As part of our calendar celebrating national heritage months and observances, explore these selected works that speak to Filipino American history and heritage.
- Anna Cabe’s “The Ala Wai Canal Fish Ate Grandpa’s Spit” is a short dispatch reflecting on the memory of her grandfather and her relationship with her ancestry.
- Amalia Bueno’s poem, “Herman’s Bones” (Issue 27), told in Hawai’i Creole English, marvels at the power of the ocean and its relationship with death.
- “The Ghost of Jack Radovich” recounts the histories of Teresa B. Wilson-Gunn’s parents and their experiences as grapepickers in central California.
- Charisse Baldoria’s sonorous meditation on change, “Salamisim,” balances her past and future, her home and new land, in the tension of a piano chord.
- Set in Kaua’i, Hawai’i, Danielle Batalion Ola’s debut essay, “The Idle Talk of Mothers and Daughters” (Issue 18), traces the contours of a complicated relationship as mother and daughter “talk story” over McDonald’s breakfast platters.
- Bino A. Realuyo’s poem “Hippocampus” explores masculinity’s connections to religious spirituality and child-rearing.
- Joseph O. Legaspi’s poem “Easter, Bonifacio High Street” captures the strange sight of a station of the cross in the middle of a metro-Manila shopping mall.
- Oliver de la Paz’s poems “Labyrinth 75” and “Labyrinth 76” (both from Issue 06) follow the boy in the labyrinth; see also “Poetry-Making as Empathy Play: An Interview with Oliver de la Paz.”
We’re fortunate to have many poems by R. Zamora Linmark in our pages, including “The Struldbruggs,” which challenges fears of aging, death, and the pursuit of immortality; “Fake: A Fable,” a sharp commentary on contemporary life featuring everything from alternative facts to zombies; and “Morning Salutation for Joe Brainard,” a 6 a.m. reflection on the past and honoring the dead. Find more of Linmark’s poems in past issues and poetry features! Check out “Pilgrimage to a Killing” (Issue 18), “Dead-of-Night Blossoms” (Issue 13), “Two Poems Composed After Watching Pedro Almodóvar’s Flicks While Suffering from Insomnia” (May 2019), “At This Point” (March 2017), “Soon to Be Titled” (March 2014), and “Three Lives” (September 2013).
Photo by Pexels user Marfil Graganza Aquino.
