Tizon provided harrowing details of how Lola Eudocia was subject to frequent scolding, forced to work long hours well beyond physical exhaustion and sleep amid piles of laundry, beaten in place of the author’s mother when the author’s mother misbehaved, promised but never actually given an “allowance.”

The essay also recounted Tizon’s own efforts to make amends: standing up to his mother in defense of Lola Eudocia; bringing Lola to live with him in her old age and helping her obtain US citizenship; giving Lola $200 a week to send to relatives, and later paying her airfare to visit relatives back in the Philippines; taking her on family vacations; and bringing her ashes back to her birthplace. Then there is the oft-repeated remark that since Eudocia Pulido was called “Lola” (Filipino term for grandmother), this meant that she was considered “part of the family.” This so-called explanation is actually a non-explanation, since it says nothing about the exploitation that happens within families. But a comment such as this one – “i feel like many filipinos don’t have so much so i wouldn’t be surprised if some took people in as help…even when they weren’t paid, feels like a way for them to take care of each other” – does not help clarify things. She is physically intimidated and verbally abused; she is beaten down day by day so that she will continue to take care of the children and do the work that the abusers cannot or do not wish to do. Because the biological parents leave the domestic sphere to Lola, she is closer than either of them to the children: “She got to know the details of our lives in a way that my parents never had the mental space for,” Tizon writes.
A controversial piece written in The Atlantic magazine about the Filipino servant caste and the Filipino American family involved in it triggers a debate in both the Philippines and the United States.