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Acapulco at Sunset and Other Stories

Acapulco at Sunset and Other Stories

PALH, 2020 US Edi­tion, paper­back, 160 pages
ISBN: 978–1‑95–3716-07–1, ORDER BOOKSHOP

EBOOK — Kin­dle, Barnes&Noble, Rakuten Kobo, Apple Books, Scribd, Toli­no, Over­Drive, Bib­lio­the­ca, Baker&Taylor, Vivlio, Bor­row Box.

First pub­lished by Anvil in 1995

 

Haunt­ing and Enchanting

The 2020 US Edi­tion of Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s col­lec­tion of short fic­tion, ACAPULCO AT SUNSET AND OTHER STORIES, gath­ers sev­en­teen enchant­i­ng sto­ries grouped into four cat­e­gories: Long Ago Tales, Sto­ries from the ’60s and ’70s, Sto­ries from the ’90s, and Amer­i­can Tales. In this book, Brainard, a Philip­pine Amer­i­can author, con­tin­ues her explo­ration of her Fil­ipino and Fil­ipino-Amer­i­can immi­grant expe­ri­ences. The col­lec­tion includes some of her best short stories.This anthol­o­gy of sto­ries, first pub­lished in 1995 in the Philip­pines, is now pre­sent­ed to an audi­ence famil­iar with Brainard’s sub­se­quent lit­er­ary work — the nov­els she wrote (WHEN THE RAINBOW GODDESS WEPT, MAGDALENA, THE NEWSPAPER WIDOW), the books she edit­ed, includ­ing the young adult com­ing-of-age antholo­gies GROWING UP FILIPINO: STORIES FOR YOUNG ADULTS and the fol­low up GROWING UP FILIPINO; and more.. The GROWING UP books are most pop­u­lar among edu­ca­tors librarians.

Praise

Review in Halo-Halo Reviews
by Her­minia Menez Coben, PhD

In her debut col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, WOMAN WITH HORNS, Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard launch­es her myth­i­cal Ubec (Cebu) – a his­toric, cos­mopoli­tan and vibrant city – the set­ting of many of her short sto­ries, as well as her most recent nov­el, THE NEWSPAPER WIDOW.

Ubec is home to the his­tor­i­cal fig­ure Lapu-Lapu, por­trayed in “1521” not in his role as the leg­endary defend­er of the island against Span­ish con­quis­ta­dors but as a new father engulfed with joy at the birth of his first son, only to lose him, soon after, to ene­my fire.

In “Black Man in the For­est,” as in “1521,” war serves as the nec­es­sary back­ground for high­light­ing the com­plex emo­tion­al dra­ma that is at the core of the nar­ra­tive. The Philip­pine Amer­i­can War sit­u­ates Gen­er­al Gre­go­rio in a for­est, where he has fled with a few of his men to escape the Amer­i­cans. Con­front­ed by a “black man,” he is wound­ed in the leg and he fires back, killing the Amer­i­can sol­dier with his last bul­lets. In the after­math, the gen­er­al reflects on his victim’s death, and with great com­pas­sion gives the stranger a riv­er-funer­al, sav­ing him from the pre­da­tion of one of his men, the can­ni­bal­is­tic Liver-Eater.

These and oth­er sto­ries below clear­ly demon­strate Brainard’s abil­i­ty to draw the read­er into the sto­ry by cre­at­ing char­ac­ters that are tru­ly believ­able, whether they are plucked from the pages of his­to­ry (“1521,” “Chino’s Dream”), drawn from folk­lore (“Woman with Horns”), or from one’s mem­o­ry of ordi­nary peo­ple lead­ing ordi­nary lives. All of them share com­mon human frail­ties and redeem­ing virtues, and, always, all are wor­thy of redemption.

In the title sto­ry, Dr. Ger­ald McCal­lis­ter, a hol­low man, grief-strick­en after the death of his beloved wife, assumes the post as Ubec’s Amer­i­can direc­tor of a pub­lic health pro­gram to con­tain a cholera epi­dem­ic. A stranger in a strange land, with­out any mean­ing­ful con­nec­tion to any­one, he becomes con­sumed by his work. In the end, an unusu­al­ly seduc­tive young wid­ow, believed to have been sired by a riv­er spir­it, redeems him from a joy­less, lone­ly existence.

In “Woman with Horns,” as well as in oth­er sto­ries in the sec­ond col­lec­tion, begin­ning with “Aca­pul­co at Sun­set,” the char­ac­ters seem haunt­ed by a sense of dis­place­ment, a “feel­ing of being a stranger” (“Killing Time”), “of not belong­ing” (“Alas­ka”) in a coun­try where even the sun­sets are nev­er the same as in one’s native land (“Aca­pul­co”). Brainard is a spe­cial­ist in the psy­chol­o­gy of exiles, of alien­at­ed immi­grants, trans­plant­ed to a place they nev­er can quite call home.

Brainard’s prose is lean, sparse, and easy to read, but each sto­ry is nev­er sim­ple. If one real­ly pays atten­tion to her sto­ry­telling craft, one is reward­ed with delight­ful dis­cov­er­ies, as in “Aca­pul­co.” The open­ing scene about a spi­der con­stant­ly weav­ing its web is a recur­ring metaphor for the hero­ine her­self. “I, too, am cre­at­ing a web, am I not?” she asks her­self. The gos­samer web reminds her of her mother’s sina­may weav­ings and the pover­ty of her child­hood, which she lam­en­ta­bly con­trasts with the wealth and com­fort her suc­cess­ful hus­band has giv­en her in her new land. Despite that, she feels “dry and hol­low,” like a “float­ing ghost,” a ghost like Jaime, the love of her life, still hov­er­ing in her mem­o­ry, and res­ur­rect­ed only with the annu­al let­ters deliv­ered by the galleon from Mani­la. At the end, when her hus­band calls her to join him and their twin daugh­ters, his loud, urgent voice leaves “the spi­der…  cring­ing in her web.”

A gift­ed spin­ner of tales, Brainard can turn a sim­ple event in an ordi­nary life, like a crav­ing for “But­ter­scotch Mar­ble Ice Cream” into a heart­warm­ing sto­ry about a young wife, preg­nant for the first time, con­tem­plat­ing her future in a small rental apart­ment in San Fran­cis­co. Look­ing out her win­dow, she is per­turbed by the scene of a woman hang­ing out her laun­dry. Is this what mar­ried life is all about, she won­ders. Her hus­band, Mark, a law stu­dent, craves for a par­tic­u­lar fla­vor of Swensen’s ice cream and per­suades her to go on what turns out to be a quest from one ice cream shoppe to anoth­er in the damp and fog­gy city. Pleased with their suc­cess, Mark set­tles down with the pint of ice cream in front of the tele­vi­sion. His wife, by the win­dow, is still think­ing of the neigh­bor and her laun­dry when the baby gives a kick. Shift­ing her weight, she catch­es Mark’s reflec­tion on the glass, hap­py and con­tent with the but­ter­scotch mar­ble ice cream, and she real­izes that “in that reflec­tion (is) my future.”

“But­ter­scotch” and oth­er sto­ries in these two col­lec­tions are them­selves like reflec­tions on a win­dow pane or like snap­shots of a moment in time, which reveal much more than what appears on the surface.

“A Very Short Sto­ry” cap­tures a few hours in the life of a mar­ried man, on a tryst with a lover at the Hilton. It is very brief, no more than half a page. It is up to the read­er to fill in the rest.

Hav­ing read most of Brainard’s short fic­tion, as well as her nov­els, I think that I can safe­ly say that these sto­ries are some of the best in her exten­sive repertoire.

(Her­minia Menez Coben, a retired Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Stud­ies at Cal State, Sono­ma, is author of EXPLORATIONS IN PHILIPPINE FOLKLORE and VERBAL ARTS IN PHILIPPINE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES: POETICS, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY.)

***

“Although writ­ing from out­side the Philip­pines, Brainard uses the Philip­pines and Fil­ipinos as ‘either the orig­i­nal or ter­mi­nal ref­er­ence point.’ This nar­ra­tive strat­e­gy, which Oscar Cam­po­manes argues char­ac­ter­izes lit­er­a­ture writ­ten by Fil­ipinos in the U.S. or Fil­ipino Amer­i­cans, opposed to “eth­nic” lit­er­a­ture, which address­es immi­gra­tion and set­tle­ment. It is best described, Cam­po­manes sug­gests, as a lit­er­a­ture of “exile and emer­gence” (Dis­crepant His­to­ries: Translo­cal Essays on Fil­ipino Cul­tures, ed. Vicente L. Rafael.) Brainard enrich­es the con­ven­tion­al under­stand­ing of exile by apply­ing the con­cept to Fil­ipino expe­ri­ence in the Philip­ines. She (Cecil­ia Brainard) is there­by able to show the cul­tur­al and social issues that a Filipino/a faces while in exile are uni­ver­sal Fil­ipino expe­ri­ences.” (Les Adler for Pilipinas)

***

“The sto­ries of Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard tell of voy­ages the heart could have tak­en, of places haunt­ed by old mem­o­ries like ghosts lin­ger­ing under an ancient man­go tree, of times seem­ing­ly irre­triev­able but always there at the far­thest end of the thread of remem­ber­ing. Wher­ev­er the char­ac­ters of her tales have wan­dered, one finds them at some point of their jour­ney redeem­ing frag­ments of their lost selves and mak­ing sense of the maze through which we all pass.” (Mar­jorie M. Evas­co, Poet)

***

“In Brainard’s sto­ries, Aca­pul­co and Intra­muros are the same, and at the same time, com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent places. Dead char­ac­ters and live char­ac­ters talk to each oth­er non­cha­lant­ly. A young poor boy falls in love with an old­er rich woman, and by lov­ing her, kills her. Fil­ipinos find their iden­ti­ty in, of course, San Fran­cis­co, but not so ordi­nar­i­ly, in Alas­ka. The green card — actu­al­ly blue — spells the dif­fer­ence between authen­tic­i­ty and an authen­tic life, between dream­ing and the Amer­i­can dream.“In Brainard’s sto­ries, the mind does won­drous things: aside from cre­at­ing an Evil-Thing that makes one do good things, for instance, it may recre­ate good peo­ple that spell the dif­fer­ence between good and evil. It may make char­ac­ters live in worlds they them­selves cre­ate, dis­tinct from — often destruc­tive of — the world that has cre­at­ed them. A young girl, for instance, may live for the hand­some object of her ado­les­cent fan­tasies, then so sud­den­ly rec­og­nize these fan­tasies as mere “sil­ly day­dreams.” A very old woman, sav­ing her­self for her one and only love, final­ly sur­ren­ders her virtue — and her life — on her death bed, of course to her one and only, now long dead, love.” (Isagani R. Cruz for Starweek)

***

Excerpt

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2013/06/manila-without-verna-short-story-by.html

Book Reviews

Review by Her­minia Menez Coben, The Halo-Halo Review, Nov. 24, 2020

Review by Les Adler for Pilip­inas, Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, No. 26, Spring 1996

Review by Isagani R. Cruz for Star­week, Philip­pine Star, Octo­ber 29, 1995

 

 


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