Monica Macansantos
  • Returning to My Father's Kitchen: Essays
  • About
  • Love & Other Rituals: Selected Stories
  • Selected Writings and Awards
  • Events
  • Blog
  • Francis C. Macansantos: In Memoriam
  • Contact
  • Returning to My Father's Kitchen: Essays
  • About
  • Love & Other Rituals: Selected Stories
  • Selected Writings and Awards
  • Events
  • Blog
  • Francis C. Macansantos: In Memoriam
  • Contact
Monica Macansantos

Love & Other Rituals:
​selected Stories

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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

Philippines: Fully Booked | Shopee | Lazada
Australia: Grattan Street Press | Booktopia
United Kingdom: Blackwell's  
New Zealand: Good Books Wellington | Unity Books Wellington  
​USA: Bel Canto Books | Elliott Bay Book Company | 
 Eastwind Books of Berkeley | BookWoman |  Books-A-Million
Bookshop | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble 

Invite me to your class or book club! Contact me here. 

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

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"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
​
Book Review in Colorado Review 

Book Review in Meanjin Quarterly 

Author conversation with Grace Talusan in The Rumpus 

Review for Radio New Zealand (afternoons with Jesse Mulligan)

Book Review in The Pantograph Punch

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

Book Review in The Philippine Star

Author interview with Speaking of Marvels

5 Questions with Monica Macansantos for LIMINAL

Author interview with Wellington City Libraries (NZ)

Book Review in International Examiner 
​
Interview with Grattan Street Press

Homesickness inducing short stories in Filipino Migrant News NZ 

appearances

  • October 7, 2022, 6 pm AEST, The Harehole, Melbourne, Australia: Launch of Love and Other Rituals with Grattan Street Press 
  • ​November 2, 2022, 5 pm PT/8 pm, ET, Bel Canto Books, Long Beach, California: in conversation with Grace Talusan (follow link to watch recording)
  • November 10, 2022, 6 pm PT, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, Washington: in conversation with Donna Miscolta (follow link to watch recording) ​
  • December 19, 2022, 7 pm Pacific Standard Time, Eastwind Books of Berkeley, California: Author Talk with Liza Gino (online event) 
  • December 22, 2022: "Love and Other Rituals: Home, growing as a writer, and the Filipino diaspora" (interview with Jaime Alejandro) on Arts Calling Podcast: Episode #76 
  • February 2, 2023: interview with Wellington City Libraries, New Zealand (follow link to watch recording)
  • February 27, 2023, 7 pm NZT: conversation with Jesil Cajes on Culture Connection New Zealand, Hutt City FM 106.7
  • March 17, 2023, 6 pm NZT, GOOD Books, Wellington, New Zealand: in conversation with Catherine Robertson 
  • April 3, 2023, 7: 30 pm CDT, BookWoman, Austin, Texas: in conversation with Elizabeth McCracken (follow link to watch recording)
  • ​June 18, 2023: conversation with Rene Nonoy Molina for Philippine Diversity Channel, New Zealand
  • June 28, 2023, 7:00 pm NZT, Glenfield Library, Auckland, New Zealand: in conversation with The Reading Revolution (in-person and virtual)
  • February 10, 2024, 12 noon to 1:30 pm CST, AWP Conference & Bookfair, Kansas City, MO: Book signing at Another Chicago Magazine table (T1820)
  • May 9, 2024, 4:00 pm AEST, University of Melbourne, Australia: in conversation with Julienne van Loon 
  • October 5, 2024, 7 pm EDT/4 pm PDT: in conversation with the Boston Filipino-American Book Club
  • October 12, 2024: Nevada Lit Crawl, Downton Reno, Nevada
  • October 19, 2024, 11:45 am -- 12:30 pm: Publishing 101, Are We There Yet? (Panel discussion, Las Vegas Book Festival, followed by book signing) 

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