FICTION BY FILIPINOS IN AMERICA

Edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

New Day Publishers, 1993, softcover, 240 pp.
ISBN 970-10-0528-X

A collection of fiction by 23 Filipinos in America, including Linda Ty-Casper, N.V.M. Gonzalez, Juan Dionisio, Bienvenido Santos, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Manuel Viray, Carlos Bulosan, Ligaya Victorio Fruto, Jean Vengua Gier, Alberto Florentino, Michelle Cruz Skinner, Jessica Hagedorn, Paulino Lim, Jr., Samuel Tagatac, Virginia Cerenio, Julia Palarca, Oscar Penaranda, Erlinda Villamor Kravetz, Nadine Sarreal, Marianne Villanueva, Manuel Olimpo, Nenutzka Villamar, and Luis Cabalquinto

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World Literature Today

Fiction by Filipinos in America. (book reviews) Al Camus Palomar.

The stories in Fiction by Filipinos in America, as editor Cecilia Manguerra Brainard puts it, "deal with oppression, flight, dislocation, unrequited love, longing for an idealized home; these are stories of humans dominated by values that run deep, of fierce loyalty for family and friends, and always that Filipino tenacity to deal with life's hardships and remain undefeated. Together these stories paint a gigantic picture of the Filipino, whether in the Philippines or in America, and it is a wonderful picture, this of a person who struggles, fails at times, but keeps on, a most resilient human being." Resilience is a quality long associated with Filipinos. As a poet once said," A Filipino is pliant like a bamboo." Neither typhoons nor monsoons could break the Filipino spirit; like the bamboo, it sways and bends with nature's relentless onslaughts, but it refuses to yield or die.

Manguerra Brainard's selection is a delight. Some of the stories are masterly, especially those written by such old reliables as Carlos Bulosan, Linda Ty-Casper, N. V. M. Gonzales, Bienvenido N. Santos, and Alberto S. Florentino. None is less than highly competent, and all are worth reading. Manguerra Brainard has done an excellent job of mixing critical judgment with personal taste. What her choices prove is that most Filipinos who write competently in English have either lived in America for a long time or were actually born, raised, and educated here. These are writers to whom English is almost a first language. It would surprise no one if these writers' command of Pilipino is inferior to their command of English.

Bulosan is at his most poignant in "The Romance of Magno Rubio," a tale of love and romance that subtly condemns those who take advantage of the good-hearted, the poor, and the ignorant. "A Warm Hand" by N. V. M. Gonzales superbly displays the innocence of the Filipino; it is not the story itself that impresses, however, but the writer's mastery of the short story, his stunning perfection of form. And who else but Bienvenido N. Santos can portray an expatriate's yearning for his idealized native land? In "Scent of Apples" Santos brilliantly delineates the touching tale of a Filipino farmer in America nostalgic for home and his own people; it is undoubtedly one of the most moving short stories in contemporary literature. Like Somerset Maugham, Santos seems to have an extraordinary sense of the hidden loneliness in others.

The excerpts from novels--Manguerra Brainard's own "Doc's Crucifixion" (from Song of Yvonne) and "The President's Wife Has a Dream" by Jessica Hagedorn (from Dog-eaters)--make one want to read the authors' books. Hagedorn's brave defiance of conventional rules of writing is both refreshing and startling. The not-so-well-known other writers in the collection are all promising, and given the time, they could surprise us with their talent. They all tell a quintessentially Filipino story and a story for our day and age.

The last entry, the shortest item in the lot (forty-one lines), is a surrealist dream, "Phalaenopsis," the tale of an expatriate Filipino who ties himself to an oak tree, slowly loses his human form, and becomes a full-grown orchid. The story is a fitting finale to a most thorough and compelling account of the Filipino culture and soul, for the Filipino is an enigma, a true child of the earth with an artist's sensibility. Manguerra Brainard's collection is a book that pulls the reader along inexorably. Each of the stories in this volume makes it impossible for the reader to stop reading,

Al Camus Palomar University of Oklahoma

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Read also
Kirkus Review of Brainard's When the Rainbow Goddess Wept
Allen Gaborro's Review of Brainard's Vigan and Other Stories
Review of Brainard's Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America
Review of Brainard's Growing Up Filipinu II
Tags: Philippine, Philippines, Filipino, literature, books, writers, authors, anthologies, novels, novelist, Cecilia Brainard, Cecilia Manguerra Brainar

This is all for now,
Cecilia

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.