September 18, 2020 at 1:43 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Camarote de Marinero, Explorers, Filipino poetry, Filipino Writers, Links, Philippine History, Recommended, Surprises, The Economist, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, historical fiction, history, inspiration, literary awards, poetry, The Philippines, websites
Rick Barot’s collection The Galleons is on the National Book Award’s longlist for poetry! Kudos, sir!
Self finds it interesting: she is writing about the galleons, too! Her book invents a character and puts him in the Philippines at the close of the 16th century.
Today, in her leisurely read of The Economist of 12 September 2020 (She’s fairly sure they skipped an issue; the 19 September issue should have arrived last week. What gives, USPS?), there is a letter about Magellan. Truly, self has entered a zone! A zone where everyone else is also thinking about Magellan! Galleons! The 16th century!
Letter to The Economist from Marques de Tamaron, Madrid:
Ferdinand Magellan was not “the first known circumnavigator (Obituary for Marvin Creamer, August 29th). He commanded the flotilla of five ships and 239 sailors that sailed in 1519 from Spain but he died in combat in the Philippines in 1521 before completing the round-the-world voyage. Juan Sebastian Elcano was then elected leader for the rest of it, reaching Spain in the only remaining ship, Victoria, in 1522. He and the emaciated survivors who dragged themselves ashore were indeed the first true circumnavigators.
Prompted by curiosity (mebbe she should have written about Elcano instead of making up a fictional character for her novel! Oh well, too late now!), self does some google research. Elcano died only four years after his return from that epic voyage. And there is a Spanish thinktank named after him that addresses such topics as climate change, cybersecurity, and international migration. Here is a link to their very interesting blog.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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August 24, 2020 at 4:37 am (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Links, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, Dublin, dystopia, experimental, fantasy, inspiration, Ireland, Literary Magazines, short story, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, writing process
This story was published by decomP Magazine. Self began writing it during a residency at Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig. Weeks later, she found the ending in Dublin.
The boss was born Earthstar. He’d never look her way. His spores were meant to go else: to a Silverleaf. Or a Shag. Not K that smelled like wet rot. All scaly cap and throat gills. She belonged with other Common.
In this story of the future, there are Earthstars. Earthstars are permitted to mate with either Silverleafs or Shags. Any other pairing is out of the question.
K is a Common.
The inspiration for this story was a book about mushrooms. Morgan Cooke, who she met at TGC, made an audio recording. Must say, self got a big kick out of hearing her story read with an Irish accent. Many, many, many thanks to Morgan.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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August 23, 2020 at 9:03 pm (Calls, Filipino poetry, Filipino Writers, Philippine History, Places, Sundays)
Tags: Andres Bonifacio, Events, heroes, history, memorials, politics, The Philippines, translation
No one knows the exact date when the Philippine Revolution began (Because it was a secret rebellion!). But the place has never been in doubt.
At some point in the last week of August 1896, Andres Bonifacio (a self-educated warehouse clerk, she posted some of his poetry a week or so ago) gathered his followers and led them in tearing up their cedulas. A cedula is a form of identification, issued by the Spanish colonial government. It was a document that formed the basis of tax collection.
Pugad Lawin was deep woods when Andres Bonifacio and a thousand followers (which is quite a large number, for a secret society, but was no match against the Spanish, who in the city of Manila alone numbered at least 10,000) gathered there. The rough translation of pugad lawin is ‘hawk’s nest.’ Today, it has been swallowed up by Metro-Manila, and lies in one of the most densely populated cities in Asia.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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August 10, 2020 at 12:47 am (Artists and Writers, destinations, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Philippine History, Recommended, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Doreen Fernandez, Dumaguete, Filipino food, memories, restaurants, The Philippines
- The drive from Dumaguete through Bais and Mabinay to Kabankalan, Negros Occidental is an excellent road, past hills and valleys, even a zig-zag portion, through fields and towns, and hardly a billboard.
Self has driven this route. Ten years ago.
Doreen G. Fernandez (self’s second mother) had made an appointment to visit Vicente Lobaton, kinilaw artist. Kinilaw is the Filipino version of sushi. And it’s rather a specialty in the Visayan Islands, in the central Philippines. The number one requirement is that the seafood be freshly caught. And in a country with over 7000 islands, there’s no excuse not to have seafood that is freshly caught. Kinilaw is served with a “dressing” called sawsawan. Want to know more? It’s all in Doreen’s book, Kinilaw (1991) She goes on to describe the meal, which involved kinilaw crab, fish, and shrimp. (SO hungry right now)
Doreen was from the self-same island that Dear Departed Dad was from. It has a very non-PC name: Negros. That’s right, the island is named Negros because its people were dark. It has been named that since the 16th century. It is divided into two provinces: Negros Occidental (where self’s Dear Departed Dad, and Doreen, were from) and Negros Oriental. Negros Oriental has this really cool city called Dumaguete, which became the title for one of self’s short stories (It’s in MsAligned 3, published earlier this year)
Vicente, who goes by Enting, has two restaurants on Negros. One is Enting’s Manukan in Sagay; the other is Enting’s Lechonan on 17th St. near Lacson in downtown Bacolod, the capitol of Negros Occidental.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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August 8, 2020 at 7:03 pm (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Links, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: experimental, flash fiction, Juked, Literary Magazines, Saturday, summer
Excerpts from self’s story “First Life” that appeared in Juked, 2015. The point of view belongs to a boy named Dragon. He’s sitting in a classroom of the future (Just because it’s the future doesn’t mean people don’t daydream, ha!)
Today I’m thick or something because thoughts are dark as dark.
Sunlight and glass, Prisms and mirrors. My mind is floating out there, beyond the windows. Out there, where swish swish goes something, maybe the wind.
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August 6, 2020 at 12:44 am (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Calls, Filipino Writers, Links, Philippine History, Places, Recommended)
Tags: Asian American Writers, San Francisco, SOMA, workshops
Ah, San Francisco. A city of neighborhoods. Never has she needed your help more than at this moment.
Liwanag is a cultural organization with deep roots in a section of the city historically populated by Filipino residents (not so anymore, but the traces are there).
They’re putting together an anthology (Deadline: Aug. 23, 2020)
Information on submission guidelines, and on two upcoming workshops, are on the website
.
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August 3, 2020 at 8:37 pm (Books, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Philippine History, Recommended)
Tags: desserts, elections, Filipino food, indulgences, memories, Mondays, nonfiction, nostalgia, politics, The Philippines
p. 13: “the past comes rushing back . . . ”
- On election day, in full view of more than 700 foreign and local journalists, and millions of concerned citizens, Marcos’s men ripped up ballots, bought others and muzzled voters. As many as three million names were stricken off the voters’ list.
p. 16 features a description of self’s favorite Filipino dessert, halo-halo (Literal Translation: mix-mix):
- This delicacy, served in a tall sundae glass, contains diced bananas, sweet mango, chickpeas, kidney beans, strands of macapuno (the succulent meat of a variety of coconut) — all of these in syrup — plus pinipig (kernels of crisp and delectable rice), mongo beans, corn, langka (jackfruit), sweet potato, jello, ube (purple yam preserves), and leche flan.
HUNGRY.
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July 30, 2020 at 8:32 pm (Artists and Writers, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Links, Lists, Publishers, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: experimental, Literary Magazines, Readings, sadness, summer
Just recently, self heard The Octopus Literary Salon, in Oakland, where she and friends had all variously read, had closed. SAD! It was a mainstay of the local literary community.
Self was just looking through her pile of contributor copies (for stories she’s published in literary magazines) and realized that there are quite a goodly number that do not exist anymore. Like, The Rambler? This magazine of nonfiction appeared in North Carolina, survived a number of years, and took two of self’s flash.
How about Isotope? A place for creative and science writing. Edited by poet Chris Cokinos. In the same issue as poetry and plays, an essay on math (with numbers!) or biology. This one published out of Utah.
Here are self’s list of The Departed (the ones she knows about):
- 5_Trope
- Alimentum: The Literature of Food (Self loved this magazine. It moved to on-line only, and self still loved it. Then, ALAS!)
- decomP
- Elsewhere Lit
- Isotope
- LITnIMAGE
- Our Own Voice (featuring writing of the Philippine diaspora)
- The Cricket Online Review
- The Rambler
- Used Furniture Review
- White Whale Review (The editor solicited her after reading her blog)
- Word Riot
Most of these magazines fell into the experimental and/or social justice arena. They were trying to do something different, and their presence in the literary world was exciting (Face it, if self had to rely solely on the big literary magazines, her career would have been over years ago). They were labors of love (as every literary magazine, big or small, is) and their vision was unique.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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July 9, 2020 at 8:20 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Women Writers)
Tags: essays, Filipino food, indulgences, nostalgia, The Philippines
From Hometown Foods: Essays on Filipino Food:
Quiet, bucolic Silay used to have a lot of gambling for high stakes going on behind the walls of those gracious houses. Some, I was told (I never saw them) had sophisticated warning, hiding and escape systems built into them in case of an unlikely raid — unlikely because of pakikisama, because important officials were among the gamblers, because it was an important part of the community lifestyle. Tales were told and zarzuelas were written about jewelry, land titles and car registrations flung on the gambling table; of haciendas lost in a night of gaming; of marriages sacrificed at the mahjong, panguingue or monte tables, or at the cockpit.
For these gamblers, I was told, were developed for kalan-unon (kakanin) for which Silay is famous, and the accompanying institution, the manug-libud (accent on ug and ud). The kalan-unon are portable — they can be eaten without getting up from the gambling table, and they used to be made by the best cooks in Silay — maiden aunts, young wives, mothers, girls, many from the best families. The food was taken around by the manug-libud (“libud” means to take from place to place, usually to sell) to homes with or without gambling, to restaurants and schools, in large round baskets covered with cloth and carried on their heads.
Are there any chefs from Silay in the Bay Area? Are there any Filipino restaurants in Redwood City? How about Half Moon Bay? Just wondering.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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