Love & Other Rituals: Stories

AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND RELEASE 
16 SEPTEMBER 2022
US & WORLDWIDE RELEASE
​21 OCTOBER 2022
A collection of stories about Filipinos at home and in the diaspora, out from the University of Melbourne's Grattan Street Press
"Tony couldn’t find any term to describe the city of his youth. Fallen, yes, but not quite so: the slums growing from its cracks could be taken as a crude sign of the city’s resurgence. As for the narrowing streets, he felt it was a sign that things were returning to normal, that houses could rise as quickly as houses had crumbled down. He had grown up thinking that his home town, nestled among pine trees and rolling hills, would last forever."

Lost in and out of their homeland, Monica Macansantos’s characters contemplate love while navigating the naivety of childhood, the complications of young adulthood and the politics of marriage. Macansantos is a powerful and emotive new voice of the Filipino diaspora, bringing us the vivid, raw and quintessentially human collection that is Love and Other Rituals. This rich collection depicts death with vitality, absence with longing, and tension with ease.
Buy the Book

Australia: Grattan Street Press Online Store | Avenue Bookstore | Booktopia
United Kingdom: Blackwell's  
New Zealand: Good Books Wellington | Unity Books Wellington | 
Time Out Auckland 
​USA: Bel Canto Books | Elliott Bay Book Company | 
 Eastwind Books of Berkeley | Townie Books | 
BookWoman |  Chapterhouse Books | Books-A-Million
Bookshop | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble 
Worldwide (incl. Philippines): Book Depository 

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Advance Praise

"I loved these beautiful stories by Monica Macansantos, who writes with such beauty and delicacy about desire, home, longing, loneliness, duty, and hope—that is, what it means to be human. Every story is terrific, different, surprising. I can’t wait to see what she does next."
​--Elizabeth McCracken, winner of the 2015 Story Prize and author of The Hero of This Book, The Souvenir Museum and ​Bowlaway
“In Monica Macansantos’s exquisitely rendered stories about the Filipino experience, both in the old country and abroad, homeland is not a place, but a pang. Wisely and compassionately observed, her dislocated characters long for home with the same restrained ardor they yearn for connection – one that, because Macansantos knows too well how an upset heart turns, remains always within sight, and yet heartbreakingly elusive. Her splendid writing is stirring.”
--Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, author of Barefoot Dogs: Stories
"Monica Macansantos draws you into the worlds of her characters and slowly reveals their secrets. I read with curiosity and quickness, intent upon discovery, but she isn’t going to give it all away and you wouldn’t want her to. Macansantos is a promising young writer who is wise beyond her years."
--Mary Miller, author of Biloxi, The Last Days of California and Always Happy Hour
"It's not their 'exotic' locations that make Monica Macansantos' stories feel fresh and new; it’s the emotional territory she covers. The compromised longing of a teacher for the young married father who's become his lover. The contemplation, on the part of two expat Filipinas in Austin, Texas, of the varieties of loneliness available to them in America. The sudden vision of a teenage girl who's chosen a rough boy as her protector of the potential emptiness of her future. Described this way, these stories sound bleak. They're not. They're stories suffused with tenderness and a keen attention to the wild aberrations of the heart."
--Anthony Giardina, author of Norumbega Park, White Guys and Recent History
​
"Monica Macansantos' writing is immersive to the point of creating its own virtual reality.  Set in the Philippines, the U.S., and New Zealand, these are tender and well-crafted stories of heartache and yearning unmet. Macansantos's Love and Other Rituals deftly moves us beyond what some might consider foreign or exotic and instead brings us closer to understanding our own tiny corners of the world."
--Oscar Cásares, author of Where We Come From
​

Press for ​love and other rituals

Articles

"The Grief of Publishing a Book Without the Parent Who Inspired You" in Lit Hub 

"9 Books About the Complexities of Filipino Family Bonds" in Electric Literature 

Excerpts from the book

Excerpt from "Stopover" in Longform 

Excerpt from "Leaving Auckland" in failbetter 

Reviews & Interviews
​
"A Life Not Lived" (review by Dr. Tinashe Jakwa) in Meanjin Quarterly 

"A Rush of Joy from Complete Strangers: An Interview with Monica Macansantos by Grace Talusan" in The Rumpus 

"Fruit-Flavoured Shampoo: A Review of Love and Other Rituals​​ by Frances Revita" in The Pantograph Punch

"Monica Macansantos on Tango, Cooking, and Reading E.M. Forster" (interview with Greg Marshall) in The Hopkins Review  

Love and Other Rituals reviewed by Alfred A. Yuson for The Philippine Star

5 Questions with Monica Macansantos for LIMINAL

Interview & Review of Love & Other Rituals by Wellington City Libraries (NZ)

"Story collection Love and Other Rituals explores the Filipino diaspora" (review by Alex Park) in International Examiner (Seattle) 
​
Interview with Grattan Street Press 

Homesickness inducing short stories in Filipino Migrant News NZ 

appearances