TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: UBEC in CEBU

Saturday, July 30, 2011

UBEC in CEBU

On the way to the airport in Cebu, I saw this graffiti on the wall. Look carefully - there's UBEC with blue skies in the middle. I found this very amusing because I created Ubec in the stories I've written. Ubec's first appearance was in the stories in my first short story collection, Woman With Horns and Other Stories. What happened was that when I wrote on characters set in Cebu, I used to block and felt I had to tell the absolute truth. It came to me to reverse the letters in Cebu into Ubec, and so I created this mythical place (loosely based on Cebu). To my delight I found I could "lie" and make up stories.

More on Ubec, there is also an Ubec Band in Cebu.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

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.