Philippine Woman in America

New Day, 1991, soft­cov­er, 100 pages, ISBN 971–10-0424–0

PALH has a few rare out-of-print copies, $65 each, Free US ship­ping, email palhbooks@gmail.com

 

Nostalgic and Insightful

For sev­er­al years, Cecil­ia Brainard wrote a bi-week­ly col­umn for the Philip­pine Amer­i­can News. The short essays touched on her mus­ings as a Fil­ip­ina liv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia as well reflec­tions on cur­rent events. She col­lect­ed some of these essays into this book.

Praise by Bienvenido N. Santos (Author)

These essays are a hoard of delights from the pen of a blithe spir­it who refus­es to be touched too deeply by the harass­ing demands in this bewil­der­ing coun­try … She is all here. What a treat it must have been for the read­ers of her col­umn to read each one of these essays and wait for the next.

Now they are all togeth­er between the cov­ers of a book to read and reread and pass on to oth­ers the glow these pages evoke. The bits and pieces are now a com­plete por­trait, a run­ning sto­ry of her life and intro­spec­tions she is will­ing to share with her read­ers, start­ing with a ‘A Begin­ning Remem­bered’ in which we have a first glimpse of a deter­mined and con­fi­dent young woman in a beige suit, brav­ing the rain in a strange ‘gray wet world.’

This is fol­lowed by a series of more essays, laced with nar­ra­tive, deep with insight, nos­tal­gia, and hope, every­thing there is that sums up the life of a young immi­grant now the wife of a for­mer Peace Corps Vol­un­teer whom she had met ear­li­er in the Philip­pines; lat­er the over­worked house­wife and moth­er of a grow­ing fam­i­ly. She writes of the com­mon frus­tra­tions and prej­u­dices that dec­o­rate a brown peo­ple’s life in Amer­i­ca. Resource­ful and inven­tive, she seeks to impose part of her own cul­ture, such as the art of hag­gling and the dubi­ous sat­is­fac­tion that it brings into the Amer­i­can culture.

Noth­ing rel­e­vant and human escapes her as in what she calls the truth about Fil­ipino old-timers. One mar­ries a Fil­ip­ina in his home­town in the Philip­pines, who refus­es to go to the States with him, so he leaves. Com­ing full cir­cle, the col­lec­tion ends with a com­ing to terms with the con­tours and shades of life she has cho­sen, with­out res­ig­na­tion but a bold accep­tance and a final self-discovery.