Monica Macansantos
  • Love & Other Rituals: Stories
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  • Selected Writings and Awards
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  • Francis C. Macansantos: In Memoriam
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  • Love & Other Rituals: Stories
  • About
  • Selected Writings and Awards
  • News and Updates
  • Francis C. Macansantos: In Memoriam
  • Contact
Monica Macansantos

News & updates

"the power of a vacant house" up on vol.1 brooklyn

3/27/2020

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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. 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.
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two essays by francis c. macansantos, "nashville" (nominated for the pushcart Prize) and "my trilingual career" are now available online

3/20/2020

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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. After being only available 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, a language with no 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 work. You can read the full essay here. 
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