CECILIA BRAINARD’S BOOK ACAPULCO AT SUNSET AND OTHER STORIES REISSUED
PALH (Philippine American Literary House) announces the release of the US edition of Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s short story collection, Acapulco at Sunset and Other Stories. The book is available from Amazon on sale for $11.95:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1953716075
First published in the Philippines
in 1995, the book collects seventeen stories inspired by the author’s Filipino
and Filipino American experiences; they are grouped into four categories: Long
Ago Tales, Stories from the ‘60s and ‘70s, Stories from the ‘90s, and American
Tales.
In the Introduction to the 2020 US
edition, the author notes “The book
had a strange beginning. Shortly after it was launched, Anvil (the publisher)
had a fire in their warehouse, and many copies of this book were destroyed.
Because of that the hardbound and softcover copies of this book were
particularly hard to find.
“In
fact, there are many strong stories in this collection, some of them dear to my
heart, such as: “Butterscotch Marble”, inspired by my early married years in
San Francisco; “Manila Without Verna”, inspired by the death of an activist
classmate during the oppressive Marcos dictatorship; “The Virgin’s Last Night”,
inspired by my spinster aunt who had a suitor who never gave up; and many
others.
The poet Marjorie
Evasco praised the book saying: “The stories of Cecilia Manguerra Brainard tell
of voyages the heart could have taken,
of places haunted by old memories like ghosts lingering under an ancient mango
tree, of times seemingly irretrievable but always there at the farthest end of
the thread of remembering”
Professor Les Adler writes in
Pilipinas that “Brainard enriches the conventional understanding of exile by
applying the concept to Filipino experience in the Philippines. She is thereby
able to show the cultural and social issues that a Filipino/a faces while in
exile are universal Filipino experiences.”
Isagani R. Cruz’s review
in StarWeek notes that: “In Brainard’s stories, Acapulco and Intramuros are the
same, and at the same time, completely different places. Dead characters and
live characters talk to each other nonchalantly. A young poor boy falls in love
with an older rich woman, and by loving her, kills her. Filipinos find their
identity in, of course, San Francisco, but not so ordinarily, in Alaska. The
green card — actually blue — spells the difference between authenticity and an
authentic life, between dreaming and the American dream.
Contact palh@aol.com for more information.
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