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
Nightboat Books | 2023
Comprising three long poems, this collection is “an autohistoriography of felt time that arises from subversive hearing practices and the emotional prosody of a mother tongue one does not understand but activates in another poetic language.”
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.”
Alice James Books | 2023
According to Hilary Sun, this collection “reminds us that we can break this cycle of bitterness and transform it into beautiful, imagined futures. To be eaten does not have to be othering; it can be a way of knowing and understanding.”
Leaving Biddle City by Marianne Chan
Sarabande Books | 2024
This coming-of-age collection “details one Filipina American speaker’s experience of growing up amid a white, Midwestern suburbia mythologized as ‘Biddle City.’”
God’s Will for Monsters by Rachelle Cruz
Inlandia Institute | 2017
According to Juan Felipe Herrera, Cruz’s collection “contests, demolishes and remixes the bizarre, early 20th Century colonial and classic ethnographic summations of the Philippines.”
Caulbearer by Luisa A. Igloria
Black Lawrence Press | 2024
Igloria’s collection weaves “poems exploring the veiled intervals of transition experienced by those in the diaspora—or by anyone who has felt a severing from their origins.”
Near Your Mirror Home (Stay On) by Paolo Javier
Poets of Queens | 2024
Javier’s collection features both “a serial poem that revels in/reveals the slipperiness of desire and separation from place and language in the Dreaming, and a long poem that roars at white supremacy, misogyny, and horizontal hate.”
Nightboat Books | 2021
In O.B.B., Javier “deconstructs a post-9/11 Pilipinx identity, amid the lasting fog of the Philippine American War, to compose a far-out comic book awit.”
Decade of the Brain by Janine Joseph
Alice James Books | 2023
According to Aracelis Girmay, the speakers of these poems “articulate the strangeness of living in relation to other past and simultaneous selves changed by injury, intimacy, notions of citizenship, and nation.”
Beyond the Galleons by Isabel Cristina Legarda
Yellow Arrow Publishing | 2024
This collection is “a meditation on Filipino experiences of colonization, ancestral connection, alienation, and the ghosts that haunt people living in geographic or psychological diasporas.”
Drive-By Vigils by R. Zamora Linmark
Hanging Loose Press | 2011
According to Rigoberto González, this collection “takes readers on a high-speed chase to the heart of ‘today’s madness,’ where Manila intersects with Hollywood, and where a rap artist might croon pidgin translations of Federico García Lorca at the Korean karaoke 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.”
Futurepoem | 2018
According to Yasmin Adele Majeed, Marchan’s poems, which are drawn from her childhood experience of Hurricane Katrina, take in “the whole stretch of New Orleans on an intimate level—it’s people, it’s music, it’s idiom, and it’s bloat.”
American Inmate: The Album by Justin Rovillos Monson
Haymarket Books | 2024
Monson’s debut collection “subverts contemporary discourse and representations of incarceration, of hip-hop, and of Asian American culture and literature.”
At the Drive-in Volcano by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Tupelo Press | 2007
According to Naomi Shihab Nye, Nezhukumatathil’s second poetry collection “examines the full circle journey of desire, loss, and ultimately, an exuberant love—traveling around a world brimming with wild and delicious offerings such as iced waterfalls, jackfruit, and pistol shrimp.”
All Things Lose Thousands of Times by Angela Peñaredondo
Inlandia Institute | 2017
The poems in Peñaredondo’s debut collection investigate “where fragments of the body’s memory, culture, gender and desire gather, then finally piece themselves together to form into new shapes.”
My Boyfriend Apocalypse by antmen pimentel mendoza
Nomadic Press & Black Lawrence Press | 2023
According to Sanjana Bijlani, “the speculative tenderness at the heart of antmen pimentel mendoza’s poetry embraces life, not just survival, while the future is still ours to imagine.”
ALL OF THEM ALL OF THEM by Akira Ritos
fifth wheel press | 2024
The poems in this collection “explore family, generational trauma, traditions, and grief in their life as a queer Filipino-American.”
Particles of a Stranger Light by Anthony Sutton
Veliz Books | 2023
“Circling around the trauma of a single night,” Sutton’s debut collection “employs a wide array of approaches and forms to obsessively dissect issues of memory, identity, culture, and history.”
INVENT[ST]ORY by Eileen R. Tabios
Dos Madres Press | 2015
This collection of Tabios’s list and catalog poems “transforms the generative function often associated with this mode into profound poetic resonance.”
Murder Death Resurrection by Eileen R. Tabios
Dos Madres Press | 2018
This collection is the result of a five-year project using the “MDR Poetry Generator,” which “contains a database of 1,167 lines which can be combined randomly to make a large number of poems.”
What You Refuse to Remember by MT Vallarta
Small Harbor Publishing | 2023
According to Angela Peñaredondo, this debut collection “transgresses narratives of second-generation immigrant g[x]rlhood by intimately positioning it against cultural histories of imperialism, gender violence, and femme subjugation.”
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.”
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.
Poems of the Black Object by Ronaldo V. Wilson
Futurepoem | 2018
According to Tisa Bryant, this collection shifts “experience and reckoning from poem to essay, theory to epistle, these intuitive modes of a person in search of a particular poetics.”
Fiction
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
Akashic Books | 2014
Gamalinda’s novel “demonstrates that for lives marked by unrelieved loneliness, the only hope lies in the redemptive power of love.”
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.”
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.”
The Hour of Daydreams by Renee Macalino Rutledge
Forest Avenue Press | 2017
This debut novel, according to Daisy Hernández, “is a stirring and haunting exploration of marriage, culture, and gender roles.”
A Professional Lola by E. P. Tuazon
Red Hen Press | 2024
Winner of the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, this collection blends “literary fiction with the surreal to present the contemporary Filipino American experience and its universal themes of love, family, and identity.”
Nonfiction & Hybrid Works
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.”
Eye of the Fish by Luis H. Francia
Kaya Press | 2001
Through stories and through “his own memories of estrangement and acceptance in the Philippines and in the US,” Francia’s memoir “reflects on the hybridity that is simultaneously the burden and the benediction of the Philippines.”
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.
Milkweed Editions | 2024
Nezhukumatathil’s celebrated work of nonfiction now includes additional essays and illustrations.
Burrow Press | 2024
A “literary-architectural hybrid project,” this book “sketches fault lines within a Filipinx family, linking intimate harm to the forces of colonialism and labor migration.”
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.”
Literary Magazines
Kitchen Table Quarterly | 2024
This interview with Ramos discusses their familial history, living in and writing about liminality, the idea of absent desire, navigating linguistic boundaries, and more.
An Interview with Christine Imperial by Sarah Sophia Yanni
Full Stop | 2023
This interview between Sarah Sophia Yanni and Christine Imperial begins, “Christine Imperial’s debut book, Mistaken for an Empire, was released in April 2023 by Mad Creek Books, an imprint of the Ohio State University Press.”
Two Stories by Matthew Torralba Andrews
The Cincinnati Review | 2024
The story “Island Hopping” begins, “The manager leads our tour of Flagstaff Senior Springs into the rec room. Keely inspects the contents of the shelves—the spines of books our mother might read, the lids of board games she and Mom could play.”
ANMLY | 2022
The poem “Grimoire” begins, “GRIMOIRE / the ceramic jug / has returned to kill me / I let it / know that parenting / is unmiraculous / every generation / should be aimless…”
“An Immigrant’s Guide to Navigating Borders & Bodies of Water” by Aileen Cassinetto
West Trestle Review | 2023
This poem begins, “1. / Save me a fish scale, hard tissue / and enamel, true cartographer. / Teach me how to unchart this body / of saltwater. Let me start over.”
“White Fantasy Appropriates Stories of Oppression from People of Color” by Elaine Castillo
Electric Literature | 2022
This essay begins, “Another day, another shit show involving J. K. Rowling; I’m starting to think there’s a schedule.”
Does It Have Pockets | 2024
This story begins, “typhoon glenda / typhoon glenda rainfall warning / typhoon glenda rainfall warning red / typhoon glenda blackout / typhoon glenda blackout affected areas…”
“If You Aren’t Explicit, They’ll Say You Never Mentioned the War” by Asa Drake
Epiphany | 2024
This poem begins, “My newsfeed is all about babies. / Helen is so tired and so relieved; / her baby born a few weeks early.”
Epiphany | 2020
The poem “from Tonight, A Woman” begins, “The albularya says women from Kangkong can’t stand their own rain. / She warns a grief face will take my beauty for a week.”
“In My Own Skin” by Camille Espiritu
Wellspringwords | 2024
This poem begins, “A painful amount of guilt has riddled my body for years.”
Review of Elle’s Cicatrix by Ann Ho
Full Stop | 2022
This review begins, “On May 9th, 2022, an old and familiar name returned to presidential rule in the Philippines.”
“Tell me about the future” by Luisa A. Igloria
The Cincinnati Review | 2024
This poem begins, “without telling me it’s impossible— / Tell me about soft green that emerges / in between burned roots and branches, / and of the slow sorting of stones, /the choosing of what withstood the worst.”
“Time Management” by Oz Johnson
The Kenyon Review | 2024
This essay begins, “I first heard of management consulting as a freshman at Stanford. The resident advisor of my dorm, a junior, said it was her dream job, which struck me as very urbane and sophisticated, even though I did not know what management consultants did.”
Two Poems by Christian Hanz Lozada
Does It Have Pockets | 2024
The poem “At The End of The Long Dark Hallway” begins, “is our craft room. When we bought the house, / Nani and I fought for it. She wanted it as the guest room, / and maybe, if God or some other source of miracles wills it, / the baby’s room. I wanted it for the craft room.”
“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.”
“To Resist Being Unseen” by Monica Macansantos
Another Chicago Magazine | 2019
This essay begins, “On a rainy evening in June 2015, I was walking from my apartment in Wellington, New Zealand, to a cocktail bar in the central business district, on the way to a party with a Meetup group I had joined online.”
“The Lonely Mountain” by Wilfredo Pascual
The Kenyon Review | 2024
This essay begins, “My ex-boyfriend Somchai wasn’t planning on sharing his HIV test results the night I visited him twenty-five years ago. He was in bed watching the news at the home in suburban Bangkok where he lived with his younger brothers.”
“The Pigeon” by Rachel Ramirez
West Trestle Review | 2023
This story begins, “Diwa walks alone down the long dirt road to school. The road is still littered with debris, the land around it still healing.”
“Folktale, three retellings” by Kim Ramos
Kitchen Table Quarterly | 2023
This poem begins, “I. / Remember / you are salt, and to salt / you shall return. / A generation sets its hopes in a wicker basket / and sends them down the river…”
“The Body Otherwise” by Reni Roxas
Wellspringwords | 2024
This essay begins, “On my second night in the hospital, I had a dream. In my dream, I was waiting for an old friend. Instead, I found myself joining someone else, a new acquaintance, on a walk.”
Electric Literature | 2021
This interview between Meredith Talusan and Albert Samaha begins, “Like the complex Philippine history the book aims to depict, there is no single sentence that can sum up Albert Samaha’s Concepcion, especially when he renders that history through the lens of his own diasporic family, dating back to his ancestors’ first encounter with Europeans.”
ANMLY | 2023
The poem “Etymon: Idiay” begins, “/id·‘jaī/ ᴅᴇғɪɴɪᴛɪᴏɴ: There, beyond you and me, a million crickets dance a fan dance in the dark bamboo groves. Before dawn, the man wends his way through his flooded field.”
