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A Mexican girl, a trans hacker, and a diverse cast of characters in Ramon Gil’s comic books
Ramon Gil’s latest middle grade graphic novel features a diverse cast of characters in terms of ethnicity, gender identity, and neurodiversity. Since 2014, Ramon Gil’s comic stories have featured people of color — often Asian — as lead characters. As an immigrant himself, he has a soft spot for the newcomer or the outsider. “I’ve […]
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Who is Raymundo Mata and what is his role in PHL revolutionary history?
By Allen Gaborro To even begin trying to understand Gina Apostol’s perplexing, historical, and political spectrum of a novel about the Philippines during its pre-turn of the century revolutionary era, “The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata,” a reader has to get out from under the tried and true empirical norms of the classical literary universe […]
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Conscientious journalism comes at a price
By Allen Gaborro Subjected to social and political pressure in the Philippines, Filipino American journalist, writer, and co-founder of the candidly disquisitive Rappler digital news website, Maria Ressa has exhibited nothing less than fearlessness and resoluteness in the face of it all. In the intro of Ressa’s memoir “How to Stand Up to a Dictator: […]
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Bretman Rock writes of colorism and how the PHL doesn’t see it as a race problem
By Tricia J. Capistrano “If you’re a bottom, you’re gonna have to learn to douche correctly,” writes Filipino American influencer Bretman Rock in his recently released book, “You’re That Bitch and Other Cute Lessons About Being Unapologetically Yourself.’ For middle-aged Filipino Americans like me who are turned off by graphic sex and cursing, I ask […]
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Loida Nicolas Lewis’s memoir of love, marriage, and race
By Allen Gaborro In 1967 a US Supreme Court ruling led to the legalization of interracial marriages. One such interracial marriage would be the union two years later of American lawyer Reginald F. Lewis and Sorsogon-born Loida Mañalac Nicolas. It would be the beginning of a beautiful and productive relationship that ended with the untimely […]
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Jaime FlorCruz’s captivating memoir on modern China
By Tricia J. Capistrano “Not valid for travel to China, the Soviet Union and other communist countries” was stamped on Jaime FlorCruz’s passport. But in July of 1971, FlorCruz, then only 20, and 14 other youth leaders from the Philippines flew to Hong Kong and then to China. The students, together with scholars from other […]
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‘I Was the President’s Mistress!!’: Ridicule of the privileged class
By Allen Gaborro Miguel Syjuco’s literary talent and writing flair are pulsatingly progressive, demanding, and risqué. This was the case with his seminal novel, “Illustrado.” It is even more so with his latest craft of fiction, the titillatingly-titled “I Was the President’s Mistress!!” Entwined throughout Syjuco’s novel are a stock of internal and external montages, […]
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Transformational, triumphant: Del Carmen’s ‘Storm Across My Cherished Bamboo Bridge’
By Marivir Montebon So gently written, the novel “Storm across my cherished bamboo bridge” (Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022, 215 pages) is unputtable down as it emerges victorious against the harrowing brutality of murder, betrayal, and survival. It’s author Gene del Carmen’s first book as a novelist. And oh my, I was touched by its transformational […]
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On Global Filipinos: Dragons and monsters
By Loida Nicolas Lewis This is an excerpt from the author’s memoir, “An Asian-American Story of Love, Marriage, Motherhood, and Running a Billion-Dollar Empire,” to be released in 2023 by Wiley and Sons. The book is a glimpse into the interracial marriage in New York between a Filipino woman and an African American. The 80th anniversary of Reginald […]