History Literature / Heat

* AsianStoreOwner: To be expected in a majority-Asian colony, such as the Dos Hermanos ("Two Brothers") tailors, who are native Filipinos despite their Spanish appellation.

* MightyWhiteyAndMellowYellow: Josefa, the native (or mestiza?) girl who works as househelp to the Ayalas, quickly sets herself up as Saulsbury's native mistress and squeezes quite a bit of money out of him that way, despite also having a native boyfriend in the persona of Estéban. It was perhaps only inevitable that there would be interracial (and coloniser-colonised) relationships in this kind of setting.

* MightyWhiteyAndMellowYellow: Josefa, the native (or mestiza?) girl who works as househelp to the Ayalas, quickly sets herself up as Saulsbury's native mistress and squeezes quite a bit of money out of him that way, despite also having a native boyfriend in the persona of Esteban. It was perhaps only inevitable that there would be interracial (and coloniser-colonised) relationships in this kind of setting.

* EthnicMenialLabor: Naturally. Chinese houseboys and servants work in the U.S. Army and Navy Club, and Filipino servants and cooks are everywhere, like the waiters and kitchen staff at Clarke's ice-cream parlour, or the cook-boy who prepares breakfast at the Ermita hostel where Charlotte stays.

* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: It's not explicitly said what year ''Heat'' takes place in, but subtle hints if matched to RealLife Philippine history at the time (e.g. the rarity of motorcars, the recency of the Philippine Revolution and Philippine-American War, the absence of any mention of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI—which Vernay and co. would almost certainly be called upon to fight in, etc.) suggest that it takes place some years before the novel's publication, probably in the 1900s-decade, also the first decade of U.S. colonial rule.

* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: It's not explicitly said what year ''Heat'' takes place in, but subtle hints if matched to RealLife Philippine history at the time (e.g. the rarity of motorcars, the absence of any mention of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI—which Vernay and co. would almost certainly be called upon to fight in, etc.) suggest that it takes place some years before the novel's publication, probably in the 1900s-decade, also the first decade of U.S. colonial rule.

* CitadelCity: Intramuros, the heavily fortified Spanish-colonial boundaries of Manila. Vernay is sometimes told that only Spaniards and Filipinos call it that whereas Americans generally just call it the "Walled City"—and he feels kind of down that American military engineers are blowing holes in it to let fresh air into the stale streets inside, all for the sake of modern (read: American) public-health standards.

* CitadelCity: Intramuros, the heavily fortified Spanish-colonial boundaries of Manila. Vernay is sometimes told that only Spaniards and Filipinos call it that whereas Americans generally just call it the "Walled City".

* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: It's not explicitly said what year ''Heat'' takes place in, but subtle hints if matched to RealLife Philippine history at the time (e.g. the rarity of automobiles, the absence of any mention of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI—which Vernay and co. would almost certainly be called upon to fight in, etc.) suggest that it takes place some years before the novel's publication, probably in the 1900s-decade, also the first decade of U.S. colonial rule.

It is a very rare and forgotten example of an American-penned fictional novel that deals with America's colonial empire, but one steeped in direct experience: Glenn, of American Southern origin and the daughter of an Atlanta, Georgia mayor, was married for 18 years, from 1903 until the latter's death in 1921, to Brigadier General Samuel Bayard Schindel, a U.S. Army officer whose foreign tours of service took him (and thus her) through much of Asia and the Pacific, including, yes, the colonial Philippines. At his side for practically all of his postings, Glenn penned down all her observations of the culture and social norms within the U.S. Army and American colonial communities in general, and ''Heat'' is her first work to set down these succinct observations. Nor would it be her last: she later came out with novels like ''Little Pitchers'' and ''Mr Darlington's Dangerous Age'' which also depict American colonial society in full or in part, but these, and in fact all of her work in general, are woefully forgotten with her today.

* EvilColonialist: Normally mild-mannered Vernay throttles and threatens to beat up or even kill a Filipino waiter at an ice-cream parlour when the latter refuses to clean up an ice-cream spill on Charlotte's dress. (It's not clear if cleaning up personal spills was meant to be part of the waiter's job, but he seems to prioritise cleaning up minor stains on military customers like Vernay over giant stains on civilian teachers like Charlotte. Still, it seems rather an overreaction on Vernay's part, in part driven by his infatuation with Charlotte.) Meanwhile, his superior Capt. Jennings agrees with Vernay, applying to Filipinos the old sentiment toward Native Americans that "the only good native is a dead one".

The plot mainly revolves around three different facets of the American colonising force in the Philippines: Lieutenant Tom Vernay, schoolteacher Charlotte Carson, and cement businessman Richard Saulsbury, as they steam into Manila on a military transport and adjust to life in this new land where they've been saddled with different responsibilities toward the natives: to police them, educate them, or modernise their infrastructure, as part of the U.S. empire's larger "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_assimilation Benevolent Assimilation]]" [[WhiteMansBurden policy]].

''Heat'' is the very obscure first novel of the very obscure American author Isa Glenn. Published in New York in 1926, it's set entirely in and around {{UsefulNotes/Manila}}, capital of the {{UsefulNotes/Philippines}}, at the time under United States colonial rule (and recently seized, or technically "bought", from the previous Spanish colonial empire via the 1898 Treaty of Paris and the then-ongoing Spanish-American War).

A mostly complete digital online copy is available to read [[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015055052222 here]], missing only 3 pages of text out of an original 317.

* ChubbyMamaSkinnyPapa: The Ayala parents, stout and pompous Doña Adelina and thin and cruel Don Sebastian.

The plot mainly revolves around three different facets of the American colonising force in the Philippines: Army NCO Tom Vernay, schoolteacher Charlotte Carson, and cement businessman Richard Saulsbury, as they steam into Manila on a military transport and adjust to life in this new land where they've been saddled with different responsibilities toward the natives: to police them, educate them, or modernise their infrastructure, as part of the U.S. empire's larger "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_assimilation Benevolent Assimilation]]" [[WhiteMansBurden policy]].

[[quoteright:278:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/download_6595.jpg]]

** The residual Spaniards can hold their own in this department. Even a veritable Spanish kid like Paraiso holds all manner of negative stereotypes about the Filipino natives and also agrees with Vernay's abuse of the native waiter.