Who will be part of the lead cast?
We can’t think of anyone who can impeccably portray Lola but Nora Aunor. Either Joshua Garcia or Iñigo Pascual can play the young Alex, John Lloyd Cruz or Piolo Pascual can play the old Alex. Julia and Gretchen Barretto are fit for the role of young and old Leticia (Alex’s mother), respectively. Isn’t Ian Veneracion perfect as the husband?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve more than likely heard or read the essay written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex Tizon, published by the Washington, D.C.-based The Atlantic Magazine as its June cover story.
It’s interesting that in this day and age of social media dominance when you have to write down your thoughts in less than 150 characters, express yourself through the use of emojis, or get the attention of the world through an eye-catching photo, people still have the patience to read a long essay, a 120-paragraph article at that.
My Family’s Slave is a liberating story about Eudocia Tomas Pulido whom they affectionately called as Lola. The author revealed that his family had kept Lola a slave for more than five decades.
“She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was,” the essay starts.
When Tizon’s family moved from the Philippines to the US in the 1960s, they took Lola with them. She was tasked to do all the chores from cooking, cleaning the entire house, doing the laundry, and taking care of the five children. And in the process, the defenseless probinsyana from Tarlac, who was initially given to the author’s mother as a gift from his grandfather, suffered physical and emotional abuse from the author’s parents.
The emotional account of this “modern-day slavery” has the entire country talking. Everyone who was able to read the article was touched and by the time you finished reading this story another Filipino is on Twitter defending Alex Tizon against foreigners who don’t have any idea of what our history or culture is.
It’s true that the essay is very popular, a few hours after the story came out it went viral on Facebook. The magazine also announced that their website set new records for both single day and concurrent audience driven by its cover story, which came out almost two months after its author’s death.
My Family’s Slave mirrors the still ongoing struggle of many Filipino house help either working in the country or overseas. And one of the reasons why the story became viral is because it’s very familiar experience among domestic helpers only Lola was not being paid. She worked tirelessly day and night in exchange for food and shelter.
But Lola’s story didn’t end there. Although a bit late, Lola still found her liberation. Perhaps, she died at 83 years old content with the love given to her by the people she unconditionally cared for.
This summary alone can be a perfect film inspiration. Imagine how this story that affected a lot of Filipinos in one way or another be made into a feature film. In fact, while reading the essay, without seeing the photos that accompanied the story, one can already create a mental picture of their faces and the deep emotion rooted from their struggles and dilemma.
