A young adult novel about a queer Filipina American teenager.
Cory Tagubio is an outcast at her all-girls Catholic high school. In the wake of an accident, Cory grows close to her history teacher, Ms. Holden, but when the crush turns into something more, Cory is shipped off to her half-brother in the Philippines, leaving her to discover how her family and their country have shaped her past and how they might change her future.
Reviews for MY HEART UNDERWATER
“In her YA debut, Fantauzzo’s gorgeous writing presents an emotionally wrought American-born teenager on a journey to define her present as well as understand her family’s past. . . . One of a cast of splendidly drawn characters, Cory faces hidden truths about familial separation and lasting bonds that provide a layered backdrop for her own catharsis.”
— Kirkus, Starred, Best Book of 2020
“This emotionally powerful YA debut sensitively portrays the tension between Cory’s American upbringing and attempts to stay true to her cultural roots. A first-person narrative peppered with largely untranslated Tagalog and Taglish adds a refreshing authenticity to Fantauzzo’s richly textured world.”
— Publishers Weekly, Starred
“Fantauzzo tenderly shows Cory’s journey of self-discovery with the help of some of the most wholesome supporting characters young adult fiction has ever seen.”
— The Manila Times
“The novel weaves themes of isolation and placelessness — from growing up brown and lower middle-class in America, from the other-ness of being queer, from being thrust into your home country where you’re seen as an outsider and the rules, the social dynamics, don’t seem to make any sense. And, most strikingly, from an abuse so subtle that it burrows under your skin. . . . It is an important novel.”
— CNN Philippines
“This soulful #OwnVoices story explores how love for family and tradition can conflict with personal dignity, and it will especially resonate with young readers from immigrant families.”
— Booklist
“Fantauzzo’s emotional story extends beyond Cory’s search for identity and belonging, adding insights about both historical and metaphorical colonization, while readers are immersed in the uncertainty that surrounds new and ongoing family crises, resentment, and forgiveness.”
— The Horn Book
“A heartfelt #OwnVoices story about a Filipino character who is gay. The emotional connection to a homeland, language, and family is demonstrated by the use of Tagalog in dialogue, and lush imagery of bustling cities and mountainous terrain. The book also incorporates political history effortlessly as Jun teaches Corazon about their country as they bond. Built on character and relationships, Fantauzzo’s young adult debut is not to be missed.”
— School Library Journal
“In a sea of coming-of-age stories, this YA debut rises to the surface with its heartbreaking beauty and grace. Centering a young, queer Filipina, the story encapsulates the challenges and hopes of many young people straddling tradition and modernity, family loyalty and burgeoning independence.”
— Ms. Magazine
“My Heart Underwater is a lovely, magnificent wonder of a novel that will leave you with the rarest of tender heartaches: life-affirming, life-inspiring, life-loving; a heartache of joy and becoming. You won’t walk freely, or willingly, from these pages.”
— Marjorie M. Liu, award-winning author of Monstress
"Beautifully unsettling and deeply satisfying, Laurel Fantauzzo’s My Heart Underwater should be read by all. And it’s a gift to any community that such a heartfelt, literary novel is now in our hands."
— Gina Apostol, author of Gun Dealers’ Daughter, PEN/Open Book Award winner
“Fantauzzo’s coming of age novel is a wise, complex exploration of a young person on the cusp of adulthood as she navigates the in-between: childhood vs adulthood; rage vs love; the life her parents’ chose for her vs the one she will create for herself; being Filipinx in America and being an American in the Philippines. Readers who yearn for stories closer to the nuances, contradictions, and messiness of real life will love Cory and root for her as she steps into her own life.”