Tuesday, December 25, 2007
CHRISTMAS 2007
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE BRAINARDS!
Here's a memory about Jacob's Crackers. In the Philippines, when I was growing up, the best crackers one could get were English crackers called "Jacob's" - except we called it Ha-cob. The brand had been around since my mother was a young girl attending boarding school. She used to talk about her father visiting her and bringing her "Hacob." The tin can of Hacob was distinctive: rectangular, with a blue-gray design and sprays of wheat. What a surprise I had when I went to my Filipino market on Vermont (Seafood City)and saw what I initially thought was Hacob! My heart stopped; a surge of memories flooded through me!
Well, it wasn't Hacob; the box, the design had clearly been copied. I bought a can - I couldn't resist - the memory of Hacob was too strong in me. Frankly I have no memory now of how Hacob crackers tasted. This Chinese version was all right - indeed they were flaky and light, and anyway, I just had to get a glimpse of the tin can to get the surge of memory from the past and that was enough.
Labels:
Brainard,
Chrsitmas,
family,
Jacob's crackers
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books..
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.
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