A Reading List for Filipino American History Month 2023


Celebrate Filipino American History Month, observed annually during October, with literature published by our member magazines and presses. (Learn more about Filipino American History Month here.)

 

Poetry

The Flayed City by Hari Alluri featuring artwork of a valley of hills filled with debris and a silhouette of a city against a colorful sunset in the background.The Flayed City by Hari Alluri

Kaya Press | 2017

According to Juan Felipe Herrera, the poems in this collection contain “a new, quiet brush of multi-currents, of multi-worlds to paint this holographic life-scape.”

 

 

 

Tender Machines by J. Mae Barizo featuring a black-and-white photograph of a lit-up city.Tender Machines by J. Mae Barizo

Tupelo Press | 2023

The poems in Tender Machines “swing between the domestic and the surreal, charting motherhood, desire and an immigrant family’s haunted inheritance.”

 

 

 

The Galleons by Rick Barot featuring a complex wooden ship against a plain white background.The Galleons by Rick Barot

Milkweed Editions | 2020

In this poetry collection, Barot “widens his scope, contextualizing the immigrant journey of his Filipino-American family in the larger history and aftermath of colonialism.”

 

 

 

All Heathens by Marianne Chan featuring a photograph of an ornate statue figure with a red and gold cloak and a crown.All Heathens by Marianne Chan

Sarabande Books | 2020

In this debut poetry collection, Chan “navigates her Filipino heritage by grappling with notions of diaspora, circumnavigation, and discovery.”

 

 

 

One Way to Listen by Asa Drake featuring a pink background with a crescent-blue comb shape.One Way to Listen by Asa Drake

Gold Line Press | 2023

The poems in this debut chapbook “return to interlocking loves: of family, place, and self—love especially in resistance to rising violence that this speaker, a Filipina American woman, is positioned to live in acute awareness of.”

 

 

 

Have by Marc Gaba featuring the title and author against a static black background.Have by Marc Gaba

Tupelo Press | 2011

In these poems, Gaba “swerves formally among varied styles, constructing and awakening through the sign-language of a physical book an irrefutable question: Could any of us say that our life is our own?”

 

 

 

Matadora by Sarah Gambito featuring a topless woman in a white skirt with a red and white striped tail and two buffalo in the background, one fallen over dead.Matadora by Sarah Gambito

Alice James Books | 2004

According to Kimiko Hahn, “The poems in Sarah Gambito’s first book, Matadora, are sheer juxtapositions of anything—starfish, Tagalog, frisson—and the friction very often adds a political dimension to the poetic.”

 

 

 

Documents by Jan-Henry Gray featuring a sunset-colored, wavy, plaid pattern.Documents by Jan-Henry Gray

BOA Editions | 2019

Winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, this poetry collection is “rooted in the experience of living in America as a queer undocumented Filipino.”

 

 

 

Court of the Dragon by Paolo Javier featuring black and white artwork of a large spindly plant growing out of the wall.Court of the Dragon by Paolo Javier

Nightboat Books | 2015

Javier’s poetry collection “is both intimate and elusive, a simultaneity brought to the fore by the author’s interest in the occult and intuitive processes, in oblique and plain spoken discourses.”

 

 

 

Threshold by Joseph O. Legaspi featuring artwork of clothes strung on a line in a dark room with a dimly lit window.Threshold by Joseph O. Legaspi

CavanKerry Press | 2017

Legaspi’s poetry collection “celebrates various courageous outsets across boundaries—bodily, filial, marital, even biblical.”

 

 

 

Pop Vérité by R. Zamora Linmark featuring colorful artwork of people dressed in 1920s attire in a piano bar.Pop Vérité by R. Zamora Linmark 

Hanging Loose Press | 2017

According to David Kirby, “James Schuyler and Frank O’Hara flit in and out of these poems, but then so do Tony Bennett, Roberto Bolaño, Donna Summer, Samuel Beckett, Amy Winehouse, and, well, everybody.”

 

 

 

Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil featuring a photograph of an aquamarine and orange fish tail.Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Tupelo Press | 2011

Nezhukumatathil’s fourth poetry collection is, according to Publishers Weekly, “fascinated with the small mechanisms of being, whether natural, personal, or imagined.”

 

 

 

Letters to a Young Brown Girl by Barbara Jane Reyes featuring a heavily saturated photograph of a girl standing on a porch with bat wings.Letters to a Young Brown Girl by Barbara Jane Reyes

BOA Editions | 2020

Reyes’s latest poetry collection “answers the questions of Filipino American girls and young women of color with bold affirmations of hard-won empathy, fierce intelligence, and a fine-tuned B.S. detector.”

 

 

 

Ambuscade by Brian Ascalon Roley featuring a blurry photograph of a chicken.Ambuscade by Brian Ascalon Roley

Finishing Line Press | 2021

This poetry chapbook “taps into the personal experience of parenting a wheelchair user son and combines it with Philippine horror mythology.”

 

 

 

Because I Love You I Become War by Eileen R. Tabios

Marsh Hawk Press | 2023

According to E. San Juan, Jr., this collection of poems and prose “weaves the semiotic subtleties of icon, index, and symbol into epiphanies and discoveries that are, indeed, new additions to our world as we know it so far.”

 

 

 

What Happens Is Neither by Angela Narciso Torres featuring abstract artwork of sideways streets opposite of a blue water pattern and a full moon.What Happens Is Neither by Angela Narciso Torres

Four Way Books | 2021

According to Tim Seibles, in this poetry collection Torres “has jimmied the lock to a house of intricate family memory and sumptuous wisdom.”

 

 

 

ESL or You Weren't Here by Aldrin Valdez featuring abstract artwork of colorful shapes and two peoples’ angry heads below blacked-out text bubbles.ESL or You Weren’t Here by Aldrin Valdez

Nightboat Books | 2018

This poetry collection “is the poet’s awakening to the legacy of American imperialism & colonialism in the Philippines, and to the experience of living between languages, cultures, temporalities, and genders—untranslatable.”

 

 

 

Proof of Stake: An Elegy by Charles Valle featuring a black smudged pattern against a light blue background.Proof of Stake: An Elegy by Charles Valle

Fonograf Editions | 2021

According to Joyelle McSweeney, in this debut poetry collection Valle “​​carries his lost loved one close against his chest as he soars through centuries, continents, climates, colonialisms and profit motives.”

 

 

 

Nonfiction

 

First by Lianne Cruz featuring artwork of a baby’s hand holding a woman’s finger against a blue background with photos of children together.First by Lianne Cruz

Read Furiously | 2023

First is a collection of Cruz’s webcomic Li Comics as she “continues to document her journey as an artist and all the firsts life presents her.”

 

 

 

Orange cover with an antlered heart above a church steeple with birds flying across.Zobel Reads Lorca: Poetry, Painting, and Perlimplín in Love by Federico García Lorca

Translated from the Spanish by Fernando Zóbel

Swan Isle Press | 2023

Zóbel Reads Lorca presents Zóbel’s previously unpublished translation of Lorca’s play Amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín and features contextual essays from several scholars.

 

 

 

The Inventor: A Transcolonial Autobiography by Eileen R. Tabios featuring artwork of a scary pile of junk against a white and red background.The Inventor: A Transcolonial Autobiography by Eileen R. Tabios

Marsh Hawk Press | 2023

According to Tabios, “In The Inventor, I show how Poetry is not mere words but a proactive approach to improving our relationships with each other and life on our planet.”

 

 

 

The Body Papers by Grace Talusan featuring a photograph of a body in a dress made from ripped paper against a mint green background.The Body Papers by Grace Talusan

Restless Books | 2019

Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Talusan’s memoir “powerfully explores the fraught contours of her own life as a Filipino immigrant and survivor of cancer and childhood abuse.”

 

 

 

The Anchored Angel: Selected Writings by José Garcia Villa featuring a red photograph of a man’s side profile with an enlarged version in the background.The Anchored Angel: Selected Writings by José Garcia Villa

Kaya Press | 1999

This selection of Villa’s writings “both recovers and rediscovers the work of this fierce iconoclast for a new generation” and includes essays from several contemporary Filipino and Filipino American writers.

 

 

 

Fiction

Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery by M. Evelina Galang featuring colorful artwork of a woman putting her finger to her lips in a hush underneath a full moon.Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery by M. Evelina Galang

Coffee House Press | 2013

In this novel for young adults, a teenage girl “leaves Manila for snowy Chicago, taking a tradition of protest—and some old family hurts—with her.”

 

 

 

The Descartes Highlands by Eric Gamalinda featuring an orange photograph of a clustered town under a full moon framed by branches.The Descartes Highlands by Eric Gamalinda

Akashic Books | 2014

Gamalinda’s novel “demonstrates that for lives marked by unrelieved loneliness, the only hope lies in the redemptive power of love.”

 

 

 

Manila Noir featuring a grayish green photograph of a child standing crouched along the railing of a balcony.Manila Noir

Akashic Books | 2013

According to Publishers Weekly, this anthology—featuring stories by Gina Apostol, R. Zamora Linmark, Sabina Murray, and more—“includes a liberal dose of the gothic and supernatural, with disappearance and loss being constants.”

 

 

 

Apology by Jon Pineda featuring green and black artwork of stamp prints forming a figure that doubles as a head shape.Apology by Jon Pineda

Milkweed Editions | 2013

This novel “explores how the decisions we make in an instant reverberate in the years to come, and paints a portrait of sacrifice within two immigrant families raising first-generation Americans.”

 

 

 

Literary Magazines

Artwork of two alligators surrounded by three plants, including a blue flower.“Letter to the Deity Who Told Me Arriving Here is Difficult as Welcome” by Hari Alluri

Adi Magazine | 2023

This poem begins, “Dear Kabunian, I love you even though you gave your buhay to our bodies….”

 

 

 

Another Chicago Magazine“Rivkah and Floradita” by Kristene Cristobal

Another Chicago Magazine | 2020

This story begins, “Floradita Pamakan laid out an elaborate breakfast for a death anniversary. Rivkah was very late, but Floradita was a patient woman, with no other plans.”

 

 

 

Logo of ANMLY with the text in black inside a twisted mobius shape colored in with multicolored patches, against a pale purple background.“A History of Skin” by K. Degala-Paraíso

ANMLY | 2023

This essay begins, “Mama [grandmother] started coming to me in my dreams before she was even dead. Before all of her body’s organs failed at once, before her brain finally shut down….”

 

 

 

Logo of The Cincinnati Review featuring "The" and "Review" in black on gray and "Cincinnati" in white on a red square.“Leftist Love Song” by Jay Julio

Cincinnati Review | 2023

This poem begins, “It’s true: I fell for a world / reimagined, heart palpitations / a cause for health care / unconditional.”

 

 

 

Cover of MUSE 2023 featuring a painterly, abstracted landscape at sunrise or sunset.Two Poems by Tina Lentz-McMillan

MUSE | 2023

The poem “How to Grow Tadpoles” begins, “Materials: / 1. Water, the kind from a place of origin. / 2. Tadpoles taken from the creek behind the house on 6th street.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Hopkins Review 15.4, featuring an illustration of a Black woman wearing a hat and seated cross-legged on the ground before a background of trees and a river.“Reading and Re-Remembering in Gina Apostol’s Bibliolepsy” by R. Zamora Linmark

The Hopkins Review | 2022

This essay begins, “I first read Gina Apostol’s Bibliolepsy in 1998, a year after it was published by the University of the Philippines Press. I was residing in Manila at the time.”

 

 

 

Logo of SWWIM featuring text in white against a black ink splatter.“Sampaguita (When We’re in Bloom)” by Momo Manalang

SWWIM | 2018

This poem begins, “Mother                                    you splice my mango mouth in June, // shed my ripe skin                    in pockets of dawn….”

 

 

 

Another Chicago Magazine“Heritage Haunting” by Larisse Mondok

Another Chicago Magazine | 2021

This story begins, “I came to America on my parents’ money four years ago. I had just finished college, and my dad convinced me the opportunity might be worth exploring since I had an American passport.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Hopkins Review 15.4, featuring an illustration of a Black woman wearing a hat and seated cross-legged on the ground before a background of trees and a river.“The Dead Children” by Sabina Murray

The Hopkins Review | 2022

This story begins, “‘You said it was his heart?’ she asked. / ‘A massive coronary. Surprised everyone.’”

 

 

 

A Reading List for Filipino American History Month featuring a photograph of city streets against a gray sky.A Reading List for Filipino American History Month

The Common | 2023

This reading list from The Common includes poetry by Bino A. Realuyo and R. Zamora Linmark, an interview with Oliver de la Paz, an essay by Danielle Batalion Ola, and more.

 

 

 

Logo of ANMLY with the text in black inside a twisted mobius shape colored in with multicolored patches, against a pale purple background.Two Poems by Pamela K. Santos

ANMLY | 20

The poem “A Song of Monsoon and Blood Lava” begins, “In the mornings they say the duwendes scatter and descend thence they came….”

 

 

 

Logo of SWWIM featuring text in white against a black ink splatter.“Pantoum with Lines from Virginia Woolf’s Diary” by Angela Narciso Torres

SWWIM | 2018

This poem begins, “Truth is, one can’t write about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes. / Why have I so little control?”