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‘DoveLion:’ Another novel about a fictional Philippine dictator
By Allen Gaborro In the realm of poetry, Eileen R. Tabios has been as creative and prolific as any of her contemporaries going back almost 30 years. Like a fine wine, her poems have over time become more evolutionary and evocative from the first moment Tabios put them on paper. “DoveLion: A Fairy Tale for […]
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From nerd to communist cadre, the arc of Edjop’s life
By Allen Gaborro Rare is the man who is so driven by conviction and ideology that he sacrifices a comfortable bourgeois existence for the austere and dangerous life of a clandestine radical. That is exactly what Edgar Jopson did as a prominent student leader at the Ateneo University and as a leading communist figure during […]
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The illiberal rule of Vladimir Putin
By Allen Gaborro His expansionist aims now brutally revealed to the civilized world, Russian president Vladimir Putin has begun a conflagration that threatens to destroy a large Eastern European democracy as well as undermine the collective security of the entire globe. Putin is a well-known quantity to Russia observers everywhere. He has ruled the Russian […]
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On Global Filipinos: Ninotchka Rosca: Writer and activist of influence
By Loida Nicolas Lewis The Pulse Asia and the SWS January 2022 Polls for the Philippine elections three months away were devastating to the campaigners of Leni Robredo and exhilarating to the followers of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. It showed that Marcos Jr. is almost 30 points ahead of Robredo in the presidential race. Because Marcos […]
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Filipinos will recognize family, politics, social class in Sabina Murray’s fiction
By Tricia J. Capistrano My FilAm writer radar did not immediately spot Sabina Murray. I think it’s because, in the last decade her novels have been about Caucasians. “A Carnivore’s Inquiry,” published in 2007, is about Katherine, a young white woman in her 20s who wanders from city to city in Europe and then the […]
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Writer Grace Talusan named one of 16 Brother Thomas fellows
The Boston Foundation and Pucker Gallery has announced that 16 Boston-area artists have been named the 2021 class of Brother Thomas Fellows, bringing the total number of recipients to 72 and the total funds distributed to $1,080,000 since the program’s inception in 2009. Artists in this class, the largest in the history of the Fellowship program, […]
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Ninotchka Rosca’s ‘State of War:’ Political corruption of the present echoing the past
By Allen Gaborro As the 2022 Philippine presidential elections approach this summer, the specter of the return of the Marcoses to the apex of political power is rearing its head. It is for this reason that Ninotchka Rosca’s classically incendiary novel, “State of War,” holds as much social, cultural, and political currency today as it […]
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Pre-colonial PHL history can be both educational and ‘enjoyable’
By Maricar CP Hampton As an enthusiast of anime, comics, Filipino oral traditions and folklore, an idea came to Arthur Soriano. Why not make Philippine history educational and also entertaining by using comic books? The idea preoccupied his imagination until several years later when he had acquired the finances, the time, and the right team […]
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Brew the barako before reading ‘The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata’
By Tricia J. Capistrano Brew the Barako. Cue up Google Translate and the Wikipedia entry on Philippine history. Soho Press in New York recently released the U.S. version of The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata by Gina Apostol and like her previously U.S. released work, Insurrecto, the Raymundo Mata book is not bedside reading. Rapt […]