CECILIA BRAINARD’S BOOK ACAPULCO AT SUNSET AND OTHER STORIES REISSUED

PALH (Philip­pine Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary House) announces the release of the US edi­tion of Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s short sto­ry col­lec­tion, Aca­pul­co at Sun­set and Oth­er Sto­ries. The book is avail­able from Ama­zon on sale for $11.95: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1953716075

First pub­lished in the Philip­pines in 1995, the book col­lects sev­en­teen sto­ries inspired by the author’s Fil­ipino and Fil­ipino Amer­i­can expe­ri­ences; they are grouped into four cat­e­gories: Long Ago Tales, Sto­ries from the ‘60s and ‘70s, Sto­ries from the ‘90s, and Amer­i­can Tales.

In the Intro­duc­tion to the 2020 US edi­tion, the author notes “The book had a strange begin­ning. Short­ly after it was launched, Anvil (the pub­lish­er) had a fire in their ware­house, and many copies of this book were destroyed. Because of that the hard­bound and soft­cov­er copies of this book were par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to find.

“In fact, there are many strong sto­ries in this col­lec­tion, some of them dear to my heart, such as: “But­ter­scotch Mar­ble”, inspired by my ear­ly mar­ried years in San Fran­cis­co; “Mani­la With­out Ver­na”, inspired by the death of an activist class­mate dur­ing the oppres­sive Mar­cos dic­ta­tor­ship; “The Virgin’s Last Night”, inspired by my spin­ster aunt who had a suit­or who nev­er gave up; and many others.

The poet Mar­jorie Evas­co praised the book say­ing: “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”

Pro­fes­sor Les Adler writes in Pilip­inas that “Brainard enrich­es the con­ven­tion­al under­stand­ing of exile by apply­ing the con­cept to Fil­ipino expe­ri­ence in the Philip­pines. She is there­by able to show the cul­tur­al and social issues that a Filipino/a faces while in exile are uni­ver­sal Fil­ipino experiences.”

Isagani R. Cruz’s review in Star­Week notes that: “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.

Con­tact palh@aol.com for more information.

Tags; Philip­pines Philip­pine books lit­er­a­ture lit­er­ary fic­tion short sto­ries Fil­ipino Pinoy