Walter Ang’s Article “Prolific Writer Cecilia Manguerra Brainard Releases her Short Stories

“Pro­lif­ic Writer Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard Releas­es her Short Stories”

by Wal­ter Ang, Inquirer.net, 8/11/21 

https://usa.inquirer.net/80089/prolific-writer-cecilia-manguerra-brainard-re-releases-her-short-stories

LOS ANGELES — Pro­lif­ic author and pub­lish­er Fil­ipino Amer­i­can Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard is releas­ing a new anthol­o­gy, Select­ed Short Sto­ries, which col­lects 39 of her pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished short works.

In addi­tion, she is also re-issu­ing her mys­tery nov­el The News­pa­per Wid­ow. Both titles are pub­lished in the U.S. by Philip­pine Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary House. In the Philip­pines, the two titles are pub­lished by Uni­ver­si­ty of San­to Tomas Pub­lish­ing House.

The rea­son for com­ing out with this col­lec­tion was a mat­ter of pro­vid­ing access. “Some of the sto­ries are from ear­li­er antholo­gies that are out of print or hard to find,” explains Brainard. “I have met many teach­ers and stu­dents look­ing for these books.”

“Many of these sto­ries are part of their cur­ricu­lum. My Philip­pine pub­lish­er encour­aged me to do a col­lec­tion that includ­ed the strongest stories.”

Range

Select­ed Short Sto­ries, the cov­er of which fea­tures a work cre­at­ed by not­ed Fil­ipino artist Felix Mago Miguel, includes her pop­u­lar works such as “Flip Goth­ic” and “Romeo” includ­ing recent pieces like “The Syr­i­an Doc­tor in Paris.”

The old­est piece in the col­lec­tion is “Woman with Horns.” Set just after the tumul­tuous Philip­pine-Amer­i­can War, wid­ow Agusti­na Macaraig, who is rumored to have horns, encoun­ters a doc­tor from New York sent to “the islands” to help stop a cholera epi­dem­ic. She heals the doc­tor in oth­er ways.

The most recent work is “Melisande in Paris,” whose pro­tag­o­nist is a fea­tured char­ac­ter from one of Brainard’s nov­els. Set in Paris, there is also a doc­tor involved in this sto­ry. Brainard explains that this episode helps explain how the title char­ac­ter ends up in The News­pa­per Widow.

The nov­el, also set dur­ing the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion of the Philip­pines, begins with the dis­cov­ery of a dead priest in a creek. In order to clear her son’s name and free him from prison, Ines Mace­da and her French friend have to solve the crime. She also has to run her recent­ly deceased husband’s news­pa­per busi­ness while she’s at it.

Inspi­ra­tion

Real life and real indi­vid­u­als are rich sources of prompts for Brainard’s work. The occu­pa­tion of Ines Mace­da was inspired by none oth­er than her mater­nal great-grand­moth­er. “Reme­dios Dio­somi­to Lopez was said to be the first woman pub­lish­er in the Philippines.”

Although now based in Log Ange­les, Brainard grew up in the port city of Cebu, which inspired her to cre­ate her myth­i­cal set­ting, Ubec. The set­ting, “which echoes the San­to Niño Church, tri­an­gu­lar Span­ish fort, and old build­ings and streets of the real Cebu,” appears in all three of her nov­els and oth­er works.

She moved to the U.S. to do grad­u­ate work in film­mak­ing and lat­er focused on writ­ing, which “suits her indi­vid­u­al­is­tic per­son­al­i­ty better.”

Nur­tur­ing

“It is dif­fi­cult to cal­cu­late how long it takes to write any nov­el because it’s a stop-and-go process, at least for me. It’s a dif­fer­ent process from writ­ing non-fic­tion that can be outlined.

“I wrote a draft of The News­pa­per Wid­ow dur­ing Nation­al Nov­el Writ­ing Month (which chal­lenges writ­ers to pro­duce 50,000 words of a nov­el in Novem­ber). Then I spent maybe anoth­er three to four years tin­ker­ing with it.”

In addi­tion to The News­pa­per Wid­ow, Brainard’s oth­er nov­els include When the Rain­bow God­dess Weptand Mag­dale­na.

“I don’t have a reg­u­lar sched­ule as some writ­ers have; I have fam­i­ly and many oth­er projects going on like art and gar­den­ing, among others.

“I need to place myself in a mas­ter work­shop so that I am able to carve out the time to write.  When I’m in that work­shop and I’m told I have to sub­mit 10 pages next week, I will do it.”

When Brainard is not busy craft­ing her own pieces, she is hard at work nur­tur­ing oth­er voic­es. She edits fic­tion and non­fic­tion antholo­gies of works by Fil­ipino Amer­i­can writers.

Edit­ing cred­its include Fic­tion by Fil­ipinos in Amer­i­ca, Con­tem­po­rary Fic­tion by Fil­ipinos in Amer­i­ca, Grow­ing Up Fil­ipino: Sto­ries for Young Adults, and Grow­ing Up Fil­ipino II: More Sto­ries for Young Adults.

Tags: Philip­pine books, Philip­pine fic­tion, Philip­pine authors, Philip­pine lit­er­a­ture, Fil­Am literature