Filipino Literature

All Talasyn has ever known is the Hurricane Wars. Growing up an orphan in a nation under siege by the ruthless Night Emperor, she found her family among the soldiers who fight for freedom. But she is hiding a deadly secret: light magic courses through her veins, a blazing power believed to have been wiped out years ago that can cut through the Night Empire’s shadows.

Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.

From the author of the National Book Award finalist Patron Saints of Nothing comes an emotionally charged, moving novel about four generations of Filipino American boys grappling with identity, masculinity, and their fraught father-son relationships.

After a harrowing flight, Queenie, her younger brother, and their elderly Chinese father arrive in the United States from the Philippines. They’re here to finally reunite with Queenie’s Filipina mother, who has been working as a nurse in Brooklyn for the past few years—building a life that everyone hopes will set them up for better prospects. But her mother is not the same woman she was in the Philippines: Something in her face is different, almost hardened, and she seems so American already.

Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer, and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the US pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish-American War of the late 1890s.

In this standalone novel based on Filipino mythology, Corazon Lopez is looking forward to her eleventh birthday, when she can finally be trained in wielding babaylan magic. She's hoping she can use it to bring her parents back to life so they can be together again.

Some girls call their mother their best friend. Marisol Martin? She could never relate. She and her mom were forever locked in an argument with no beginning and no end. Clothes, church, boys, no matter the topic, Marisol always felt like there was an unbridgeable gap between them that they were perpetually shouting across, one that she longed to close. But when her mother dies suddenly, Marisol is left with no one to fight against, haunted by all the things that she both said and didn’t say.

The Karangalan family and their neighbors huddle for survival in the cellar of a house a few miles from Manila. Outside the safety of their little refuge the war rages on—fiery bombs torch the beautiful Filipino countryside, Japanese soldiers round up and interrogate innocent people, and from the hills guerillas wage a desperate campaign against the enemy. Inside the cellar, these men, women, and children put their hopes and dreams on hold as they wait out the war, only emerging to look for food, water, and medicine.

Two men, each unaware of the other, share a common family secret: They were sold for adoption by their American father shortly after their births in the Philippines. Three alternating stories interweave the experiences of father Andrew Breszky and the two sons who try to connect and piece together the puzzle of their reckless, impulsive father. One lives in New York and the other grows up in the south of France, later traveling all over Asia as a documentary filmmaker. Both will discover that their relationships somehow echo that of the young man whose history eludes them.

How many lives fit in a lifetime? When Hero De Vera arrives in America - haunted by the political upheaval in the Philippines and disowned by her parents - she's already on her third. Her uncle gives her a fresh start in the Bay Area, and he doesn't ask about her past. His younger wife knows enough about the might and secrecy of the De Vera family to keep her head down. But their daughter - the first American-born daughter in the family - can't resist asking Hero about her damaged hands.

Steve bets his friend Jeff he would spend his vacation in the Philippines relaxing on the beach, without succumbing to the charms of a Filipino bar girl. He needs to recover from his recent divorce. But when he meets Reyna with the cute eyes, a strange thing happens. He falls - hard. Jeff returns home $5,000 wealthier, and Steve much happier.

Narra Jal is one of the cursed, cast aside her whole life, considered unlucky. But with her mother's life on the line, she will return to the city where she was born to face the trials: a grueling, bloodthirsty series of challenges designed to weed out the weak, the greedy, and the foolish. Trials to select the next ruler of Tigang. Narra has nothing. No weapons. No training. No magic. No real chance of leaving with her life. Just her fierce grit and a refusal to accept the destiny she's been handed.

His first time in The Philippines, he arrives home in her arms. For as long as he can remember, Jeff longs for Asia and Asian women. Now, in the Mabini district of Manila, he discovers reality exceeds anticipation. The beautiful young bar Filipino girl Analyn satisfies his deepest lusts and the strongest yearnings of his heart with Asian sex. In her love and her body, his soul recognizes the heaven he seeks.

Eighteen-year-old Filipino American Ruby Santos has been unmoored since her mother’s death. She’s always dreamed of going to art school, but instead, she and her father have had to move into the basement of their home and rent out the main floor while they work to pay back her mother’s hospital bills. Then Ruby finds out her father has been living a secret life as a delivery person for a magical underworld—he “jumps” train lines to help deliver packages for a powerful family. Recently, he’s fallen behind on deliveries (and deeper into a fog of alcohol).

The teacher Patrick Healy travelled around the world, talked with people in different places, and collected around half a thousand myths, legends, and folktales and several alternative versions. His opinion and comments (directly or indirectly) are inevitable. 61 Filipino Tales is the third volume of his work, in his words. He retold the stories with his own opinion and approach to them.

Realidad e imaginación se mezclan en esta historia que nos sitúa a finales del siglo XIX y nos lleva desde Toledo a Mallorca, Alejandría y finalmente a Manila, en Filipinas. En un clima de tensiones socio-políticas que acabarán con la pérdida de la última colonia española, tres hermanas buscan su espacio en una sociedad clasista, entre la masonería, la aristocracia, la familia y la lucha por la independencia de un país que las cambiará para siempre.

Thea gets a chance to begin anew at Pacific Academy. There, she’s a star athlete, someone with friends and popularity. But disaster strikes at Junior Stunt Warrior summer camp with her new friends: Her extremely uncool former best friend, Evan, shows up too, and she discovers that stunt class is the one activity she’s not good at. Actually, it’s something she’s terrified of. It all reminds Thea of the shy, invisible version of herself she’s determined to leave behind.

Filipino-American bounty hunter Domingo has made a career of catching criminal undocumented immigrants. He’s the best in the business—and it isn’t lost on him that he’s so good because of his similarities to his targets. Despite Domingo’s claims that he is unsympathetic to their plight, yet spends his spare moments on stakeouts and in between jobs writing a book of advice for aspiring immigrants. Brash, funny, and candid, he compiles the names of all the people he’s apprehended, documenting the hazards of his profession, and imparting advice to foreigners who dare to dream of life in America.

I never thought I’d see her again. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? But five years later, my casino fling is my new next-door neighbor. A lot’s happened since we got acquainted in that hotel room. I finished out my military career, took a job with my estranged father, moved to the beach…the only thing that hasn’t changed is that Beatrice has always been on my mind. I can’t let her get away again. Lucky for me, she feels the same way.

For best friends Miliani, Inez, Natalie, and Jasmine, Providence, Rhode Island has a magic of its own. From the bodegas and late-night food trucks on Broad Street to The Hill that watches over the city, every corner of Providence glows with memories of them practicing spells, mixing up potions and doing séances with the help of the magic Miliani’s Filipino grandfather taught her.