Philippine Edition of Cecilia Brainard's War Novel at #CebuLitFest

PHILIPPINE EDITION OF CECILIA BRAINARD’S WAR NOVEL AT THE #CEBULITFEST



The Philippine edition of Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s novel, When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, will be released by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. The author, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, will be at the Cebu Literary Festival (CebuLitFest) on June 29 and 30, 2019, Ayala Center, Cebu, Philippines, to celebrate this publication.

The internationally acclaimed novel, When the Rainbow Goddess, first appeared under the title of Song of Yvonne in 1991. New York publisher Dutton/Penguin published it in 1994 under the title of When the Rainbow Goddess Wept. It was subsequently published by the University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor Imprint). The novel, which received favorable reviews, was translated into Turkish by the Bilge Kultur Sanat in 2001. In print for almost thirty years, the novel remains the subject of numerous academic studies and continues to be used in English, Literature, History, even Political Science classrooms.

World War II Fiction - Excerpt, Cecilia Brainard's When the Rainbow Goddess Wept

Ten hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Manila.  

I'm posting the first chapter of my novel, When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, which is about the coming of age of a young girl in the Philippines during World War II. The World War II pictures are courtesy of Wikipedia.

 Rumblings of War

Excerpt from Cecilia Brainard's When the Rainbow Goddess Wept:

Mother Ignacia, fourth-grade teacher at Santa Teresa's School, made us pray for peace, and she kept our souls clean by taking us to weekly confession and communion.

“If war should catch you with mortal sins in your souls, you will end up condemned, with chains, and you will roam the earth for all eternity,” she warned.

It was a scary thought: I, Yvonne Macaraig, entangled with heavy chains, barred from heaven, barred even from purgatory, destined only to drag myself and the chains, and scare people away. There was a condemned soul who frightened the people in the house down the street from where we lived. He had borrowed fifty pesos and never paid it back, that's why his soul was not at peace.

To prepare us for the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Mother Ignacia talked about the Virgin Mary. “She did not have a speck of venial sin,” Mother Ignacia said. “She was spotless, perfect. She did not commit concupiscence. Does anyone here know the meaning of the word concupiscence?”

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.