Love and Hard Times

Book cover, Taxi Dancer by Marivi Soliven

In an article published by Positively Filipino, Titchie Carandang reviews Taxi Dancer, a novel by Marivi Soliven.

Marivi Soliven’s latest novel is a love story inspired by a 1935 murder case that took place in San Diego’s red-light district known as the Stingaree. In Taxi Dancer, we follow the story of the idealistic and romantic Eli Mata, who falls in love with the beautifully vulnerable Lucinda Lane, the red-haired star dancer at the Filipino-owned Rizal Dance Hall. Readers are drawn into a world that stretches from dusty asparagus fields to the steamy dance halls where men paid for the company—and dances—of taxi dancers.

Taxi Dancer is more than a romance. It is also a portrait of the lives of the manongs, Filipino men who traveled to the United States in the early 1900s in search of a better life. Many settled on the West Coast, working as agricultural laborers in California and Washington, while others traveled farther north to work in Alaska’s fish canneries.

More Americans are learning about the manongs and their lives, thanks in part to the growing recognition of their role in U.S. history. Filipino American labor leaders Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, and Peter Gines Velasco were featured in Marissa Aroy’s Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the United Farm Workers and the PBS docuseries Asian Americans. More recently, they were honored for their contributions by the Department of Labor, which included them in its Wall of Honor in 2024. Itliong’s life has also been the subject of several books, including Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong, by Dr. Dawn Mabalon and Gayle Romasanta, which became the basis for Larry the Musical: An American Journey.