Portrait of a marriage in black and brown

NEW YORK—In the gripping Prologue of her memoir, Why Should Guys Have All the Fun?, Loida Nicolas-Lewis recounts a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to prevent brain cancer from claiming Reginald Lewis, her husband and self-made African American billionaire. She’s engaged the services of a psychic healer from the Philippines, where she’s from, to rid Reginald of a deadly affliction Western medicine is unable to cure.

Their marriage and especially Reginald Lewis’ determination to succeed as no other black man in the competitive, white-dominated corporate world had, constitute the heart of Loida Nicolas Lewis’ memoir. HANDOUT

It quickly becomes apparent that the healer is in her words “an opportunistic charlatan,” with cleverly disguised minuscule packets of animal blood and entrails to simulate incisions meant to rid the body of malignant substances.  Nevertheless, he is paid his exorbitant fee for, in Reginald’s view, he at least gave them “hope.” Not long after, Reginald, referred to by the author as “my beloved,” succumbs to the cancer, barely fifty years of age.

Hope is the memoir’s major leitmotif, along with faith and love.

The scene exemplifies the devotion the author had for her life partner and sets the tone for the rest of the book. Their marriage and especially Reginald Lewis’s determination to succeed as no other black man in the competitive, white-dominated corporate world had, constitute the heart of her memoir, which by the way cleverly takes its cue from her husband’s posthumously published Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?

Like any marital union this one has its ups and downs, but theirs is a sturdy vessel that maneuvers its way successfully through the various shoals and reefs that beset every marriage. Reginald has an explosive temper, can be foul-mouthed, on occasion unfaithful—which to his credit he discloses unprompted to the unsuspecting wife—but has many other positive attributes that Nicolas-Lewis wisely focuses on.

Reflective of the author’s brand of born-again Catholicism—the memoir is dotted with appropriate Biblical quotes (she once seriously considered becoming a nun)—she relies on not just hope, but rock-steady faith and love, as well as Carolyn Fugett, her wise and caring mother-in-law, and her own supportive family to strengthen and deepen this interracial, intercultural marriage. It may come as a surprise to readers aware of racism in the Philippines to find no evidence of this in the author’s family.

In New York of course racism manifests itself, perhaps not often overtly but as any person of color living here will tell you, it’s there, a seemingly permanent fixture of the American psyche. It’s part of what fuel’s Reginald’s obsessive drive to prove himself, an African American man, as capable and as competitive as any white male. With his leveraged buyout of Beatrice International Foods in 1987, the conglomerate becomes the largest business enterprise owned and managed by an African American.

And with revenue of $1.8 billion, Beatrice becomes the first black-owned company to have more than $1 billion in annual sales. Sales shoot up to $2.2 billion in 1996—three years after Reginald’s death, with his widow at the helm—landing as number 512, on Fortune magazine’s list of 1,000 largest companies.

Immense wealth enables the family to live luxuriously, with residences on Fifth Avenue, in the tony 7^tharrondisement of Paris, a beach villa in the Hamptons—and a corporate jet at their disposal. In Paris, the author notes that her husband is much more relaxed, as the City of Light is welcoming of African Americans, having a history as a haven and refuge for black entertainers, jazz musicians, and writers, such as Josephine Baker, Charlie “Bird” Parker, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright.

We learn that their daughters Leslie and Christina, as biracial children living in the United States, are more attuned to their African-Americanness than their Filipinoness—perhaps understandably, owing to how they are perceived and the complicated history of blacks in the US. Practically nothing in the memoir gives the reader any indication of what the two daughters learned about the cultural heritage of their mother, or their feelings towards the country where she was born and grew up.

Through this portrait of their marriage, we learn about her upper middle-class upbringing in the Philippines’ Bicol region, her parents’ marriage (in a way, predictive of hers), her education in the top schools in the country, leading to a law degree, and placing 7^th in the nationwide bar exams in 1967. In the Big Apple, her own aspirations to carve out a niche play out. In 1974, she passes the New York Bar, becoming the first Asian woman to do so without attending a US law school.  She is thus licensed to practice law in both the Philippines and in the United States.

She lands a position with the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)—a position she had to sue the agency for, overcoming institutional misogyny and racism. Once employed, after a few years of exemplary work, she sues the agency once again, for failure to promote her when she is so clearly qualified. Realizing that this is a fight they can’t win, INS agrees promptly to give her the promotion.

We read of her involvement in the US-based anti-martial law movement during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, when she publishes Ningas Cogon (Brushfire), a continuation of the satirical Imelda’s Monthly, published in Manila by her younger sister Imelda shortly before martial law was declared in 1972, forcing the magazine to shut down. Funded by her and Reginald, Ningas was quickly blacklisted by the Philippine Consulate in New York, its staff—I was on the editorial board, along with the late investigative journalist Nelson Navarro and the late brilliant satirist Nonoy Marcelo—declared personae non grata. Otherwise, there is little in the book about the political developments back in the islands or on the competing anti-Marcos factions, divided by personality as well as by ideology, within the US diaspora.

On her husband’s death, Nicolas-Lewis relies on her faith and, as she states, “words from the Good Book” to recover. She also takes over TLC Beatrice International Holdings, and surprises the business world, with its recumbent misogyny and likely stereotypical views of the dutiful Asian housewife, when she successfully liquidates the enterprise with immense profits, for her family and the shareholders. One can deduce that Reginald’s success was due in large part not just to the author’s wholehearted support but her own business sense. In this case the cliché couldn’t be truer: behind every successful man stands a woman.

Part of the wealth generated by their business ventures is used to form the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation, with the author as chairperson. In its grants the foundation has emphasized education as a path towards upward mobility, particularly crucial in an age of worsening social and economic inequality and no doubt influenced by how education was instrumental in the successes of Reginald and Loida.

The memoir’s tone and style is breezy and moves briskly. Unwaveringly optimistic, Nicolas-Lewis declares in the concluding paragraph that “spirituality is at the core of my being,” with faith “an integral role in my journey through life.” Her journey is indeed well worth following.

Copyright L.H. Francia 2023