Hey, You!

May 3, 2012 at 9:07 pm (anthologies, Books, Links, Lists, Publishers, Recommended, Women Writers)
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Yes, you!  Dear blog reader!  Whose impeccable taste is affirmed daily when you check in with Kanlaon (i.e., this blog, not the volcano, silly.  The volcano’s on the other side of the world, and self chose it to name her blog after because –  well, because she has a thing for mountains and volcanoes, who knows why.  It’s elemental)

Well, self wants to call dear blog readers’ attention to an excellent interview with Calyx Senior Editor Becky Olson.

It’s on bibliobitch (Way to appropriate the derogatory, oh fab bibliobitch editors!  Hear, hear!), which is the publisher of Bitch Magazine (See above parenthetical remark), and if you want to know how Becky and staff are handling the transition from founder Margarita Donnelly (Self’s Most Awesome Second Mother, after Dearly Beloved Doreen Fernandez) to the current crop of kick-ass women writers, read this now!

Here’s what Calyx did to add to the cultural landscape:

They published The Forbidden Stitch, the first Asian American women’s anthology in the United States.

They published Nobel prizewinner and newly departed poet Wislawa Szymborska, way back in 1980, when she wasn’t even Wislawa Szymborska.

Heck, they even published Barbara Kingsolver when she wasn’t even Barbara Kingsolver!

They published Chitra Divakaruni’s Black Candle, when she was still writing poetry.

They published the Filipino women’s anthology GOING HOME TO A LANDSCAPE!  Which self co-edited with Virginia Cerenio!  (And that volume included:  Shirley Ancheta, Arlene Biala, Michelle Bautista, Conchitina Cruz, Luisa Igloria, Reine Melvin, Maiana Minahal, Angela Narciso Torres, Barbara Jane Reyes, Veronica Montes, Maloy Luakiun, and so many many other women who feared they weren’t “really” writers because they hadn’t any publications yet)

They published self’s first book, Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila!

They published M. Evelina Galang!

Really, where would self be today if not for Calyx?  Puh-lease check out their website and if you can find it in your heart to dig out a little contribution (for the furtherance of women’s art and all future women geniuses) please do so.

Self will leave you with an excerpt from a Szymborska poem:

I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.
These words soar for me beyond all rules
without seeking support from actual
examples.
My faith is strong, blind, and without
foundation.

Beautiful. Challenging. Brave. That’s Calyx.

Stay tuned.

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1st Wednesday Post-Washington DC Trip: Cleaning the House

April 18, 2012 at 6:23 pm (anthologies, Conversations, Family, Niece, Surprises, Weather, Women Writers)
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It is another gorgeous day.  Self’s hands are full of little cuts from pruning and re-planting a small rose bush.  The old wound, the one she got just a few days before leaving for Washington DC, is completely healed.

She wonders if she should bother getting a pedicure.  In anticipation of son and Jennie visiting next week.  And besides, with the weather warming up, it is so nice to have pretty toe-nails to show off when wearing sandals.  While self and the husband were in DC, self couldn’t help noticing that blue and yellow and lime green were popular among the women of DC.  The ones, that is, who were wearing sandals on the gorgeous last day of the trip, Sunday 15 April, when the husband and self were strolling from one museum to another.

Niece G is so excited to see son and Jennie, and so is self.  In fact, the whole world is excited, because yesterday afternoon, self started a conversation with her neighbor, Claudio, and after she told him that son and his girlfriend would be visiting next week, Claudio said to be sure they stop by to say hello.  He’ll even serve them Prosecco, and then he might ask son and Jennie to show off some fancy dance moves, because Claudio’s wife Mary loves to dance.

Anyhoo, as self just got through saying, it is a gorgeous day, and her pants are tight.  She lives in absolute horror of returning to Bacolod and hearing the laundry woman at L’Fisher Chalet say:  “Tumaba ka.” (You’ve gotten fat).  During self’s most recent Bacolod visit, the laundry woman said it, at least three times.  Then she added this final dagger in self’s heart:  “If you keep gaining weight, the next time you come, WHAT will you look like?”

The only solution is to not eat.  Not eat for days.

Self has also undertaken to poke into the backs of all her cabinet drawers, and she keeps pulling out sheets of yellowing newspaper.  One sheet is wrapped around a still-unopened package labeled:

GENUINE CAMIAS

Bulong Sa Nervios, Suloksulok, Panuko, Panlibang Kurog, Malaria Kag Bulao

Self thinks this is Ilonggo, not Tagalog.  And she is proven correct when she reads, at the bottom of the label, the words ILOILO PHILIPPINES.

In addition, she comes across a very old newspaper called Ohlone College Monitor.  She has a feeling she hung on to it for one reason only.  Again, self is proven correct, for at the bottom of p. 1 is an article titled “Filipino Writer Speaks to Class.”

Of course, it’s about herself.  The writer is Clarissa Aljentera (probably has a husband and three kids by now:  the issue is dated 1997!)

Here’s an excerpt:

She was on campus last Tuesday night to speak to the Filipino American Literature class.

She is the author of the book Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila.  This was about the time when Ferdinand Marcos was in power in the Philippines.

However, this wasn’t her first published work.  She had written “Siko” as part of the book The Forbidden Stitch.  After that anthology came out in 1989, her name started to get spread around the Filipino-American community.

Okey-dokey!  Must get back to cleaning.  Stay tuned!

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Latest Book Deals (Courtesy of PUBLISHERS LUNCH WEEKLY 20 March 2012)

March 21, 2012 at 4:53 am (anthologies, Authors, Books, Eavesdropping, Lists, Memoirs, Publishers, Weather, Women Writers)
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Latest e-letter from Publishers Weekly has announcement of the following deals:

Fiction Debuts:

  • Rachel Urquhart’s The Visionist, the story of “a 15-year-old girl who sets fire to her family farm, killing her abusive father, and finds refuge –  as long as she can guard her dark secrets — in an 1840s Shaker settlement,” to Reagan Arthur Books, in a pre-empt, by Dorian Karchmar at William Morris Endeavor
  • Jillian Cantor’s Margot, “reimagining Anne Frank’s sister’s experience in post-war America as Anne’s growing status as a cultural icon dramatically upends Margot’s own new identity, love, and life,” to Riverhead by Jessica Regel at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency

Thriller

  • A. J. Hartley’s Tears of the Jaguar, “bringing back protagonist Deborah Miller from The Mask of Atreus who has to connect four remarkable events or die trying:  the most famous witch trial in English history; the discovery of an underground Mayan tomb in the Mexican jungle; the disappearance of the original English crown jewels in 1649; and a string of murders perpetrated by an arms dealer in pursuit of a high tech weapon,” to Thomas Mercer for publication in Fall 2012

General/ Other

  • Roboticist and New York Times bestselling author Daniel H. Wilson and anthologist John Joseph Adams, eds.’s, Robot Uprisings, an anthology of stories, to Vintage, by Laurie Fox at Linda Chester Literary Agency and Joe Monti at Barry Goldblatt Literary

There were other deal announcements, such as the memoir by Amanda Knox’s former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, Presumed Guilty:  My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox, written with Andrew Gumbel, which describes Sollecito’s “first meeting with Amanda” and “his arrest, prison time, and subsequent release,” but the rain which fell all morning has finally ceased and self does not want to miss an opportunity to go moseying around Lacson Street.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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The Joy of Reading Luning Bonifacio Ira

February 14, 2012 at 12:19 am (anthologies, Authors, Books, Calls, Family, Filipino Writers, Places, Women Writers)
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Self has discovered a new kindred spirit and Filipino writer!

Of course, this writer is very well known in the Philippines, but self only discovers her now.  She is Luning Bonifacio Ira.

Self is reading her story, “Tell Me Who Cleft the Devil’s Foot,” in The Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century, edited by Isagani R. Cruz.

Self promised to finish this book, finally, this week, but every time she begins a new paragraph in the aforementioned story, she has to stop, it is so beautiful, and fills her with so much nostalgia.  (The phone rings, a rare occurrence.  Self lets it ring.  She will check momentarily to see who it was that just called)  Take, for example, this paragraph:

Rounding Luneta’s manicured acres, she turned right at Del Pilar, left at Padre Faura, and right at a side street whose new name she could not recall.  She felt at home in this part of town.  South Manila was was where an ambience was compounded of old acacia trees which shed their leaves gently like confetti, breezes that might carry the tang of salt (for, south, the sea was never far away), and a tranquil quality which went by the name of “Before the War.”  She parked her car in the shade of an acacia which trailed lush green fern plants, for sale by sidewalk vendors parked there day after day.

Dr. Twig’s clinic was in the back portion of a hotel which had bloomed before the advent of tourism and was now shrunken in the shadow of the skyscraping internationals.

“Dr. Twig will see you in a little while.  Please be seated,” said the mini-skirted young receptionist.  She looked fifteen, though of course she couldn’t be.  Filipino girls just looked younger than their age.

Dr. Twig’s equipment had always impressed her, even aroused a proprietary feeling due partly, she supposed, to all the past bills she’d been paying.

Her last visit had been when she’d had reading glasses fitted two years ago.  But when Dr. Twig came in, lean, stooped and shiny-domed, she was not prepared to find him so aged.

(Boy, and what self wouldn’t give to be one of those young-looking “Filipino girls.”  Right now.  But, alas, here she is in northern California, where the dry heat robs the skin of its elasticity and results in hundreds of minute lines at the corners of both self’s eyes –  Ahem!  Where were we???)

Self now checks the phone:  No blinking message light.  Perhaps a solicitor?

Self was dealt a cruel blow in the wee hours, when she received the bad news that son would not be able to go with her to Bacolod.  The news was so dire it quite put her in a depression.  Everything she does there, really, is to preserve a legacy for the future –  which is to say, for sole fruit of her loins.  But he has many, many responsibilities now.  He will go another time.

And now self can’t seem to stop wondering:  Who was it who just called?  Who?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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2nd Weekend of February (2012)

February 10, 2012 at 11:03 pm (anthologies, Books, Filipino Writers, Movies, short story collections, Weather)
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This morning was chilly and overcast (although, after experiencing the frigid nights of Dharamsala in January, self thinks she will never complain about her unheated house, ever again), but now the sun’s come out.  It is Friday!  Oh happy happy joy joy.

The Grammys are this weekend, though self is not as excited as she was for the Golden Globes.  Adele will clean up, that’s all she knows.  Maybe Lady Gaga will delight with a particularly outré outfit.

They caught Madonna’s stalker.  Apparently, he was an escaped inmate from a mental asylum — ?

No rejections yet today (though she hasn’t checked all of her e-mail).

The husband thinks the Ancient One is on her last legs.  Self sees the deterioration.  Her pet doesn’t even react to a piece of bacon put right under her nose.  It seemed to have gotten worse while self was in India.  One more stretch of not seeing self, and Bella will keel over.  Self prays it doesn’t happen when she is home.  One dog’s expiring (April 2011, Gracie) was awful enough.  Perhaps the husband can do death duties this time.

One thing that always made self curious was why “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy” was nowhere in evidence in the last Golden Globes.  She thought Gary Oldman’s and Tom Hardy’s performances were very fine.  Did the omission have something to do with cut-off dates?

The Denzel Washington/ Ryan Reynolds thriller opened today.  Self still wants to see Liam Neeson punch out wolves in “The Grey.”

Want to know something?  Self is really, really, disproportionately happy today.  She has decided to finish The Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century (in English), which she started reading years –  this is truly pathetic –  ago.  Currently, she is on p. 448, which means she is right in the middle of the Cirilo F. Bautista story, “Ritual” (Nice title, that!).  Here’s a short excerpt:

There was a knock on the door followed by the entrance of a dark-skinned man carrying several books.  His white trousers and white shirt were spotless; the electric bulb was reflected on his shoes.

“Carlos Dayleg, in charge of the fourth class,” Father Van Noort said to me by way of introducing the newcomer.

“I think we’ve already met,” Dayleg said, extending his hand.  It was only then that I realized he was the man I asked directions from a few hours ago.  He must have noticed my surprise.  “Yes, we met this morning.  In this place it is not uncommon for natives to change to more civilized attire.  As for me, I do it only on special occasions.”

Here are a few thoughts that occurred to self while she was reading the above:

  • It is very hard to keep a white shirt and white trousers clean, especially in the tropics.  But that’s what characters always seem to wear in the tropics, even the ones in Somerset Maugham.
  • Self has already completely forgotten where this story is supposed to be taking place (though the name “Dayleg” sounds vaguely Igorot — ?)
  • The presence of the word “native” is excusable because the “native” is calling himself “the native.”

Here’s yet another passage, from several pages later:

Three school terms I had worked with him but I knew nothing about him, except his preference for canned food, his indifference to women, his love for the rice terraces.  Not that he was reserved or aloof –  he was sociable — but his sociability revealed merely the outer encumbrances of his personality, much as the sphinx revealed merely the outer characteristics of its animalism, but the mystery that shrouded it amidst the burning desert sands few could untangle.  Perhaps the metaphor was far-fetched; perhaps he was enigmatic, not because I could not understand him, but because I was analyzing him from an irrelevant angle.  Luisa had told me that I was always inclined to be poetic.

Last night self attempted to inveigh sole fruit of her loins to visit Bacolod with his girlfriend.  An idea which son does not seem to find particularly attractive, self knows not why.  But one cannot have everything, in this world!  One can simply live, as best as one knows how to.  Back to her reading.

Stay tuned.

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Hearing From Virginia

December 7, 2011 at 11:46 pm (anthologies, Conversations, Women Writers)
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Last week, self got her first Christmas card.  It was from poet Virginia Cerenio.  Virginia wrote that she was still writing, though not sending out (Why not, Virginia?  Why not?).  Her daughter, Mari, was grown.

Self has not seen Virginia for almost a decade.  They met for the first time at a reading for The Forbidden Stitch, the Asian American women’s anthology published by Calyx Press.  Self read a new story, “Ginseng.”  Afterwards, Virginia took self aside and asked, “Has that story been published yet?  I can get it published.”

As it turned out, Calyx publisher Margarita Donnelly was thinking the same thing, for she too came up to self afterwards and asked, “Got any more like those?”

Ah, those were the days!

Self pulled a whole sheaf of stories out of her desk drawer (Or filing cabinet, she forgets for sure where the stories had been secreted).  It had been four years since she’d graduated from Stanford.  She had only one story published, since then.  The story in The Forbidden Stitch, “Siko,” was the first to be published in a long, long, long while.

(Are you reading this, oh intrepid student from UP Diliman?  Self still can’t get over how you approached self on this blog, leaving your questions regarding “The President’s Special Research Project,” which as so happens is one of self’s all-time faves)

Such generosity, Margarita, Virginia –  can self be forgiven for thinking the whole world was her oyster?

Later, she was “adopted” by Virginia’s crowd.  She will never ever forget:  Jaime Jacinto, Lou Syquia, Shirley Ancheta (whose prose poem “Kristine” is one of self’s all-time favorites)

Where are you all now?  Can we do a reunion?  Why does time move so fast?  Like an arrow, plunging straight into the heart.

Afterwards followed self’s first book, Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila.  Then the anthology, Going Home to a Landscape.

Self has met, over the years:  Maloy Luakiun (in Hong Kong, the girl was hilarious), Nadine Sarreal, Maiana Minahal (now teaching in Hawaii:  which reminds self that niece very much wants to go there!), Angela Narciso Torres.  At one time, she corresponded with Conchitina Cruz:  most of these dialogues were fleeting, flaring up suddenly for a period of months, then dying away.

Merlie Alunan:  can self tell you how much she worships at your feet, how absolutely tongue-tied she became when she met you last year in Cebu?  And one of the last things she did before she left Bacolod was mail you the two author copies you never received.

What a fragile web we women writers weave!  Is it because we always put the husbands, children, and housekeeping ahead of ourselves?

That’s enough, now.  Life’s too short, time moves like an arrow.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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The Writing Disorder Bookstore

November 10, 2011 at 4:47 pm (anthologies, Books, Filipino Writers, Links, Publishers, Recommended)
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Today self goes tra-la tra-la tra-la and wanders all over the web, culling the gold from the dross, all for the benefit of dear blog readers.

She checks out The Writing Disorder Bookstore, which she hasn’t done in some months, and — Hoooly Moly! They have quite interesting books for sale!  To wit:

  • Matt Thomas’ Resetting the Armageddon Clock (Boxfire Press)
  • Tina May Hall’s The Physics of Imaginary Objects (University of Pittsburgh Press/ Drue Heinz Literature Award Winner)
  • Wodke Hawkinson’s Catch Her in the Rye (CreateSpace)
  • Self’s Mayor of the Roses (Miami University Press)
  • The Writing Disorder Anthology, edited by C. E. Lukather (168 pages of fabulous, may be ordered from Lulu.com)
  • Michael Burns’ Where You Are (All Things That Matter Press)
  • John Oliver Hodges’ War of the Crazies (Main Street Rag)
  • John Kilgore’s The Blunder (Bridgeway Books)
  • Vanessa Libertad Garcia’s The Voting Booth After Dark (Fiat Libertad Co.)
  • Self’s Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila (Calyx Press)
  • Gretchn Mattox’s Buddha Box (Fiat Libertad)
  • Amy Newlove Schroeder’s The Sleep Hotel (Oberlin College Press)
  • Yu-Han Chao’s We Grow Old:  53 Chinese Love Poems (The Backwaters Press)
  • Sudha Balagopal’s There Are Seven Notes (ROMAN Books)

And they also sell the cutest “How to Draw a Novel” T-shirts!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Missed Mary Oliver Reading at Stanford

October 11, 2011 at 1:39 am (anthologies, Books, Recommended)
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How sad self is to miss Mary Oliver’s reading at Stanford this evening!  But none of the people she invited could make it, and it would feel lonely.

Instead, self is going to spend a cozy evening at home.  Late yesterday, she stumbled across an anthology of Chinese poetry that Prof. James J. Y. Liu used in his Chinese poetry classes at Stanford (He was a very endearing man.  He always kept a scarf around his throat.  He died of cancer, oh years and years ago).

Although self’s avowed major was East Asian Studies, with a concentration in Chinese, she had never read much Chinese poetry (except for Li Po, and all she knew about Li Po was that he was often drunk, or seemed so)

The anthology she has is called Sunflower Splendor:  Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, co-edited by Wu-Chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo.  Self keeps turning the pages, turning the pages, until she comes across her own handwriting, in blue ink, next to a poem by Tu Fu (712- 770):

Night Thoughts Aboard a Boat

A bank of fine grass and light breeze,
A tall-masted solitary night boat.
Stars descend over the vast white plain;
The moon bolts in the Great River’s flow.
Fame: Is it ever to be won in literature?
Office: I should give up, old and sick.
Floating, floating, what am I like?
Between earth and sky, a gull alone.

(Translated by James J. Y. Liu and Irving Y. Lo)

And here is what self wrote beneath the poem, in blue ink: “Gull — a symbol of freedom.”  Funny, she doesn’t quite “get” that interpretation of the gull.  Perhaps it was self at twenty-one who was reading into it what she needed in her life at that time!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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Merlie Alunan in GOING HOME TO A LANDSCAPE

September 28, 2011 at 2:36 am (anthologies, Places, Publishers, Women Writers)
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MERLIE ALUNAN HAS TWO NEW BOOKS OUT.  SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN, TO THE FIRST COMMENT.

Dear Merlie,

Self is deeply apologetic that you never received your author copies for your wonderful poem in GOING HOME TO A LANDSCAPE, the Filipino women’s anthology published by Calyx Books.  Now, self is heading to the LBC Office in Bacolod with the books you should have received, ages ago.  But before she mails the books, she just has to re-read your poem, “Odysseus Cripple at Bantayan Island.”  It touches self like never before!  Here it is, for the edification of dear blog readers:

“Odysseus Cripple at Bantayan Island”

The light, the light here how pitiless
it burns from the vast skies at noon.
All day the heated wind
presses its salt kiss on the skin.
Bantayan Island, not such a way
from home, West of Leyte where I come.
Straggler though I am, this isle still
is my own — the starveling dogs, the armies
of sandcrabs guarding their holes,
the children too, brown and thin
with sunburnished hair, lilting seasounds
in their speeches, my bittersweet familiars.
Not that one — white and blue-eyed traveler
hefting himself by his two good arms
on crutches of steel, dragging his body
on shriveled legs inch by careful inch,
Odysseus cripple, wandered from his own
ice-locked continent to this atoll
east north west south of Read the rest of this entry »

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Just Out: THE LOTUS SINGERS, Companion Volume to ANOTHER KIND OF PARADISE

June 9, 2011 at 10:19 pm (anthologies, Filipino Writers, Lists, Publishers, Recommended)
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One nice thing about having a blog is that you can do favors for friends who’ve been nice to you, who’ve shared their hopes, joys, and success with you, and who regularly and tirelessly keep on writing, editing, anthologizing.  In the miasma of economic despair that is currently California, such friends should be cherished, coddled, supported, applauded, and embraced, at every opportunity.

So, here are a couple of supporters who self would like to acknowledge today:

  • To the Editors of Used Furniture Review:  You made self’s day!  Thank you for taking “Jesters” (and for waiting patiently while self cleans up her interview with Karen Llagas)
  • To Randi Shapiro of The White Whale Review (published “Dumaguete”)
  • To Isagani Cruz, editor of Best Philippine Short Stories in English (included “Lizard,” self’s altogether strange story about a “shadow” attached to the narrator’s beautiful mother) –  Isagani, where can self acquire additional copies of this book, preferably in paperback?  Many’s the time when she’s wanted to haul a copy with her on a trip but –  egad, the hardcover weighs three pounds, if not more — !!!
  • Trevor Carolan, editor of Another Kind of Paradise (Boston:  Cheng & Tsui)

Here’s information about Trevor’s new anthology, The Lotus Singers:

The Lotus Singers is an anthology of contemporary stories from India and the South Asian region.  It’s the companion volume to Another Kind of Paradise, the collection of stories from East and Southeast Asia that was published last year.  Here’s a link to the publisher’s website.

The stories come from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, and Pakistan, and explore the themes of social upheaval, gender inequality, economic and spiritual struggle, and challenges to cultural orthodoxy.

And, dear blog readers, self has just decided that she’s going to head back to the lovely lovely island of Negros, soon.  Because that place is just magic for self.  And once you’ve found magic, you know, like in Woody’s new movie, you’ve just got to hang on to it.  Because life is not a dress rehearsal.

Stay tuned.

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