Carlos Bulosan Book Club Launches Growing Up Filipino 3

Seat­ed l‑r: Cecil­ia Brainard, Ryo Alfar, Mar­i­lyn Alquizo­la, Jose­lyn Gea­ga-Rosen­tal; stand­ing l‑r: James Castil­lo, Rachielle Schef­fler, James, Jaime Gea­ga, Erlin­da, guest, Megan

The Car­los Bulosan Book Club of Los Ange­les host­ed a launch for the YA anthol­o­gy GROWING UP FILIPINO: NEW STORIES FOR YOUNG ADULTS, at the Echo Park Branch Library in Los Ange­les, on Sat­ur­day, March 18, 2023.

Here is the link to the YouTube video of the book launch:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWk44Igi_lk

The event was in-per­son, via Zoom, and Face­book streaming.

 l‑r: Cecil­ia Brainard, Mar­i­lyn Alquizo­la, Her­minia Menez Coben, Jaime Gea­ga, Rachielle Scheffler

 

After intro­duc­tions, I talked about how this book came to be and I also shared an excerpt from Kan­ni­ka Clau­dine D. Peña’s sto­ry in the book.

Mar­i­lyn Alquizo­la shared an excerpt from her sto­ry, while Ryo Alfar read from his moth­er Nik­ki Alfar’s piece in the anthology.

Four mem­bers from the audi­ence shared their own “grow­ing up” experiences.

It was amaz­ing to hear Dr. Her­minia Menez Coben talk about her recur­ring dream of hid­ing in a bunker in their house when she was a child.  In fact, her father had cre­at­ed a bunker in prepa­ra­tion for World War Two in the Philippines.

Rachielle Schefller shared mem­o­ries of her child­hood in Ilocos.

Jose­lyn Gea­ga-Rosen­thal recalled an inci­dent dur­ing Christ­mas time when trib­al Ifu­gaos showed with, play­ing gongs — a dif­fer­ent kind of Christ­mas car­olling, she not­ed. But a real­ly love­lyh image Jose­lyn described was when her moth­er start­ed danc­ing in response to the gongs.   This was so vivid that I saw in my mind young Mrs. Gea­ga doing the trib­al bird-dance.

Ryo Alfar recalled being around eight years old and get­ting sick. His nan­ny turned out to be a heal­er and did a rit­u­al on him, which healed him.

The ques­tions that fol­lowed were heart­felt ones about the dif­fi­cul­ties Fil­ipino Amer­i­can writ­ers and film mak­ers (and artists) face here in Amer­i­ca. Mem­bers of the Car­los Bulosan Book Club are tuned in to com­mu­ni­ty and polit­i­cal­ly issues and a live­ly dis­cus­sion followed.

Jaime Geaga

I am per­son­al­ly fond of, and sup­port, the Car­los Bulosan Book Club. The club is a project of Friends of Echo Park Library, head­ed by Jaime Gea­ga, Jose­lyn Gea­ga-Rosen­thal, Vicky Perez, James Castil­lo, Myr­la Bal­don­a­do, David Rock­el­lo and others.

Jaime and Jose­lyn are long-time Los Ange­leno friends. When I was new here in Los Ange­les, the Gea­ga fam­i­ly was in the fore­front of lead­ing and shap­ing the Fil­ipino Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. The Gea­ga chil­dren con­tin­ue their com­mu­ni­ty and polit­i­cal ser­vice. The Friends of Echo Park Library and the Car­los Bulosan Book Club are two of their numer­ous com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed activities.

  L‑R: Cecil­ia Brainard, Rachielle Sheffler

  L‑R: Rachielle Shef­fler, Dr. Her­minia Menez Coben

l‑R: Rachielle Shef­fler, Mar­i­lyn Alquizola

tags: Fil­ipino teens, Fil­ipino books, YA books, Fil­ipino YA, Fil­ipino young adults