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Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

author and editor

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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
ISBN for ebook: 978–1‑953716–08‑8
Anvil, 1995, hardcover, 157 pages ISBN 9712704599

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Available in Kindle

PALH has a few rare out-of-print hard­bound copies of the Philip­pine Edtion, $75 each, US ship­ping $10, email palhbooks@gmail.com

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: STORIE FOR YOUNG ADULTS and the fol­low up GROWING UP FILIPINO; and more.. The GROWING UP books are most pop­u­lar among edu­ca­tors librarians.

Praise

“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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Cecil­ia Brainard
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PO Box 5099
San­ta Mon­i­ca, CA 90409
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