Compartments by Ian Rosales Casocot - Love Stories Series #8

 

From Cecilia Brainard: I am proud to share IAN ROSALES CASOCOT''s short story, COMPARTMENTS. This is part of my Love Stories Series featured in my blog. All articles and photos are copyrighted by the individual authors. All rights reserved. This is featured in my blog with permission from the author. 

IAN ROSALES CASOCOT teaches literature, creative writing, and film at Silliman University in Dumaguete City, Philippines where he was Founding Coordinator of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center. He is the author of several books, including the fiction collections Don’t Tell Anyone, Bamboo Girls, Heartbreak & Magic, and Beautiful Accidents. He has won the Palanca nine times for his fiction, plays, and children’s poetry. In 2008, his novel Sugar Land was longlisted in the Man Asian Literary Prize. He was Writer-in-Residence for the International Writers Program of the University of Iowa in 2010, and produced the film City of Literature, directed by Zhao Lewis Liu. His website is http://eatingthesun.blogspost.com .

COMPARTMENTS

Copyright By Ian Rosales Casocot, all rights reserved. 

 

For L.

Something people will never understand, if ever I begin to tell the story of how we met, but more so how we made love for the last time, if making love were the right words for it: you had a small knife hidden in your pocket, and you were ready to kill me.

But I must tell you I’ve always understood perfectly why that was.

Years later, in unguarded moments when I find myself still thinking of you, I try to imagine what it would have been like if things turned out differently that night. What words I would have said, what frantic gestures I would have made, what degree deeper into the heat of anger we would have plunged to, to trigger a bloody end, and my death. Your knife upon my back, or protruding from a deep trembling wound on my side. My blood thick on your hands.

I would have said, “Dev, what have you done?”

An Affair to Remember by Paulino Lim, Jr. - Love Stories Series #7

From Cecilia Brainard: I am proud to share PAULINO LIM, JR.'s  short story, AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER. This is part of my Love Stories Series featured in my blog. This story first appeared in The Philippines Graphic Reader, June 2, 2025. It is featured in my blog with permission from the author.  

PAULINO LIM, JR. is a professor emeritus of English at California State University, Long Beach. He is a recipient of the 2016 Presidential Award for Filipino Individuals and Organizations Overseas—for his fiction and scholarly essays that are constructive criticisms of the political, social, and religious problems in the Philippines. Also in 2016, his alma mater, the University of Santo Tomas, conferred upon him a lifetime achievement honor—the Parangal Hagbong Award—for significant contributions to Philippine literature.

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER

Copyright by Paulino Lim, Jr. All rights reserved.

MONSIGNOR SULLIVAN WAS SEATED at his glass-topped desk, the letter from Vikings Cruise on a linen stationery before him. Should he take up the offer of a free cruise in exchange for serving as chaplain for two weeks on the ship?

He was wearing a black cassock and tinted lenses that highlighted his cropped white hair and shaven surf-tanned face. He looked up when he heard the knock, and said, “Come in. Oh, hello.”

His assistant Father Clive James was in his late forties, with his trimmed brown hair, metal-framed tinted glasses, hair on the chin but not the cheeks. He looked like a surgeon, except for the white alb he wore at the outdoor Mass on the playground of St. Ambrose Catholic School.

“How was Mass on the grass, Clive?”

“Just a couple of Southwest Airline planes that landed and took off from the Long Beach Airport. Deacon Charles delivered the homily.”

“When is he leaving for Florida, by the way?”

“End of the month, during school break.”

Fossil by Angelo R. Lacuesta - Love Stories Series #4

 

From Cecilia Brainard: I am proud to share ANGELO R. LACUESTA'S short story, FOSSIL. This is part of my Love Stories Series featured in my blog.  Fossil first appeared in Sarge's collection CORAL COVE AND OTHER STORIES (UST PH 2017).  It was also published in Santelmo Journal (2025). This is featured in my blog with permission from the author. 

***

ANGELO R. LACUESTA is a fictionist and novelist who also writes screenplays and essays. He has written more than ten books and two screenplays, and has won many national awards for his writing. He has represented the Philippines at numerous literary and film festivals and conferences. He is the current president of the Philippine Centre of PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) International. 

His most recent book is the novel JOY, published by Penguin Random House SEA in 2022. In 2024 he wrote and produced the film “An Errand,” based on a short story he wrote, for the Cinemalaya Film Festival. It was selected as part of the Bright Futures section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). His upcoming novel IRÔ (Milflores, 2025) was selected as one of 10 novels to be presented for possible film adaptation at the “Books at Berlinale” section of the  2025 Berlinale Film Festival. In 2025, “Song of the Fireflies,” a film he also wrote and produced, had its international premiere at the Manila International Film Festival in Los Angeles, California. 

*** 

FOSSIL

Copyright by Angelo R. Lacuesta. All rights reserved.

 

WHENEVER EMILIANO DATOY was drunk he stood up and declaimed in straight English how he had served, as a young boy, at meetings of town elders during the years before the war. The elders he had served themselves had served at the councils in their younger years, in Spanish times and then American times, entertaining traders, envoys and soldiers passing through Nueva Florencia, which had always been a dismal halfway town between the busiest of the island’s ports.

But I remember that when he was sober, Datoy spoke only Bisaya and could not even eat unattended, and he saved his feeble voice for when he needed it to carry from the veranda where he liked to sun himself, across the second floor living room, to his great-grandniece’s bedroom.

She appeared shortly, a dark young girl in her teens dressed in a batik house duster, carrying with two hands a thick, heavy, rectangular thing wrapped in the kind of velvet they used to cover statues on Black Saturday. Upon the old man’s croaked order, the woman swept the velvet curtain aside to reveal a block of black, stony wood bearing the smoothened etching of a winged figure. Dr. Hill drew a small gasp of awe from his throat and we bent forward to inspect the image, our heads softly colliding in the process. There were other things: vertical shapes etched around the figure possibly representing humans, and below it an inscription in badlit.

“Pre-Hispanic,” she said, when the old man nudged her ribs with an arthritic knuckle, which then pointed at the inscription. “The dragon of the swamps,” she translated, and Datoy’s folded hand sprung into a triumphant V and dropped to his side where he’d kept a bottle of gin handy, which he seemed intent to nurse into the afternoon. 

Dr. Hill remained silent but I know that by now he had begun to harbor a distrust toward the situation, his voice caved-in with exhaustion when he followed up with the old man about the tooth fragment. I was sure it was the heat, too. Datoy barked and sent the girl swishing out on bare feet to return with what looked like—and was soon proven to be—a two-inch tooth fragment. This she surrendered to us, depositing it into a piece of bubble wrap we had prepared specifically for this purpose.

Dr. Hill inspected the specimen while trying to express all due respect. It was Datoy himself who had started everything. He had seen my photo in a press release in the Daily Freeman announcing my scholarship in London and cut it out, A photo of the tooth-chip was stapled to a letter, written by the girl, explaining how she had discovered it while she had been playing in the dusty hillsides that surrounded their town.

 

Cecilia Brainard Fiction - The One-Night Stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair

 

 

THE ONE-NIGHT STAND AT THE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR, by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Copyright 2025 by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, all rights reserved.

Published in the May 2025 issue of the Philippines Graphic Reader - https://philippinesgraphic.com.ph/2025/07/21/the-one-night-stand-at-the-frankfurt-book-fair/

***

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard shares THE ONE-NIGHT STAND AT THE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR, a work of fiction inspired by her visit to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2024. This was first published by the Philippines Graphics Reader on May 2025. 

Cecilia is the award-winning author of three novels: When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, Magdalena, and The Newspaper Widow. Her Selected Short Stories was awarded the 40^th National Book Award. Her work has been translated into Greek, Turkish and Finnish. Her books have forthcoming translations in Portuguese, Japanese, and other languages.  For more information, please visit her official website at https://ceciliabrainard.com

***

MARIBEL GLANCED AT HER PLANE SEAT, grateful that she had the aisle seat and only one seat beside her. Her seat mate was a young woman who had her ear buds on. Maribel was grateful for that too; she didn’t have to chitchat with her. After making sure she had her passport, eyeglasses, and valuables in her small cross body bag, she tucked her backpack under the seat in front of her. She buckled herself, and settled into her seat, ready for the ten-hour journey from Los Angeles to Frankfurt.

            While passengers and the airplane attendants bustled around her, she closed her eyes and tried to push away the sadness of the past few days. She had been in LA for the funeral of Lou, her school friend, partner in countless girlish escapades, and later, companion to more serious political marches. They were both writers and they had written their share of articles to try and right wrong (human rights, justice, gender equality, extra-judicial killings). Later, Maribel had found her voice in her political-yet-entertaining fiction. The two women had kept in touch even when Lou had migrated to the US and married an Irish-American.

How I Became a Writer - Tony Perez - Filipino FilAm Series #7

 

From Cecilia Brainard: I am happy to report that VIBAL PUBLISHING HOUSE will publish HOW I BECAME A WRITER: ESSAYS BY FILIPINO AND FILIPINO AMERICAN WRITERS.  The anthology collects 22 personal essays.  The Manila launch will be on June 7, 2025. Book signings are scheduled in Cebu on May 30 and June 7, 2025 at Lost Books Bookshop.

I am proud to share Tony Perez's Essay on HOW I BECAME A WRITER. All articles and photos are copyrighted by the individual authors. All rights reserved. Cecilia Brainard has permission from the authors to use their materials here.  

TONY PEREZ was born in San Fernando, Pampanga in 1951 and then moved with his family to Cubao, Quezon City at the age of five to commence and complete his education at the Ateneo de Manila University. He holds an A.B. degree in Communications; an M.A. candidacy in Clinical Psychology; and, from Maryhill School of Theology, a master’s degree in Religious Studies. He worked as Cultural Affairs Specialist at the Public Affairs Office of the Embassy of the U.S.A. for 36 years.

Mr. Perez is the author of the Cubao book series, two major trilogies in Filipino drama: Tatlong Paglalakbay (Bombita, Biyaheng Timog, and Sa North Diversion Road); and Indakan Ng Mga Puso (Oktubre, Noong Tayo’y Nagmamahalan Pa; Nobyembre, Noong Akala Ko’y Mahal Kita, and Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid Ng Disyembre?). He established the Spirit Questors, a group of young, psychic volunteers, in 1996 and has written a series of volumes on magic and spiritism.

Mr. Perez has worked in graphite, Conte crayon, pen and ink, oil pastels, and chalk pastels, but now paints exclusively in oil. His current, major work is a 40-painting project for Maryhill School of Theology. He has held individual art exhibits at Hiraya Gallery, the Thomas Jefferson Cultural Center, mag_net gallery, National Book Store Pasong Tamo for the Thomasites Centennial in the Philippines, the Saturday Art Group, Sining Kamalig Gallery, a fiber art exhibit in the upper hallway of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and a retrospective in the lobby of the Little Theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Mr. Perez is a recipient of the 100 Artists of the Philippine Centennial award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2000, and a recipient of the Dangal ng Wika award from the Filipino Language Commission in 2022.

Although he retired in 2015 and since then no longer updates his curriculum vitae, he continues to write trilogies of full-length plays and novels.

 

 

HOW I BECAME A WRITER

When people ask me why or how I became a writer, I ask myself why and how I became anything at all. I’d always wanted to believe it was a matter of free will, choice, taste, and sophistication, but, having studied Clinical Psychology, I learned that we are molded by personifications of the superego in our childhood--parents, teachers, authority figures, older siblings, and role models among them. I recall that my grade school teachers complimented me for my writing and my drawing, and that made me feel that I had something special going for me.

I was born into a middle-class family in 1951. My father was a colonel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines who fought in Korea toward the end of WWII. My mother, like many women of that period, chose to be a housewife and raise a family devoid of the many traumas of war.

My parents and my siblings were occasional readers, but no one except myself became a writer and a painter. They would nonetheless eventually become supportive audiences of my plays and art exhibits. My mother and sisters, however, were into needlework—sewing, crochet, cross-stitching, and knitting—and I later dabbled in sewing and knitting myself; the results are on my blog at <https://tonyperezphilippinesenchantedknits.blogspot.com/>.

I seriously tried, and feel that I have not yet succeeded, to elevate knitting from the level of craft to the level of art, which entailed, among other things, developing stitches that would allow my works to NOT look like knitting, and I know that I have yet to get there.

 

Years later I would adopt two boys who added two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren to my family. All of them grew up surrounded by art and books on art and literature, but, like my parents and siblings, none of them became interested in writing nor in painting. My maternal aunts used to tell me that, in San Fernando, Pampanga where I was born, my heart stopped beating when I was one year old, and that I was rushed to hospital and revived. Three psychics later informed me that I was/am a walk-in soul with a purpose. I have always wondered if that was true.

After I graduated from university and long before I retired, everyone thought that I was a full-time teacher and Spirit Questor. They believed that all I did was teach and then go on Spirit Quests. They had no idea that I was part-time teaching and Questing, on Saturdays only, and that, during the week, I was actually holding, for 36 long years, a full-time job that offered lifetime annuity. Now that I am finally retired, they are surprised to know that I am what I always really wanted to be: a full-time writer and artist with a monthly pension for life.

Sadly, this is not how all writers and artists and researchers on the paranormal end up. Most of them spend their youth seeking to be writers only or artists only or paranormal researchers only. When it is time for them to retire, they suddenly realize that they have no adequate source of income and that they don’t know what hit them, because they never prepared for retirement as young writers and young artists and young paranormal researchers. They become bewildered by their own poverty. When they get sick, they beg others to help them.

I can never refer to my development as a writer without referring to my development as a painter. I realized, early on, that the two go hand in hand. To this day I observe that writers who cannot draw or paint well, really do not write well, and that painters who cannot write well, really do not paint well--they cannot even articulate their own works for their gallery exhibits. Such writers and such painters continue to extol their works as “self-expression.” forgetting that self-expression as an excuse for writing and for painting should have been left behind in their K-12 classrooms.

Through my days at university, I have always been fascinated by the fact that certain, verbal descriptions cannot be adequately illustrated, and that certain, visual images cannot be properly described in words, but that both writing and painting were the completion of series of ideas. It occurred to me that this apparent dissonance actually had its uses, and that, in a manner of speaking, one could paint a novel and write a painting. These two dimensions of writing and painting—the interface between the verbal and the visual, and the concept of writing and painting as series of ideas—became the foundation for the first workshops in creative writing I conducted.

 

Years later I felt that those were not enough. I investigated the dimension of emotion and its psychology. I saw, both in fiction and in drama, that it is the emotions that actually tell us the stories. I incorporated emotional truth exercises in my workshops—a fearsome challenge to the faint-hearted. One particular batch of students was simultaneously enrolled in a disaster and survival course that required them to accomplish all kinds of challenging feats, and the students claimed that it was more terrifying to go through emotional truth exercises than to jump from a tall building onto a trampoline. It was quite interesting that the writers who were emotionally dishonest with themselves produced the most mediocre works. I explored different emotions and mixed them like paint colors, going beyond primaries to secondaries and on to tertiaries. It was a joy to witness characters come to life as complex human beings because of their complex emotions.

I couldn’t stop there, and arrived at the doorstep of the fourth dimension of writing and painting, which is that we write what we dream, we dream what we write, we paint what we dream, and we dream what we paint. It seemed urgent, therefore, to be able to teach writers to remember and record dreams, interpret them, and develop them into stories and pictures. 

While studying and analyzing dreams--not only my own but also the dreams of others—the concept of “dream cities” came to the surface. I taught my students to map out the most frequent locales of their dreams on drawing paper, including gray areas that remained in shadow, representing the Unconscious. They came up with houses, schools, restaurants, train stations, seaside resorts, churches, and cemeteries, even if they hadn’t actually been to those particular places in real life. I theorized that one’s “dream map” could even be set side by side with the “dream maps” of others, especially if those others were persons who were close to or connected to the dreamer in some kind of psychological, emotional, or symbiotic way. I informed my students that, in such instances, it is possible for them to visit one another’s “dream cities” as long as their “dream maps” could be set side by side. I started testing this theory by means of hypnotism and a series of regression exercises, but these were dreaded by many workshops participants, who described the exercises as being too intense. By this time I’d already been conducting workshops in the Philippines, in Australia, and in Singapore.

Hypnotism and regression led me deeper into the artist’s psyche, and I held one-to-one sessions with interested writers on past-life regression. Moving back in time to past lives involved traveling through Carl Gustav Jung’s Collective Unconscious. Interestingly, such forays allowed the participants to write and paint from the points of view of previous lifetimes and karma. The exercises allowed them to create works from the points of view of persons they’d been in the past, such as men, women, murderers, murder victims, persons of different ethnic backgrounds, and so on. All they had to do was surf through the inner Internet of Memory.

And all to what end? Not only to become a well-rounded writer and painter, but to become a well-rounded person as well, harnessing all five dimensions into their everyday lives.

To summarize, these are the five dimensions of creative work I discovered on my journey through writing and painting:

1) The interface between the verbal and the visual

2) Writing and painting as complete series of ideas

3) The psychology of emotion

4) The incorporation of dreams and dream messages in one’s work

5) The use of hypnotism and regression to revisit previous lifetimes and look at the world, once again, through different perspectives

6) Integrating all five dimensions to live life not merely as a writer and as a painter but also as an individuated human being

As to the last three dimensions, I developed two, two-week workshop syllabi before I retired in 2015: From Dreams to Drama (for TheatreWorks Singapore) and From Drawing to Drama, from Paintings to Plays.

Today, when students and workshop participants ask me for tips to successful writing, I give them only one, which is to develop their powers of observation. A person with weak powers of observation should not even attempt writing or painting, for the works produced will have, to begin with, the marked absence of originality. I have a blog for the Spirit Questors that contains exercises on strengthening powers of observation, and they can be useful to both writers and painters as well, at 

<https://tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook19.blogspot.com/>. 

 

I also have loose notes and exercises on writing and drawing in another blog. 

Tony Perez's Writing from The Heart, at 

.http://tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook18.blogspot.com/.

https://tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook19.blogspot.com/

 

READ ALSO:

        Celebrating STEP INTO OUR KITCHENS AND  HOW I BECAME A WRITER 

        Tony Perez, Goodbye for Now 

How I Became a Writer Series

Ian Rosales Casocot 

Caroline S. Hau

 Paulino Lim, Jr 

Tony Perez

Eileen R. Tabios

John Jack G. Wigley

Hope Sabanpan Yu

AND MORE from Cecilia's blog:

Writing Workshop with Author Cecilia Brainard April 19, 2025

 Author Cecilia Brainard Interview by Read Pinoy Philippine National Book Development Board

Cecilia Brainard Talks About Her Novel The Newspaper Widow and More - video link  

A Book Fair to Remember (And Get Ready For), by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Positively Filipino 

Philippine Folktale - Los Siete Pecados, by Filomena Alesna Cuenco 

An Afternoon with Exploding Galaxies, with Carlos Bulosan Book Club, PALH

Carlos Roxas Interview of Cecilia Brainard re Frankfurt Book Fair 

Cecilia Brainard's Travel Report of Frankfurt Book Fair 2024

 Tags: Filipino authors, Filipino writers, Filipino books, Filipino literature

Leonard Ralph Casper Centennial Birthday Celebration

The Centennial birthday of LEONARD RALPH CASPER is this July 6. Please read this writeup "REMEMBERING LEONARD RALPH CASPER" based on interviews of his wife, award-winning Filipina novelist Linda Ty-Casper.

The collection of his letters, (which his wife calls his Memoirs) WILL YOU HAPPEN, PAST THE SILENCE, THROUGH THE DARK is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, among others.

tags: Philippine literature, Filipino literature, Pinoyreads, pinoylit, Filipino books

Read also;

Interview of Linda Ty-Casper

Book Review of WILL YOU HAPPEN by Joel Pablo Salud

Literature as a Coping Strategy by Cecilia Brainard, delivered at the Int'l Conference on Literature Education 2021, LEAP, Inc

 

Talk Delivered at the International Conference on Literature Education

Literature Educators Association of the Philippines (LEAP), October 28, 2021 

Literature as a Coping Strategy

by

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Copyright 2021 by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

 

PART 1

GREETINGS – WHO AM I? – CHALLENGES TODAY – TRUTH – SELF-EXPRESSION & CREATIVIY

Greetings from California. I’m Cecilia Manguerra Brainard here to talk to you about Reading and Writing Literature as a Coping Strategy. Thanks to Dr. Christopher Yap-Wright for inviting me. I would have wanted to be with you, in person, as it is always nicer to see people face to face. But given the limitations of the pandemic, I am still glad that I can address you from my office here in Santa Monica.

 

Guest Blogger: Poetry by Elmer Omar Pizo

In this difficult time of Coronavirus, I am happy to feature poetry by Elmer Omar Pizo, a Filipino who now resides in Hawaii. May his poetry contribute to the healing that we need during this uncertain time. Thank you Elmer for being my guest blogger. ~ Cecilia Brainard

POETRY BY GUEST BLOGGER ELMER OMAR PIZO

I.

Rice birds

on the ground

in front of your house---

kicking,

sidestepping,

hopping

every now and then,

matched by their heads

moving

up and down---

looking for scraps

from Grazia

and her month-old puppies' breakfast

of fried rice

and fish pinangat.

Meanwhile,

the overcast sky's clearing up.

From time to time,

as they continue

in their search for bits

of food---

high-pitched,

but sweet, pleasing chirps

escape from their beaks.

In my silence,

they fill my half-deaf ears

with joy so difficult

for me

to explain,

to resist.

II.

“Mother,

in every practical sense,

believe me,

Birds

cannot live

by scraps alone.

They need to pick up

tiny stones

to crush and grind

the seeds

they have packed inside

their gizzards

before they can get

the nourishment

much-needed

by their tiny bodies.”

In Memory of Alejandra Corpus Bascos,

Nee Piso of Villasis, Pangasinan, the Philippines

and Anaheim, California, USA

February 27, 1934 - June 8, 2021

elmer omar bascos pizo

old ewa, ewa beach, hawai’i

BIO of Elmer Omar Pizo

He came from a family of farmers, teachers, soldiers, and religious leaders in the Ilocos, La Union and Pangasinan, the Philippines. He entered the Anglican St. Andrew's Theological Seminary after high school. On his second year in the seminary, he left of Benguet State University where he earned a B.S. Agriculture Science degree in 1981.

He raised eggplants, goats, chickens, and ducks in Pangasinan for a time before he taught Poultry Production at a National High School in a neighboring town. Not long after, he went to Saudi Arabia to work as a Greenhouse Agriculturist. Problems cropped up when their monthly salaries and working conditions were not met. He led the fight for what was due him and his co-workers. He was hauled to the Kalabooz, whipped every Friday for more than three months, then sent back home as an undesirable worker.

A resident of Ewa Beach for the last 22 years, he now works as a handyman after working as an Outreach Worker for the Hawaii Department of Health's Tuberculosis Program and as an Inspector for its Vector Control Program for almost 16 years.

He was a Poetry Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center in February 2006. Prior to this, he was also a Poetry Fellow at the 2000 Silliman National Writers Workshop in the Philippines.

His poems have been published (print and online) in the US and in the Philippines, including Bamboo Ridge Press, Hawaii Review, Maganda Magazine, Tayo Literary Magazine, Crate Literary Magazine, Mutual Publishing, PAWA, Inc., Likhaan Online University of the Philippines-Diliman Creative Writing Center, Our Own Voice Online Literary Journal, and Philippine Free Press.

His debut collection of poems, Leaving Our Shadows Behind Us, was released by the Bamboo Ridge Press, Hawai’i’s most respected literary journal, in April of 2019.

This is also published in Cecilia's blog in her official website: https://ceciliabrainard.com/guest-blogger-poetry-by-elmer-omar-pizo/

pictures courtesy of Elmer Omar Pizo and wikimedia

Tags: Philippines, Filipino, poetry, poet, poems, Hawaii, Filipino American

Pictures: Philippine Literature Critic Dr. Leonard Casper

These pictures of Dr. Leonard Casper are from the author Linda Ty-Casper. 

From Syracuse University Libraries where Leonard Casper's papers are stored, I quote:

Leonard R. Casper (dates unknown) is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison and emeritus professor of English from Boston College where he taught for 45 years. He is the author or editor of numerous books on Philippine literature, as well as several pieces of fiction and two volumes on the works of Robert Penn Warren. Casper taught in the Philippines on five separate occasions, twice as senior Fulbright lecturer, and was contributing editor to Solidarity (Manila) and Pilipinas (Kansas; Arizona State). His wife Linda Ty Casper is a noted Filpino novelist.

The Leonard Casper Papers consists of correspondence, notes, manuscripts, drafts, published books and printed material.

Book Review of Brainard's Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, by Harold Augenbraum

I'm reprinting Harold Augenbraum's fine review of "Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America" ed Cecilia Brainard - the book has been in print since 1997 but remains relevant and is still available from Anvil Publishing in the Philippines and Philippine Expressions in the US, email lindaatphilbooksdotus


BOOK REVIEW
CONTEMPORARY FICTION BY FILIPINOS IN AMERICA
Edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
Anvil Publishing, 1997, 254 pages

MANOA, Vol. 13, No., 1, Silence to Light: Japan and the Shadows of War (Summer, 2001) pp. 201-203
by Harold Augenbraum
Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America.Edited by Cecilia
Manguerra Brainard. Pasig City, Philippines: Anvil Publishing, 1997.
254 pages, paper $22.95.

A couple of years ago, I asked a colleague of mine who was preparing a comprehensive
anthology of world literature which Filipino writers he was going to
include.He wasn't aware of any, he replied, adding that they probably hadn't been
translated yet.

Research Sources and Links re Cecilia Manguerra Brainard #Philippines Literature

Some students have asked for help regarding their research.  Here are sources and links about Cecilia Manguerra Brainard or Cecilia Brainard, official website http://www.ceciliabrainard.com

Wikipedia site on Cecilia Brainard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Manguerra_Brainard

Other Sources about Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

* Abao, Jane Frances P. 2001. "Retelling the Stories, Rewriting the Bildungsroman: Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's When the Rainbow Goddess Wept ." Humanities Diliman (January-June)

* Adler, Les. 1996. "Acapulco at Sunset and Other Stories: A Review." Pilipinas 26 (Spring)

* Aubry, Erin. "A Child's Vision of Life During Wartime." Los Angeles Times. November 15, 1994, E-8.

* Beltran, Marie G. "Woman With Horns and Other Concerns." Filipinas (May 1995_: 29, 56.

* Casper, Leonard. "BACK-AZIMUTH Filipino Writers Abroad." Kinaadman XXVII (2005): 69-82.

Some Filipino and Filipino American Books and Journal to Read

Here are some books on my Reading Pile:

Front l-r:  

Jaime Alonso Yrastorza's From Fire to Freedom: Childhood in Colonial Philippines to Post-WWII Adulthood in America, Tate Publishing, 2015:

"From Fire to Freedom narrates an insight into the tapestry of the life of Dr. Jaime Alonso Yrastorza. His weave of reminiscences begins in his idyllic upbringing in the Philippines. He reflects on the legacies that centuries of turbulent Spanish and American colonial overlords had influenced the mores and traditions of the present-day Filipinos..."

Lisa Suguitan Melnick's #30 Collantes Street, Carayan Press, 2015: 

"In #30 Collantes Street, author Lisa Suguitan Melnick experiences unexpected takes on both the foreign and the familiar of her ancestral roots. The stories reflect astute observations and discoveries and experiences in Cebu, Negros, Mindanao, Palawan, and Bohol. Melnick's pieces also represent rites of passage gently evocative of the author's childhood...."

Interview: Cecilia Brainard's Novel "Magdalena" Revealed

The protagonist in my second novel is a woman who defies Philippine society and takes on a lover. Following is a student interview regarding my novel, Magdalena.

~~
Interview Questions from Shiela Mae P. Abas, BA Literature IIIA:

When did you realize that you wanted to be a writer? 
Did someone push you to become one, or was it your will as it was your dream since you were young? 
Are there authors who influenced your work particularly Magdalena? Who are they? 
What/who inspired you to write the book, Magdalena? 
Could you give us an insight into your main character? What does she do that is so special? 
Did you use real-life facts based on true stories? 
Who is your target reader? 
As a literature student myself, what is your advise for young writers like us? What motivates you to write?

Philippine Literature: My Novel Short-Listed for the Cirilo F. Bautista Prize for the Novel!!!

Good news this morning --- my novel, Dead Priest in the Creek, is 1 of 8 Short-Listed for the Cirilo F. Bautista Prize for the Novel. The winner will be revealed on October 12, 2015 ---- but as far as I'm concerned I'm already a winner!

Thank you judges for finding merit in my new novel, which is as of yet unpublished.

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Announcing: The Short List for the Cirilo F. Bautista Prize for the Novel
Warm felicitations! The winner will be revealed on 12 October 2015.

Philippine Literature: The Centenary of N.V.M. Gonzalez

L-R: Vince Gotera, Virginia Cerenio, N.V.M. Gonzalez, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, William Oandasan

The centenary of the Filipino National Artist for Literature, N.V.M. Gonzalez was celebrated last September 8, 2015. Dr. Adelaida F. Lucero from the University of the Philippines had invited me to write a tribute, which she included with others and which she shared at the university celebration. The following is what I wrote: