“Each morning when I rise, I pause to remember the preciousness of what I have lost, and I cherish it.” Septuagenarian Peter Bacho, whose first novel, Cebu (1991), won the American Book Award, commits those memories to the page in poignant, affecting “mostly true stories.” Bacho’s...
Insurrecto by Gina Apostol With shrewd insight, inventive plotting, and stinging history lessons, Gina Apostol, who received the PEN Open Book Award for Gun Dealers’ Daughter (2012), puts the “unremembered” Philippine-American War on literary display. Adjectives such as humorous, playful, and ingenious seem almost disrespectful when describing a book anchored...
Originally published in 1943, Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart is a cornerstone of classic Asian American literature. Drawing on Bulosan’s Filipino boyhood, his immigration to the United States, and the challenges he faced as a first-generation Asian American, it remains a notable inspiration, most recently...
On Old-Timers, Boxing, and Lots of Sex (mostly off the page ...
A must-read novel about a Filipino Native American hapa Vietnam War veteran whose disturbing journal “entrys” are juxtaposed with more reliable, objective narration. How the story plays out keeps you on the edge of your seat,...
Ben Lucero, a Filipino American priest, arrives in the Philippines for the first time to bury his mother in her homeland. As a guest of his Aunt Clara, his mother’s lifelong best friend, he experiences the...
