-Fi for recipes, behind the scenes of the writing process, and more. And if you preorder Guilt and Ginataan, you’ll get some wonderful artwork depicting Lila and her friends.
FICTION
Guilt and Ginataan
by Mia P. Manansala
Penguin Publishing Group
Published November 12th, 2024
