52 pages • 1 hour read
Mia P. ManansalaArsenic and Adobo
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Janet, Lila’s “high school bully” (54), shows off her engagement ring. The women bicker about their high school relationships. Lila has some time to kill before her dinner, so she decides to bake.
Chapter 10 Summary
Lila makes a calamansi-ginger pie and gives a small piece of leftover crust to her dog. Then, Lila leaves a note for her aunt and goes to Ninang June’s house. The whole Calendar Crew is there, and they know Lila talked to Bernadette and Janet. They chastise her for not bringing Amir to talk to Janet. Ninang April criticizes the pie, but everyone else loves it. Ninang June gives Lila a list of suspects. Lila says they need the process in the lab sped up, and the women assure her they’ve made some phone calls to help with that.
Chapter 11 Summary
Lila feels strange not going to work. Tita Rosie begins cooking for Bernadette, Lola Flor secretly goes out gambling, and Lila takes her dog out for a run. Afterwards, Lila visits Adeena at Java Jo’s. Adeena has Lila test some drinks for the coffee shop’s next special. When Adeena suggests they open a cafe together in Shady Palms, Lila is confused. She takes her dog to use the restroom outside and thinks about Adeena wanting to move to Chicago because she is a lesbian and her family keeps trying to set her up with men.
When Lila gets home, Bernadette is late for lunch. Adeena calls and tells Lila that the police lab found “traces of poison” on the dishes from the restaurant (67). This makes Derek’s death a homicide investigation.
Chapter 12 Summary
Lila, still on the phone with Adeena, hesitates to answer the door, thinking that it is the police. Tita Rosie answers, and Bernadette comes in. A few minutes later, Detective Park shows up at the door with a warrant. He explains that the lab found arsenic on the dishes and that he is going to search the house and restaurant. Lila thinks that they should wait for Amir to come over, but Tita Rosie allows the detective access to the house. After asking Bernadette to stay with Tita Rosie, Lila goes to the restaurant to watch the police officers searching there.
Chapter 13 Summary
At the restaurant, a police officer finds a duffle bag in Lila’s locker. Detective Park asks her to come to the police station. Lila insists the bag isn’t hers and asks Adeena, who came outside when the cops arrived, to call Amir. Then, Lila gets into the police car.
Chapter 14 Summary
At the station, Detective Park convinces Lila to talk before Amir arrives. They discuss a bag of rice that the police found in the restaurant. An anonymous tip led the police to test the rice for arsenic. Amir arrives, and Detective Park shows him the duffle bag, which is filled with cash and pills. Lila denies the accusations that she is dealing drugs. Amir connects the evidence in the bag with Detective Park’s previous case, where he took down a drug ring. The detective insists that he has enough evidence to charge and book Lila. Amir promises to return in the morning. Lila worries about her family’s reactions to her mug shot and fingerprinting.
Chapter 15 Summary
Lila is processed and led to a jail cell. She thinks about the list of suspects that her godmother made, which she gave to Adeena. The list includes people who run local restaurants, such as Sushi-ya and Big Bishop’s BBQ. Marcus, the son of Lila’s godmother Ninang Mae, is a corrections officer and leads another person into Lila’s cell. Marcus reveals there is enough evidence for a drug case against Lila, but not necessarily a murder case.
The new person is Yuki Sato, who co-owns Sushi-ya. She asks if Lila knew and killed Derek. Yuki explains that after her restaurant got a poor health inspection, Derek got them a discount on a contractor to take care of the inspector’s complaints. Lila believes there were no code violations and that Derek and the inspector were running a scam. She guess that he was doing this to other restaurant owners, and it was the motive for his murder. Lila asks if Yuki and Derek were having an affair, and Yuki slaps her. Marcus comes over, and Lila agrees to not press charges so Yuki can leave. Yuki offers Lila a free meal at Sushi-ya.
Chapter 16 Summary
Lila doesn’t sleep or eat in jail. Amir takes her to the arraignment, and she is released on bail. Afterwards, Tita Rosie hugs Lila. Detective Park says the trial will be in two months. The health inspector is out of town for a couple of weeks, and the restaurant can’t reopen until he clears them. In Amir’s car, Lila misses her life in Chicago and wants to get out of town. She discovers that her family put up the restaurant and the house to come up with Lila’s bail money. She feels like she can’t leave Shady Palms, at least not until she’s repaid her family.
Chapters 9-16 Analysis
In this section, the narrative for the rest of the novel is outlined in a list of suspects that Lila’s aunties give her. It reads:
Stan and Martha Kosta—Stan’s Diner
Diana Torrez—El Gato Negro
Akio and Yuki Sato—Sushi-ya
George and Nettie Bishop—Big Bishop’s BBQ
Mike Krasinski—Pierogi Palace (83).
The diversity of food choices in the small town of Shady Palms develops the theme of the Importance of Food. Derek, who is white, frequently targets restaurants run by people who are not white in his reviews and scams. He doesn’t have a cultural or emotional connection to food, despite working as a food critic. The list also previews how Lila’s investigation of these places will include sampling their food.
Before Lila can visit these restaurants, however, the police target her in their investigation, in part due to her ethnicity and class. Socioeconomic class plays a prominent role in the theme of Economic Vulnerability and Labor Dynamics. Lila is put in a jail cell with one of the people on the list: Yuki. Both of them are working class and not white, which makes them vulnerable to Derek’s antagonistic actions. When Yuki shares her experiences, Lila begins to suspect that “Derek was purposely writing bad reviews to sic the health inspector on these restaurants and then taking a cut of the fees the inspector charged them” (87). Derek worked his above-board job as a writer for the newspaper alongside his illegal side hustle. His shady practices contrast with the precarious restaurant business, developing the theme of Economic Vulnerability and Labor Dynamics. This theme is also developed through Adeena’s wish that Lila will “settle down here in Shady Palms and open a cafe” (65). Derek’s illegal work selling drugs affected Adeena’s job. Adeena’s original boss at Java Jo’s, Jo, died of a drug overdose. This is why Adeena asks Lila to start a business venture with her. Lila doesn’t agree to open this cafe until the end of the novel, but their business partnership is foreshadowed in this section.
Bailing Lila out of jail puts her family’s restaurant and house in jeopardy, highlighting their precarious socioeconomic position. They have to put up both properties as collateral to raise the necessary funds. Lila thinks,
This house and our restaurant were more than places to sleep, eat, work. They represented everything my family had sacrificed so that I could have a better life. I owed my aunt and grandmother everything. Guess it was finally time to put my dreams aside to make sure their sacrifices meant something (93).
She realizes that her family is willing to put their livelihood in jeopardy to help her, which develops the theme of Familial Pressures and Personal Identity. Her family’s support and sacrifices inspire her to prioritize her family’s needs over her own desires. This is complicated by how her identity is different from other women in her family. Lola Flor felt a strong need to be a “real Filipino.” Lila, on the other hand, considers herself a “second-generation member of a colonized country, born and raised in the Midwestern United States” (59). Despite their different identities, all of Lila’s family faces stigma from law enforcement. Lila notes, “The law tended to work differently for people like us” (68), an observation that becomes clear when Detective Park comes after her with “bogus drug charges” (82). Lila being more Americanized than her grandmother doesn’t keep her from being targeted by the police.
This section also introduces Lila’s dog, a “chubby dachshund” (57). The dog’s name is Longganisa, but Lila often refers to her as Nisa. At the end of the novel, Lila defends herself against Derek’s killer, Kevin, with a statue of her dog. The initial presence of Nisa foreshadows Lila’s victory over the murderer and the symbol of the statue that represents this victory.
