Zielfa B. Maslin

What Brought You to England? Zielfa B. Maslin

What Brought You to England? It is the 1980s. A Filipina, Eve, goes with her husband, Andrew, when he returned to England after working as a British volunteer in the Philippines for four years. Due to limited finances, they have no choice but to live with Andrew's parents, and the situation is not helped when Andrew experiences difficulty in finding a job as a clinical psychologist. The meeting of different backgrounds and cultural expectations causes strain, and there is palpable generational tension. For Eve, opportunities to find work in England prove nonexistent as she finds that her degree in history and career in the National Museum of the Philippines count for nothing. As she reinvents herself, she experiences undercurrents of racism, but she also succeeds in training to be a nurse. Her personality and Filipino upbringing inevitably impacts on how she copes with marriage, parenthood, work, and friendships.