Published author Randy Ribay spoke for over an hour at the Wauwatosa Public Library Civic Center on October 2nd, 2024. His talk ranged from reading his most recent book “Everything We Never Had”, to answering questions in front of the audience, discussing his childhood, his education and his experience being an author. Ribay spoke earlier in the day to Tosa West Students enrolled in Creative Writing and Contemporary Novels. Ribay was on a four city book tour with Milwaukee, WI as the second stop visited.
“It’s always special for me when this one was co-hosted with the Filipino American National Historical Society, there were more Filipinos in the crowd than usual. And so it’s always good because I get questions about “utang na loob”(a debt of one’s inner self) and other kinds of questions that non Filipino audiences generally don’t ask.”
Randy Ribay is a Filipino American Author who writes fictional books for young adults and won bestselling author from the book he wrote “Patron Saints of Nothing”. He has also won awards like National Book Awards for young people’s Literature and also Best Young Adult Novel award. Randy continues to write many of his books representing his Filipino American Heritage, history and many events.
“When I think really an integral part of myself, and it is by tapping into that I was able to write stories right now.”
Randy Ribay was born in the Philippines and just moved to the Midwest of the United States at the age of 1. Growing up he felt that something was missing, he had no knowledge of his own heritage and his own background and was divided between his academic and social life with Filipino American History and Culture.
“I had connection with the Philippines and Filipino community, but in the day to day, I lived in the suburbs outside of Detroit, and so the only Filipino kids at my school were my siblings and myself.”
“We didn’t know anything about Filipino history or Filipino American History, so it created this kind of weird division for me, I think of kind of like a separate thing from my academic life, my social life, or my future career,”
After graduating from High school. Randy took Aerospace engineering for his first year of college but felt that he did not want to be in that path. He decided to change his course to writing and later earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from University of Colorado at Boulder and also a Master’s degree in Language and Literacy from Harvard Graduate School of Education.
“I didn’t imagine myself being happy five years down the road or 10 years down the road, if I stuck with engineering.” – said Ribay. “I ended up switching to English, just because I always loved stories my entire life in all formats. And so in college there’s this whole major dedicated to studying stories and that was a great opportunity. And so I’m gonna go jump in and do this.”
Although writing fiction, his written works are based on real events in the Philippines. His book “Patron Saints of Nothing” takes place during the Philippine Drug war of 2016. Many Filipinos died during the years following the election of President Duterte’s Election.
“My main interest is fiction. And so a lot of times for me, it was reading a fictional book about a historical time period, and then that makes me interested in that time period, until I go and read books about that time period.”
By the end of the event, Ribay gave advice about what makes a good story and how to discover oneself and find joy while writing. He shared his knowledge and beliefs to aspiring writers who are interested in starting their career of their works and literacy.
“Know your story. Think about who you are, think about what you care about, what you value, and continue to think about that. Because I think the more you know that, the more you know what you’re interested in, curious about, and what brings you joy. And so I think it is as much as internal, it also has external impacts.”
