• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

author and editor

  • Home
  • About
    • Interviews
    • Sources
  • Books
  • Other Books
  • Media
    • Blog
    • Travels with Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
    • Creative Writing Tips by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
  • Contact

Selected Short Stories by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Selected Short Stories by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

PALH,  2021, 276 pages
ISBN 978–195371619 (sc) — ORDER BOOKSHOP
ISBN — 978–1953716255 (hc) — ORDER AMAZON

EBOOK — Kin­dle

Uni­ver­si­ty of San­to Tomas Pub­lish­ing House, 2021, soft­cov­er, 316 pages (July 2021) — avail­able from Laza­da and Shopee in the Philippines

 

POWERFUL, POIGNANT, ENGROSSING

Select­ed Short Sto­ries by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard col­lects 39 of the Fil­ip­ina Amer­i­can author’s short fic­tion. The col­lec­tion includes some of her best short fic­tion, includ­ing sto­ries that deal with fic­tion­al Mani­la and Mex­i­co, Intra­muros and Aca­pul­co, Ubec and Cebu.

Select­ed Short Sto­ries includes a very long sto­ry (one would call it a novel­la), “Melisande in Paris”, which is about the French seam­stress who appears in Cecil­i­a’s third nov­el, The News­pa­per Wid­ow. Melisande is the friend of the pro­tag­o­nist in the lit­er­ary mys­tery The News­pa­per Wid­ow. Melisande and Ines solve the crime of the dead priest in Ubec’s creek. But Melisande had a whole oth­er sto­ry back in Paris before she went to Ubec.  “Melisande in Paris” is that story.

PRAISE

Pow­er­ful, poignant and engross­ing, the Select­ed Short Sto­ries by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard is an impor­tant work by a major writer. Writ­ten in a poet­ic style rich in imagery, her obser­vant eye’s sub­ject is both transna­tion­al and local, soci­etal and rela­tion­al in the more per­son­al scale of fam­i­ly, friend­ship, love. These sto­ries have an oral qual­i­ty in the best sense of the word, by a mas­ter of the form. ~ Bri­an Ascalon Roley, author of Ambus­cade and Amer­i­can Son, and Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish, Mia­mi University.

Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s short sto­ries cov­er not just the his­to­ry of the Philip­pines – Span­ish and Amer­i­can colo­nial rule, the bloody Mar­cos era, the high price of fight­ing for polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic free­dom – but also the deeply mov­ing hes­i­ta­tions and com­plex­i­ties of the human heart: the loves and long­ings and loss­es that shape and haunt a life, the sen­su­al­i­ty and desires that rip apart the fab­ric of social life, the intri­ca­cies of girl­hood and female friend­ship, the con­fronta­tion of cul­tures, the lone­li­ness  and courage of Fil­ipino-Amer­i­cans and oth­ers who have left their home­lands and the idea of home. Beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten, mas­ter­ful­ly craft­ed, these sto­ries are at once heart-break­ing, enter­tain­ing, and pro­found­ly humane — very dif­fi­cult to put down, impos­si­ble to for­get. ~ Reine Arcache Melvin, author of The Betrayed: A Novel

Cecil­ia Brainard’s well-craft­ed sto­ries deal with fic­tion­al Mani­la and Mex­i­co, Intra­muros and Aca­pul­co, Ubec and Cebu. She has the uncan­ny abil­i­ty to enter the skin of her char­ac­ters and give them their sin­gu­lar voic­es. Her Select­ed Sto­ries only affirm what we have long known: that she has already vault­ed into the front rank of the Philip­pines’ best writ­ers of fic­tion. Bra­va!” ~ Dan­ton Remo­to, author of River­run, A Novel.

Link to Cecil­ia Brainard read­ing from a flash fic­tion piece from Select­ed Short Stories 

BOOK REVIEWS

Jen­ny Ortu­oste Reviews Select­ed Short Sto­ries by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard in Mani­la Stan­dard Lifestyle 7/30/22

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2022/08/book-review-of-cecilia-brainards.html

“Well-writ­ten and hyp­not­ic, these tales are a grand dis­play of Brainard’s sto­ry­telling and word-weav­ing skills that only get bet­ter with time.”

 

George Deoso Reviews Select­ed Short Sto­ries by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard in Pos­i­tive­ly Filipino

https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/i‑was-upset-review-of-cecilia-manguerra-brainards-selected-short-stories

“There is much to rejoice about this feast of a book: the range in terms of form; the weav­ing of past and present between the pages; and that reas­sur­ing sense of being in the hands of a writer—an artist—whose mark tran­scends the bound­aries of time, place, and his­tor­i­cal conflicts.

Brainard’s Select­ed Short Sto­ries make me upset. And I am only hap­py to be upset by her fic­tion. Lit­er­a­ture is noth­ing if it doesn’t shake the core of our being, if it only gives us a kind of bliss.”


Tagged with: Books, Philippine books, Philippine literature

Say Hello

Cecil­ia Brainard
c/o PALH
PO Box 5099
San­ta Mon­i­ca, CA 90409
USA

Let’s Get Social

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Recently on the Blog

  • Carlos Bulosan Book Club Launches Growing Up Filipino 3
  • My Cat Che Jumping Over the Moon, Pastel by Cecilia Brainard
  • Cecilia Flying Pastel Art by Cecilia Brainard

Copyright © CECILIA BRAINARD 2023 · DESIGNED BY FANCY GIRL DESIGNS