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Journalist mines Hollywood for Filipino A-listers, artists
Once you get hold of the book, “My Filipino Connection: The Philippines in Hollywood,” it’s easy to understand why Ruben Nepales is not your run-of-the mill entertainment journalist. He asks questions many celebrities dread most: the difficult ones. And asks them without trepidation and with great fondness for his sources. To Michael Caine, he asked […]
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Martial law literature and memory politics
Retrospective memoirs on Philippine martial law in the ‘70s are hitting the bookshelves. “Subversive Lives” is a family’s memoir about the Marcos years written by siblings Nathan Gilbert and Susan Quimpo. In a YouTube interview, Nathan Gilbert provided a snapshot through a revolutionary thread running through the Quimpo siblings’ lives. Of the 10 Quimpo brothers […]
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The ’emotional journey’ through Harvard and beyond
By Cristina DC Pastor ‘Lonely at the Top’ By Christina Lewis Halpern Kindle Single, Amazon Digital Services January 2012 Christina Lewis Halpern wrote an e-memoir that ranks among Amazon’s Top 10 in the categories of Business and Biography & History not far from the latest Steve Jobs bio. In “Lonely at the Top,” the journalist […]
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Gitmo meets Fashion Week post-9/11
From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant By Alex Gilvarry Penguin Group Out by January 9, 2012 Manhattan and Guantanamo blend nicely, and humorously, in this debut novel by Staten Island-born FilAm writer Alex Gilvarry. “From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant” fuses the themes of fashion and terrorism through the eyes of Filipino designer […]
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Career vs family, according to the Hukbalahap Amazons
Amazons of the Huk Rebellion: Gender, Sex and Revolution in the Philippines By Vina A. Lanzona University of Wisconsin Press 2009 By Lorial Crowder It began as a dare and led to an impromptu meeting two weeks later with Professor Vina A. Lanzona of the University of Hawaii Manoa, the author of “Amazons of the […]
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Read a good book lately? We try
By Cristina DC Pastor I’ve been reading “A Year by the Sea” for almost two years now. The book by Joan Anderson about a journalist who takes a sabbatical from marriage has been sitting in a little corner of my bedroom along with other books on food, true crime, politics and the Taliban. It’s a […]
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Always a delight to have around
By Cristina DC Pastor Since retiring from politics, former President Fidel V. Ramos has published a total of 22 books: six coffeetable books, four books of his speeches, and 12 books of his columns written for Bulletin Today. “All good stuff, all current and contemporary, all (written in) long hand,” he said in a relaxed […]
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‘Young Filipinos more aware of history than a lot of the older folks’
By Cristina DC Pastor; TF Photo Poet Luis Francia, who came to New York more than 30 years ago in search of his beginning as a writer, talks about his early Bohemian life and how his struggle was unlike that of many Filipino immigrants. TF: Did you leave because of martial law? LF: No, I […]
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An unfinished love story
First-time novelist Samantha Sotto – she’s being compared by some to J.K. Rowling — is launching her book, “Before Ever After,” on August 12 at 6 p.m. at the Philippine Center on 556 Fifth Avenue. The event is open to the public. The novel is a modern-day fairy tale that asks, ‘What if your happy […]