I love a good book. And the book of this month is a reminder that there are still great books out there. The book follows the story of Jane, a Filipina immigrant in New York who becomes a "Host" at Golden Oaks, a luxurious secretive facility in New York where wealthy clients pay poor women to produce perfect babies. I know! Quite the story. In essence, the book explores class, poverty, motherhood, exploitation, and the commodification of surrogacy. The idea is that they get these women who are desperate and pay them a lot of money to stay at the Golden Oaks premise with all kinds of amenities: organic meals, personal fitness trainers, daily massages, but then on strict conditions such as not allowing them leave the grounds, monitoring every moment, and being cut off from all they know. What I found so fascinating wasn't quite Golden Oaks itself, but this exposition on the lives of the Filipina women clawing their way to better lives but almost always tumbling down to the depths of struggle because the forces are almost always unbelievable.
