A literary masterpiece of the Philippines written under the Age of Globalization (1995-present)

1. We Won’t Cry About This
I. Summary
Katrina, or Tyke, is a teenager caught up with her feelings as her Ma battles with
cancer but does her best to be happy all the time. Her Ma has remained steadfast and
refuses to let her illness weaken her spirit and zest for life. She is portrayed by her
daughter as someone who has a larger than life personality. And as a mother, she is a
loose cannonball, different among all the mothers are. Messy, outrageously lazy, parties
with her amigas constantly, gets drunk, dates younger men, chats with Ralph Waldo
Emerson’s books, and adamantly treats her baldness as if it is a crown. Her mom, in
entirety, shuns the melodrama of motherhood, of living and of death.
When their Pa left them for his secretary, her Ma never showed any weakness in her
actions but instead, tried to look jolly by inventing color games. She even acted
surprised to know that she’s a rich woman after her husband left her with all the rights to
his properties and possessions. After that, she started partying with her friends and gets
drunk almost every night with her daughters. Until Tyke’s grandmother took her to an
extended European vacation that when she came home, she sold their purple-walled
house she painted to express her emotions and lived in a townhouse where his
husband used to work for. Squeak on the other hand, Tyke’s little sister, no doubt loves
and feels for her mom like any normal daughter would but one could sense her masked
anger at her Ma’s effort to hide her pains, physical or otherwise. Tyke sees this as an
implicit attempt on her mom’s part to rob her and Squeak the right to grieve, to feel,
pressing all the emotions into one lump of denial, cowering beneath the weight of her
Ma’s signature line-“we won’t cry about this”.
Discovering that her Ma has cancer, she even made a joke out of it on how she’s
glad that it didn’t hit her breasts. The way she broke the news to them made Tyke’s
world fell apart. This made a huge impact on the lives of both Tyke and Squeak. For
Squeak, her academic life is on a spin dive. And as for Tyke, she also suffers from C’s
and D’s for her school papers but doesn’t even get sad about it. She has implanted in

2. his mind what her Ma is always saying to them. That in every problem they face, “we
won’t cry about this”.
The partying went on in their house as if their house was some tourist shop. Even if
Tyke and Squeak’s world is about to fall apart, their Ma never stopped partying as if the
world’s going to end.
Squeak has become so deadpan and thin, too, like her cheekbones are going to pop
out of her skin any minute. Their tita Lanie has come to live with them to their aide as
their Ma dies slowly but happily. One night, almost Christmas, they all went to a
gimmick in Subic. They all got boozed and Dino took Tyke home. Just as she enters the
door, someone slapped her in the face and recognized that it’s Squeak. The two fought
with each other physically until tita Lanie broke them off. Tyke fell asleep on the floor
and woke up the next morning with her Ma’s foot on her face. She finds comfort in her
mother’s feet that she loved sniffing them when she was still younger.
The physical state of their Ma deteriorated and she was hospitalized during the
Christmas season forcing them to spend Christmas in the hospital. Although sad and
unprepared to face the reality of her mom’s imminent demise, Tyke manages to see
what counts and what in their situation is really important and that is to treasure the
precious moments leant to them by time and fate.
II. Character Analysis
Katrina, or Tyke, has made an impact of being the tough daughter to go through this
situation. The way she acted in the story is extraordinary for she tolerated her mother’s
attitude as she slowly dies. The way she stood up to her Ma in the first part of the story,
Tyke obviously disagrees with her mom’s unconventional mothering, although verbally
articulated, her opposition takes on the nature of a jest or of the comical or even of mild
irritation on how indifferent their relationship is from other mother-daughter ones. It can
also be acquired in the story that Tyke goes through different emotions in her life as the
chaos in their family started to take its toll on her. How she responded to the

3. announcement of her mother’s illness showed her soft side. She may also be looked as
the tough sister who refused to be the weak and to be strong enough to face the truth
that their father was never going back to them. She’s also the one who can valiantly tell
her mother her feeling so straightforward that it appeared like she disrespects her. But
her weakness really showed when she started crying during her fight with Squeak one
night when she got home drunk. That scene is the one I considered as the climax where
Tyke started to break down as she realized that what Squeak told her, that their mother
is starting to count days, hit her. And just before the story ended, it can be acquired that
Katrina is rather weak and always the rotten egg than the tough one.
III. Action Analysis
First off, the way Tyke and her mother talk to each other is very realistic for it’s
almost the same way how a mother and a daughter talk to each other nowadays. The
way Tyke answers her Ma back merely shows her discontentment on her mother’s
actions. On the part of the mother, this seeming disapproval from her daughter is taken
lightly, opting to remain the way she is – unruffled, cool and indifferent.
In the part where their Ma showed them her new do, Tyke’s reaction to her mom’s
baldness is so typical of youth-tactless, spontaneous and unhindered. So when she
bought her Ma a new beret, it clearly specifies the uncertainty and repressed grief of
someone trying to cope with a potential loss and the love and concern of a child.
Her Ma considering her cancer in the lungs a blessing than getting it on the breast is
somewhat a way to make her daughters feel less sad about what she’s going through at
the moment. Also, her Ma’s camouflage of celebrating her richness after their dad left
them is clearly illustrating her sorrow of what happened and it was being proved by the
part where they went to the mall and Tyke saw her in the library browsing on self-help
books frail and sad.
“I hardly go home before dinner anymore and I wonder if she knows I hang out with
the gang at the billiard hall like I lived there.” – This obviously is Tyke’s way to escape

4. from the hurt and all that’s happening in their family. But it’s clear that she is fed up with
all her mother’s pretention that everything’s fine and that they won’t cry about their
problems.
December fell when one night Katrina went home drunk and she had a fight with
Squeak. And that fight was full of emotion as the rage of both lead to Tyke’s change of
heart from the tough daughter to the rotten egg of all time. Christmas came, her Ma got
weaker and she and her sister are already sad thinking of their future loss and Tyke
showed how hurt she was as she remembered their past Christmases and how happy
they were. That clearly revealed that Tyke is a typical girl with a heart of a child.