(My father, with his favorite tablea chocolate, in Iloilo.) 

My newest essay, which appears in Issue 17 of Lunch Ticket, is about how my father, the late poet Francis C. Macansantos, showered his love upon his family by nourishing us with delicious meals, and how his love for me survived in the midst of death as I strove to recreate his dishes. It's also about his mother, my Lola Peregrina, and how her spirit of vitality and joy sustained him, as their love continues to sustain me in the kitchen and beyond. I am so happy that it came out in time for Father's Day--you can read the full essay here and the Lunch Ticket issue where it appears here. 

(Katherine Mansfield. Source: Archives New Zealand.) 

My newest piece, up on New Zealand's The Pantograph Punch, is about how reading Katherine Mansfield's short fiction taught me to slow down, and allow light to shine through my days amidst the darkness and despair of this pandemic. This is the first time I wrote an essay that straddles literary criticism and memoir, and I enjoyed the process immensely. Read the full essay here. 

"A recognition of her own mortality allowed her to write honestly about death, even as life, and human kindness, continued to shine through her work."

UPDATE (6/17/2020): This essay was featured in The Spinoff's Daily News roundup--you'll have to scroll to the end of this article to see the wonderful things The Spinoff staff said about my essay. I am so honored to see its warm reception in New Zealand and around the world. 

The opening chapter of my unpublished novel, People We Trust, is in the latest issue of ANMLY! Entitled "An Unexplained Kindness", this chapter takes place during the EDSA People Power Revolution of 1986 that ousted the Marcoses from power, and shows how the revolution unfolded in my hometown of Baguio City. Despite its many disappointments, I still feel that the EDSA Revolution of 1986 was a pivotal moment in Philippine history, which is why I chose it for my novel's opening. I am currently seeking representation for this novel about the Marcos dictatorship's impact on the lives of two brothers and a woman they love, and I welcome interested literary agents to read this opening chapter. More here. 

I am pleased to share that my words have finally appeared in Vol.1 Brooklyn, one of my dream publications. My essay, "The Power of a Vacant House", is about class and American colonialism in my hometown of Baguio, referencing my friendship with a classmate in high school and an unsettling encounter I had with his aunt at his mother's wake. You can read the full essay here. To give you an idea of what the essay is about, here's a quote:

"I knew, of course, that Gene was a Muller, and that his family had once owned the grand colonial-era mansion facing Burnham Park that had filled me with awe as a child. Painted a tasteful shade of old rose, it seemed to have come straight out of an album of photographs from the American South, though the presence of the American colonial government in our city, and the arrival of American gold prospectors eager to make their fortunes in the nearby mines, made it completely possible for houses like these to occupy their own unique niche in our city’s landscape."

I am excited to share that two essays by my late father, Francis C. Macansantos, are now available online. The first essay, "Nashville", written in 2012, chronicles my father's grapplings with the American Dream and America's legacy of colonialism in the Philippines and elsewhere when he and my mother lived in Nashville, Tennessee for five months in 2012. It was published in the Shanghai Literary Review's third issue (2018) and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize that same year, and after being available only in print, it has finally been made available online. You can read the essay for free here. 

The second essay, "My Trilingual Career", is a speech he delivered at the Cordillera Writers Workshop in which he spoke about his journey as a writer from Zamboanga who began writing in his second language, English, and transitioned to writing in Chabacano, his first language, later in life. He talks about the difficulties of writing in Chabacano, which hardly has a literary tradition, and he also touches upon his struggles to learn Tagalog at an early age while "being ostracized in class by the arrogance of Tagalog teachers and classmates who made the rest of us feel like second-class citizens." I would like to thank Katitikan, a literary journal of the Philippine South, for helping us release my father's essay into the world, and for also asking my mother to write an introduction to my father's life and world. You can read the full essay here. 

I am pleased to share that my scholarly article, "Historical Amnesia, Colonial Trauma, and Self-Immolation in Ninotchka Rosca's State of War" was published in the latest issue of Journal of English Studies and Comparative Literature, the official academic journal of the University of the Philippines Diliman's Department of English and Comparative Literature. This is a revised and shortened version of a chapter from the critical component of my creative writing PhD thesis. The full PDF of the article is available here: www.journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/jescl/article/view/7053/6138

I have joined the staff of The VIDA Review, the new literary journal of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, as a fiction reader. I have long been in awe of everything VIDA has done in fighting for gender equality in the publishing world, and I look forward to contributing my talents to this organization as a reader for The VIDA Review. More information on the journal is available here. 

(My Zumba class at the Victoria University of Wellington's Recreation Centre. Guess where I am here!) 

I wrote about how taking a Zumba class at the Victoria University of Wellington helped me recover from the trauma of being hit by a car, while also allowing me to discover my love for dancing, for SBS Voices. Looking back, I can see how moving to New Zealand made me a dancer, and this particular Zumba class taught by Carolina and Maddy was where it all began. You can read the full piece here. 

I am happy to share that "To Resist Being Unseen", my essay about a traumatic experience with the New Zealand Police during my first year as a PhD student, was featured in The Rumpus's ​This Week in Essays. I struggled to place this essay, but thankfully Another Chicago Magazine, which was one of my dream journals since I was a high school student in the Philippines, stepped in to run the essay. It only goes to show that if you have a story that matters, don't stop believing in it, even if others think it's too risky or outrageous to be publishable. Let's not stop raising our voices against those who seek to erase us!