V. M. Gonzalez has influenced an entire generation of young Philippine writers and has also acquired a devoted international readership. His books, however, are not widely available in this country. The Bread of Salt and Other Stories provides a retrospective selection of sixteen of his short stories (all originally written in English), arranged in order of their writing, from the early 1950s to the present day.This is a powerful collection, both for the unity and universality of the author's subjects and themes and for the distinctive character of his prose style. As Gonzalez remarks in his Preface: "In tone and subject matter, [these stories] might suggest coming full circle - in the learning of one's craft, in finding a language and, finally, in discovering a country of one's own."Gonzalez has traveled widely and has taught the writer's craft in various countries. Nonetheless, his primary metaphor is his colonial island homeland, and his stories are peopled with the farmers and fishermen, the schoolteachers and small-town merchants, "the underclass who constitute the majority in all societies." He portrays, in the men, women, and children of the peasantry, an ordinary and enduring people who live lives of stark dignity against a backdrop of forgotten and unknown gods. A broad humanity suggests itself: "This feeling of having emerged out of a void, or something close to it, is not uncommon, and we face our respective futures predisposed, by an innocence, to prayer and hope."Colonization, Gonzalez feels, has created in Filipinos "a truly submerged people." The stories in The Bread of Salt explore this rich vein at several levels, from the river-crossed wilderness of the kaingin farmers, stoic in the hard face of nature; to the commercial centers of the town dwellers, cut off from the mythic animism of the land; to the America of the contemporary sojourner, exiled from the old ways without the guidance of new traditions. Gonzalez writes: "It was in America that I began to recognize my involvement in the process of becoming a new person . . . of trying to shed my skin as a colonial."Gonzalez's social commentary is implicit throughout his stories. His message is humane, moral, tellingly accurate, and gently ironic; he is neither sentimental nor doctrinaire. His narratives are presented without intrusive explanation, invoking instead the reader's own powers of contemplation and discovery. His strong prose style, spare yet lyrical suggests the cadences of Philippine oral narrative traditions.Each of these sixteen tales is a small masterpiece. The language and its imagery, the characters and their aspirations, all connect powerfully with the reader and serve to illuminate the dreams of exiles and colonials, suggesting what it was like, as a Filipino, to witness the endless interacting of cultures.

    An advocate of the literature of the imagination, he is the publisher of the Philippine Speculative Fiction anthologies, an annual showcasing Filipino fictionists that he began in 2005.

    Here she also encounters Cris, a struggling film critic whose passionate loathing for bad local movies reflects his views of modern Filipino sociaty.Coming from completely different worlds, the two eventually learn from each other. Through Cris, Halina gets a quick course on Manila life, from driving through midnight traffic to listening to the Eraserheads, while she helps him gain a newfound appreciation of living in his own country.From National Book Award-winning author Arnold Arre, creator of The Mythology Class , After Eden , Ang Mundo ni Adnong Agimat , and Trip to Tagaytay comes Halina Filipina , a story about friendship, understanding, and love; about finding one's identity and experiencing the joy of finally having a place to belong.

    Set in future Manila, a gleaming metropolis where one's paranoia may not be exactly unfounded and whose lashing sings tribute to Philip K. Dick. "Stations" takes on the ethical trappings of high technology adoption. "August Moon" relies on a succession of flashbacks to uncover, as well as obscure, the eventual doom of a woman who deems herself a "good wife," while "Eyes as Wide as the Sky" depicts a post-war world—scorched yet not wholly devoid of hope. These stories insist on the unreal becoming the real, the rational melding with the irrational, familiarity breeding strangeness.

    Soon a couple of friends join in, and the operation proceeds smoothly up until they quit, vowing to take the secret to their graves. A month later, a phone call at 4 in the morning tells Alvin that the police are on their way.At once a workplace novel and a meditation on history and globalization, The Quiet Ones is a grimly humorous take on a soul-sapping, multi-billion-dollar industry. In interlocking narratives, it explores lives rendered mute by irate callers, scripted apologies, and life’s menial violence, but which manage to talk back every now and then, just as long as the Mute button is firmly pressed.Winner, 2017 Palanca Grand PrizeWinner, 37th National Book Award

    Based on the author's childhood experience. 2000 Palanca 2nd Prize winner.

    So the kind and character of his works: very rare, exceptional, unique, maverick, exceedingly original fiction: rara avis that's a quantum leap away and departure... At least three or four in this collection already strike one as veritable classics." - GREGORIO C. BRILLANTES

    But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima’s lifelong martial arts trainer. And years ago, on Excel’s tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secret that he must keep forever. “We are ‘TNT’—tago ng tago,” she told him, “hiding and hiding.” Excel is undocumented—and one accidental slip could uproot his entire life.Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes a leap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called Hello City. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up techies—and existing outside the normal constructs of American society—Hello City offers Excel a chance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years of trying to be invisible, who does he want to become? And is it possible to put down roots in a country that has always considered you an outsider?

    Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere—and, sometimes, turning back again. A pharmacist living in New York smuggles drugs to his ailing father in Manila, only to discover alarming truths about his family and his past. In Bahrain, a Filipina teacher drawn to a special pupil finds, to her surprise, that she is questioning her own marriage. A college student leans on her brother, a laborer in Saudi Arabia, to support her writing ambitions, without realizing that his is the life truly made for fiction. And in the title story, a journalist and a nurse face an unspeakable trauma amidst the political turmoil of the Philippines in the 1970s and ’80s.In the Country speaks to the heart of everyone who has ever searched for a place to call home. From teachers to housemaids, from mothers to sons, Alvar’s powerful debut collection explores the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and the longing to connect across borders both real and imagined. Deeply compassionate and richly felt, In the Country marks the emergence of a formidable new writer.

    But is her allegiance to the principles of Mao or to Jed, the comrade she’s in love with? Can she really be a part of the movement or is she just a “useful fool,” a spoiled brat playing at revolution? Far from the Philippines, in a mansion overlooking the Hudson River, Sol confesses her youthful indiscretions, unable to get past the fatal act of communist fervor that locked her memory in an endless loop. Rich with wordplay and unforgettable imagery, Gun Dealers’ Daughter combines the momentum of an amnesiac thriller with the intellectual delights of a Borgesian puzzle. In her American debut, award-winning author Gina Apostol delivers a riveting novel that illuminates the conflicted and little-known history of the Philippines, a country deeply entwined with our own.

    Santos has presented what may well be the essence of those years - the loneliness and hunger of a people who were almost all of them hurt and broken to the bone. But for an ideal, which Santos so eloquently dramatizes in this book, they would have lost their very souls. In this sense YOU LOVELY PEOPLE is a document and at once a portrait of the Filipino heart.

    A girl meets a young man with the legs of a chicken. A boy is employed by a goddess running a pawnshop. A group of teenagers are trapped in an enchanted forest for 900 days. A man finds himself in an MRT station beyond Taft, a station that was not supposed to exist. A student claims to have seen the last few digits of pi. Someone’s sister gets abducted by mermaids.Includes stories that have appeared in the critically acclaimed anthologies Philippine Speculative Fiction and Alternative Alamat, and stories that have won prizes in the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards and the Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Literary Contest.

    A passionate love story set against the ugly political backdrop of repression, torture, and murder, "The Noli," as it is called in the Philippines, was the first major artistic manifestation of Asian resistance to European colonialism, and Rizal became a guiding conscience—and martyr—for the revolution that would subsequently rise up in the Spanish province.

    Plus the portrait of a hip chick from then Swinging London as she discourses indelicately on a most delicate topic: the Filipino as Lover.

    Undermanned and under-funded, the Filipino Heroes League does what it can to fight against injustice.It's tough being a superhero but its even tougher being a third-world superhero.