From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel by Alex Gilvarry Boyet Hernandez is a small man with a big American dream when he arrives in New York in 2002, fresh out of design school in Manila. With dubious financing and visions of Fashion Week runways, he sets up shop in a Brooklyn toothpick factory, pursuing his goals with monkish devotion (distractions of a voluptuous undergrad not withstanding). But mere weeks after a high-end retail order promises to catapult his (B)oy label to the big time, there's a knock on the door in the middle of the night: the flamboyant ex-Catholic Boyet is brought to Gitmo, handed a Koran, and locked away indefinitely on suspicion of being linked to a terrorist plot. Now, from his 6' x 8' cell, Boy prepares for the trial of his life with this intimate confession, even as his belief in American justice begins to erode.

With a nod to Junot Diaz and a wink to Gary Shteyngart, Alex Gilvarry's first novel explores some of the most serious issues of our time with dark eviscerating wit.

Leche by R. Zamora Linmark After thirteen years of living in the U.S., Vince returns to his birthplace, the Philippines. As he ventures into the heat and chaos of the city, he encounters a motley cast of characters, including a renegade nun, a political film director, arrogant hustlers, and the country’s spotlight-driven First Daughter. Haunted by his childhood memories and a troubled family history, Vince unravels the turmoil, beauty, and despair of a life caught between a fractured past and a precarious future.

Witty and mesmerizing, this novel explores the complex colonial and cultural history of the Philippines and the paradoxes inherent in the search for both personal and national identities.

Walang Hiya ... Literature Taking Risks Toward Liberatory Practice Presented by Editors Lolan Buhain Sevilla and Roseli Ilano, this anthology is committed to using the narrative as a departure point for personal and political transformation. Featuring short fiction and poetry from emerging Pilipino and Pilipino-American writers:

Adrien Salazar, Aimee Suzara, Aldrich Sabac, Amalia Bueno, David Maduli, Dionisio Velasco, Edene Matutina, Eileen Tabios, Ellen-Rae Cachola, Elsa Valmidiano, Emily Lawsin, Grace Talusan, Jen Palmares Meadows, Jenny C. Lares, Joan Iva Cube, Kristen Sajonas, Laurel Fantauzzo, Lolan Buhain Sevilla, Melanie Dulfo, Melissa Reyes, Michael Janairo, Michelle Ferrer, Niki Escobar, Paul Ocampo, Pippi Prado, Rachel Gray, Regie Cabico, Ricco Villanueva Siasoco, Roseli Ilano, Thomas Paras, Tina Bartolome. Artwork by Arlene Rodrigo and Aimee Espiritu.

Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco Garnering international prizes and acclaim before its publication, Ilustrado has been called “brilliantly conceived and stylishly executed . . .It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy, and effervescent with humor” (2008 Man Asian Literary Prize panel of judges).

It begins with a body. On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River—taken from the world is the controversial lion of Philippine literature. Gone, too, is the only manuscript of his final book, a work meant to rescue him from obscurity by exposing the crimes of the Filipino ruling families. Miguel, his student and only remaining friend, sets out for Manila to investigate.

To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, piecing together Salvador’s story through his poetry, interviews, novels, polemics, and memoirs. The result is a rich and dramatic family saga of four generations, tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, the Americans, and the Filipinos themselves. Finally, we are surprised to learn that this story belongs to young Miguel as much as to his lost mentor, and we are treated to an unhindered view of a society caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.

Exuberant and wise, wildly funny and deeply moving, Ilustrado explores the hidden truths that haunt every family. It is a daring and inventive debut by a new writer of astonishing talent.

"Alien Hand" by Grace Talusan >>>

"A Doctor of None" by Zaldy Tan

The Solmen Lantern Maker by Merlinda Bobis It’s six days until Christmas, and on the bustling streets of Manila a mute ten-year-old boy sells his version of the stars: exquisite lanterns handmade with colorful paper. But everything changes for young Noland when he witnesses an American tourist injured in a drive-by shooting of a journalist and imagines he’s seen an angel falling from the sky. When Noland whisks her to the safety of the hut he shares with his mother, the magical and the real collide: shimmering lanterns and poverty, Christmas carols and loss, dreams of friendship and the global war on terror. While the story of the missing tourist grips the media, Noland and his mother care for their wounded guest, and a dark memory returns. But light sneaks in—and their lives are transformed by the power of love.

Filipino American Psychology by Dr. Kevin Nadal Filipino Americans are the second largest Asian American/ Pacific Islander population in the United States and they are projected to become the largest Asian American population by 2010. With 1.37 million Filipino-born immigrants living in the US, Filipino Americans are the second largest immigrant population in the country. As descendants of the Philippines, a country that was colonized by Spain for over three centuries and by the US for nearly 50 years, Filipino Americans are an ethnic group with a sociocultural and historical experience that is unlike any other. First, they are the only ethnic group that has been categorized as Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic. However, California state laws require that all personnel surveys or statistical tabulations classify persons of Filipino ancestry as "Filipino" rather than part of any other racial or ethnic group. Additionally, Filipino Americans have often been referred to as the "Forgotten Asian Americans," because their presence has been invisible in psychology, education, humanities, and other social sciences. Filipino American Psychology: A Handbook of Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice offers a comprehensive look at the psyche of Filipino Americans. By examining history, cultural values, influences of colonialism, community dynamics, and intersections with other identities, the reader will have an opportunity to understand essential information about this population. Students will gain knowledge and awareness about Filipino American identity and personality development, while practitioners will learn culturally-competent techniques to become better counselors, clinicians, and educators. This book is the first of its kind and aims to promote visibility of this invisible group, so that 2.4 million Filipino Americans will have their voices heard.

Juan Luna's Revolver by Luisa A. Igloria The poems in Juan Luna's Revolver both address history and attempt to transcend it through their exploration of the complexity of diaspora. Attending to the legacy of colonial and postcolonial encounters, Luisa A. Igloria has crafted poems that create links of sympathetic human understanding, even as they revisit difficult histories and pose necessary questions about place, power, displacement, nostalgia, beauty, and human resilience in conditions of alienation and duress.
Igloria traces journeys made by Filipinos in the global diaspora that began since the encounter with European and American colonial power. Her poems allude to historical figures such as the Filipino painter Juan Luna and the novelist and national hero José Rizal, as well as the eleven hundred indigenous Filipinos brought to serve as live exhibits in the 1904 Missouri World's Fair. The image of the revolver fired by Juan Luna reverberates throughout the collection, raising to high relief how separation and exile have shaped concepts of identity, nationality, and possibility.
Suffused with gorgeous imagery and nuanced emotion, Igloria's poetry achieves an intimacy fostered by gem-like phrases set within a politically-charged context speaking both to the personal and the collective.

The Gods We Worship Live Next Door Bino A. Realuyo has that rare gift of transforming modern horror into art. In The Gods We Worship Live Next Door he writes of his beleaguered country, the Philippines, in ways that reveal universal truths. The land is vibrant and alive, real with mythical shadows--rituals, dances, work--and, at the same time, racked by persecution and death. The book is passionate without a trace of sentimentality, a compelling account of destruction under a silent god." Grace Schulman, distinguished professor of English, Baruch College, CUNY

The New York Times Book Review of the Umbrella Country, Laura Morgan Green
...Realuyo's lucid prose, unencumbered by sentimentality or hindsight, lends freshness to the conflicts of his somewhat familiar characters and color to a setting both impoverished and alluring.

From Kirkus Reviews
A lyrical first novel limns a troubled coming-of-age in 1970s Manila, where deviance and difference are punished by silence or brutality. Eleven-year-old Gringo, an observant child who spends long hours watching the neighborhood from an upstairs window, narrates the story of his Manila childhood. He is perhaps too adult and perceptive for his agebut these are common failings of the genre, redeemed here by the eloquence of the writing. The family is poor and unhappy. The father, Daddy Groovie, often unemployed, dreams only of escaping to America, where his sister lives; the mother, Estrella, her feelings tightly suppressed, got married only because she was pregnant; one-year-older brother Pipo, of whom Gringo is extraordinarily protective, likes to dress in women's clothes and has thrice been crowned ``Miss Unibers'' in childhood versions of the beauty pageant; and when hes drunk, Daddy Groovie beats Pipo and Estrella while Gringo looks on helplessly. The neighbors don't intervene either, Manila being a place where umbrellas are carried both in rain and sun as a means of protection from what is best neither seen nor known. Gringo has had to grow up fast: After Pipo is brutally raped by Boy Manicure, the owner of the street's Beauty Parlor, Gringo helps him clean up; an older acquaintance shows Gringo the hideout where Pipo is coupling with other young gays; and when Boy is murdered by an unknown adult, Gringo confesses that it was his shorts, not Pipo's, that police found on the premises. Daddy Groovie gets his visa and, once settled in the US, sends for his family, but only the boys will go: Estrella belongs in Manila. Gringo's responsibilities for his brother must continue. Sometimes overwrought, but even so an evocative and subtly different take on the loss of innocence. A promising debut. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.