On a summer day in 2015, 64-year-old Josefina Tometich grabbed her trusty BB gun and shot out the back window of a man’s car.
The man, she told police, was stealing mangoes from her Fort Myers yard. He wound up mango-less while Josefina Tometich ended up in handcuffs, and the incident went viral.
A decade later, that story earned Josefina’s daughter, Annabelle Tometich, the Southern Book Prize — a prestigious literary award given to works that capture the spirit of the American South. Previous winners include Coretta Scott King, Ann Patchett and Carl Hiaasen, a fellow UF graduate.
The 44-year-old UF psychology graduate won the award’s nonfiction category for her debut book “The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony” Feb. 14, 10 months after it was published in April.
Tometich said the story, which follows her tumultuous childhood in a mixed Filipino-American household in Fort Myers, explores why her mother would so fiercely protect a few mangoes.
Her answer: “It’s complicated.”
The memoir delves into Tometich’s familial background, including her mother’s journey from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Metro Manila, Philippines, to Florida, her father’s death and her own path from being a pre-med student to a restaurant critic to a journalist. It weaves food, family and the fallout of one fateful felony into a Florida suburban backdrop and Tometich’s quest for identity.
Initially, Tometich wanted her mother’s story to go away. But when she began writing a cookbook in 2019, it morphed into a collection of personal stories. She said she realized the book offered her the chance to rewrite the narrative that defined her mother in national headlines. After being charged with a felony, Josefina Tometich served five years of probation.
“I get to reclaim this and make it my own,” she said. “[I get to] connect with other multiracial Filipino Americans, Asian Americans or just anyone who’s felt other in their life.”
At UF in the early 2000s, Tometich had her eyes set on medical school with plans to eventually become a doctor. She said she never considered writing as a career option but fell in love with it when she landed a job at The News-Press in Fort Myers. She spent 18 years writing food reviews — sometimes under the pseudonym of a Frenchman named Jean Le Boeuf.
By age 39, however, she said she faced a “bit of a midlife crisis.” Searching for a new direction for her writing, she revisited the 2015 mango tree incident.
“I didn’t know that this was a story that needed to be told, because it’s these memories that I had blocked out for a long time,” she said. “That incident proved in a lot of ways all of these burdens that [my mother had] been carrying for so long.”
Tometich said she hopes her memoir pulls readers “out of the otherness” and “help[s] them see themselves for who they are.”
Readers resonated with Tometich’s message — enough to win her the Southern Book Prize, which is a readers’ choice award chosen through popular vote. Booksellers who are part of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance nominate award finalists, and sellers and their customers vote on the books.
Winning the award was “beyond the scope of dreams” of Tometich’s college self, she said.
“I think [my college self and I would] be high-fiving and jumping up and down and screaming,” she said.
Tometich’s husband, Buddy Martin, said he isn’t surprised by his wife’s success. Even with their two children, he said, Tometich “poured herself into the project.”
Martin, a 45-year-old UF secondary education and history alum, knew of Tometich before college but reconnected with her at UF a few days before her freshman year in 1998. They’ve been together ever since.
Martin described Tometich as a “fun, cynical and honest” author and said her writing process, which often kept her up late into the night, was “cool to watch.”
“[There’s] this flow and this snappiness to her writing that I think just draws people in and keeps them connected,” he said. “She really bared her soul in this project.”
Natasha Powell, a UF public relations alum who lived with Tometich at Beaty Towers, said “The Mango Tree” resonated with her because it helped her understand how Tometich grew up and “how complicated it is to be different in South Florida.”
“I’m incredibly proud to be her friend,” 44-year-old Powell said. “I think she just really is a stellar example of the incredible people that come out of that college.”
As for what’s next, Tometich is already working on a follow-up memoir about her years as a food critic. She’s also writing a children’s book — it’s about mangoes.
Contact Grace McClung at gmcclung@alligator.org. Follow her on X @gracenmclung
Grace McClung is a third-year journalism major and the university administration reporter for The Alligator. In her free time, Grace can be found running, going to the beach and writing poetry.
