I Am A Filipino and This is How I Cook by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad - 2019 - 423 Pages

 

I Am A Filipino and This is How I Cook by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad - 2019 - 423 Pages

YouTube has several informative videos on this book

I Am A Filipino and This is How I Cook by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad is a combination cookbook, history of the Philippines, a memoir and the story of how a passion for Filipino food produced a highly successful restaurant.

"Named a Best Cookbook of the Year by The New Yorker, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Book Review, Houston Chronicle, Food52, PopSugar, and more

Filipino food is having its moment. Sour, sweet, funky, fatty, bright, rich, tangy, bold—no wonder adventurous eaters consider Filipino food the next big thing (Vogue declares it “the next great American cuisine”). Filipinos are the second-largest Asian population in America, and finally, after enjoying Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese food, we’re ready to embrace Filipino food, too. Written by trailblazing restaurateurs Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad, I Am a Filipino is a cookbook of modern Filipino recipes that captures the unexpected and addictive flavors of this vibrant and diverse cuisine.

The techniques (including braising, boiling, and grilling) are simple, the ingredients are readily available, and the results are extraordinary. There are puckeringly sour adobos with meat so tender you can cut it with a spoon, along with other national dishes like kare-kare (oxtail stew) and kinilaw (fresh seafood dressed in coconut milk and ginger). There are Chinese-influenced pansit (noodle dishes) and lumpia (spring rolls); Arab-inflected cuisine, with its layered spicy curries; and dishes that reflect the tastes and ingredients of the Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans who came to the Philippines and stayed. Included are beloved fried street snacks like ukoy (fritters), and an array of sweets and treats called meryenda. Filled with suitably bold and bright photographs, I Am a Filipino is like a classic kamayan dinner—one long, festive table piled high with food. Just dig in!" From the publisher 

Some People Need Killing: a Memoir of Murder in My Country - by Patricia Evangelista.- 2023 - 429 Pages

 Some People Need Killing: a Memoir of Murder in My Country - by Patricia Evangelista.- 2023 - 429 Pages

"TIME’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “riveting” (The Atlantic) account of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens under President Rodrigo Duterte, hailed as “a journalistic masterpiece” (The New Yorker)

 

“Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story.”—Tara Westover, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated

 

FINALIST FOR THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY’S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library, CrimeReads, "

Rodrigo Duterte 

Born: March 28, 1945 (age 79)

Presidential term: June 30, 2016 – June 30, 2022

 President of the Philippines (2016–2022), Mayor of Davao City (2013–2016), Vice-Mayor of Davao City (2010–2013), Mayor of Davao City (2001–2010), 

Education: San Beda College of Law (1968–1972), Lyceum of the Philippines University (1968), Cor Jesu College, Inc., Ateneo de Davao University Grade School, Laboon Elementary 

Some People Need Killing: a Memoir of Murder in My Country - by Patricia Evangelista.- 2023 - is a masterpiece on numerous levels.  As reportage of the war on drugs of Rodrigo Duterte (an estimated 20,000 people died in extrajudicial killings), an account of the impact of working as a reporter on the drug war on a relatively highly educated young woman, a brilliant account of the use of Orwellian "Double Speak", a presentation of life among the poorest in the Philippines and a history lesson weaved into the structure of the book.

(A good summary of the war on drugs can be found at

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_drug_war)

I wish or feel a need to convey my own history with the Philippines.

I am an American,  I grew up in Florida. In 2004 I moved permanently to Quezon City, an area that figures very much in the book. I married a wonderful Filipino lady and became the defacto father of her three daughters.  I sent them to college, the youngest at the same university as Patricia Evangelista.

We lived in a gated walled condo community. Nobody gets in without being screened  by armed guards,The residents are doctors, lawyers, business owners and individuals with substantial private worth.  Our barangay has  numerous similar condo communities and also very impoverished areas,  Nearby are huge beautiful malls with four Starbucks and outlets where you can select your $10,000 dollar purse. You pass children playing in mud puddles and Scary to us looking slums which are far from the ones where the drug killings were focused.

When Roberto Duterte  began his successful campaign for president he stated exactly what his top priority would be, to eliminate drug usage in the Philippines. He stated he would do what ever was necessary to achieve this goal.  He said his objective was to protect Filipino children from drug dealers.  

In our community he had significant support. People wanted a strong leader. Unlike other past presidents he disclosed all his assets and Evangelista makes no suggestions of personal financial corruption. Unlike American politicians in their seventies when asked about his health he said "you name a disease and I probably have it". When then President Donald Trump visited the country he staged an elaborate event and gave a speech praising trump to the sky. After that the Philippines got massive American aid in the form of weapons.

My American family and friends thought the drug killings were everywhere and asked if I was in danger.  I told them if not for TV news we would not even know about the killings.  People reported Street crime was way down.  Once a presentation was given in our community meeting house on the war in drugs in our barangay.  An exact account of those killed was given. As the only foreigner there they asked me  my thoughts. I told them I grew up where there is a significant drug problem but here in our community I see only family focused clean living people and I was shocked by Reports of  millions of drug users,   Most were on a version of meth amphetamines.  The government made no distinctions between a casual user of marijuana and a daily user of heroin. All were considered dangerous to society.

Evangelista goes into personal detail on police who killed for bounty money or because they believed it was the right thing for the country as well as on drug dealers.

From Fully Booked- An excellent source for the book, in several Manila malls

"fearless, powerfully written on-the-ground account of a nation careening into violent autocracy—told through harrowing stories of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens—from a journalist of international renown

“Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story.”—Tara Westover, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated

“My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.”

Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte.

Some People Need Killing is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines’ drug war. For six years, Evangelista chronicled the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs—a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.

The book takes its title from a vigilante whose words seemed to reflect the psychological accommodation that most of the country had made: “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.”

A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is also a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an important investigation of the human impulses to dominate and resist."

Patricia Evangelista is a trauma journalist and former investigative reporter for the Philippine news company Rappler. Her reporting on armed conflict and disaster was awarded the Kate Webb Prize for exceptional journalism in dangerous conditions. She was a Headlands Artist in Residence, a New America ASU Future Security Fellow, and a fellow of the Logan Nonfiction Program, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Her work has earned local and international acclaim. She lives in Manila

This is a wonderful book.  I am very grateful to Patricia Evangelista for her insights and hard work

Mel Ulm

Fires on the Plain (野火, Nobi) is a 1959 Japanese war film directed by Kon Ichikawa, starring Eiji Funakosh - 0ne Hour Fifty minutes

 Available on YouTube with English Captions 

Ten years ago I read Fires On The Plain by Shohei Ooka (1951, translated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris, 1957, 246 pages)

Here is a portion of my post on the novel.

"Shohei Ooka (1909 to 1988-Tokyo) is know for one  famous book, Fires On The Plain.   He was one of the first Japanese authors to write fiction based on the Japanese experience in WWII.   Ooka was a French scholar and translator.    He translated The Red and the Black and  The Charter House of Parma both by Stendhal into Japanese.   In January of 1944 he was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army and after a brief training was sent to the southern Philippines to fight the Americans and Filipino resistance forces.   In January 1945 he became a prisoner of war of the Americans.

I decided I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw it was about a Japanese soldier's experience in the Philippines in WWII.    A few members of my family still have living memories of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. "

 

I was delighted to find a highly regarded movie based on Fires in the Plain on YouTube 

The film follows a tubercular Japanese private, Tamura (Funakoshi), and his attempt to stay alive during the latter part of World War II. Tamura and his fellow soldiers are stranded in the jungles of the Philippines after the American army has returned. The Japanese army remnants have taken to the jungle after being driven out of the main cities. The Filipinos, after suffering a brutal Japanese occupation, are in little mood to show mercy on their former tormentors, and light the titular bonfires for communication. Japanese soldiers are reduced to little more than bandits and murderers as their supplies dry up and they are encircled by the American-Filipino forces.

Tamura is abandoned by his unit and forced to fend for himself. He is weak and sick, and must scavenge for food and water. He encounters other Japanese soldiers who have been reduced to madness and desperation. Some have resorted to cannibalism. Tamura himself is tempted to eat the flesh of a dead soldier, but he manages to resist.

Fires on the Plain is a powerful and disturbing film that depicts the brutality of war and the dehumanizing effects of conflict. It is a film that stays with you long after you have seen it.

The film was initially received mixed reviews from both Japanese and international critics concerning its violence and bleak theme. In following decades, however, it has become highly regarded and is now considered to be one of the greatest Japanese war films ever made. 

Mel Ulm

Human Zoo by Sabina Murray - forthcoming August 2021 from Grove Atlantic Press

Human Zoo by Sabina Murray - forthcoming August 2021 from Grove Atlantic Press

This is a marvelous depiction of the Phillipines, quite possibly the best fictional evocation of The Modern Natiinal Capital region yet done.  Set in a period very much like today, minus The Pandemic.

The  country is governed by an elected president obsessed  with eliminating all drug use and traffic in The country.  Thousands of suspects  are shot by The National Police.  Income disparity is way beyond that in America.  People are very Family oriented, large networks of connections are needed to get anything done. Everything depends on a psrsonal connection.  Divorce is not part of the legal system. 

Filipino-American Christina “Ting” Klein has just travelled from New York to Manila, both to escape her imminent divorce, and to begin research for a biography of Timicheg.  Timicheg as an indeginous Phillipino brought to USA early in the 20th century to be part of a “Human Zoo”.  We learn a good bit about his history.

It has been a year since she has been in the Phillippines, a new president has been elected. She shows up unexpected at a rich older tita’s  (aunt) house. The tita lives in a huge walled in house with shredded glass embedded into the top of the wall, very common in the Philippines.

She is soon included in upper class family and social gatherings.  She spends time with her best friend, a gay socialist philosophy professor, reconnects with an old boyfriend Chet a wealthy businessman with some dubious connections to the current regime. A cousin’s fiancé Laird has returned trying to rediscover his roots. Somehow Ting becomes responsible for him.  Everybody wants to know why she is getting divorced.  Slowly she becomes drawn into dangerous relationships.

Murray does a great job making Manila, and also Baguio, come to life.  

Jollibes are everywhere.  The traffic is horrendous.  The heat is near steam bath level.  The rich, even the middle class have full time helpers. The food references are all perfect.  She has lots of small details like the McDonald’s near the Baguio bus station right. A gay relationship is beautifully developed.

I would have liked to know more about the male characters.

I highly recommend this book to  anyone enjoying an exciting fast moving story.

Sabina Murray grew up in Australia and the Philippines and is currently a member of the MFA faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Tales of the New World, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, Forgery, Valiant Gentlemen, and The Caprices, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction..from the publisher 

 

Riverrun by Danton Remoto - 2020

 

Riverrun by Danton Remoto - 2020

Elaine Chiew’s very interesting interview with Danton Remoto

#globalpridelitmonth: an interview with Danton Remoto

Website of Danton Remoto

I love this book.m  I give my great thanks to Elaine Chiew, I have featured her work numerous times, for turning me on to this novel. 

Riverrun is set in the era of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines (1965 to 1986).  Marcos was 

not driven by ideology  or ethnic  hatred but by a desire to enrich himself and his wife Imelda.  He would, however, use deadly force on anyone brave enough to speak out against him.  Remoto wonderfully shows how this climate of fear impacted  upbringing.  Children were taught to never talk about the government.  ( My wife lived through the era also and she and her siblings were trained not to ever mention anything about  Marcos.)

It is structured as a memoir about growing up in a very Conservative mostly Catholic country in a period when same sex relationships were very much frowned upon while slowly coming to the realization you are gay.  (Even now it takes a prescription to buy a condom.)

The story starts in the south on the

biggest island Luzon, near the Mayon Volcano.  The narrator’s family is relatively affluent, above the abject poverty of millions struggling just to feed their families.   There are several regional recipes scattered through the narrative, something most readers will enjoy even if they probably cannot get all the needed ingrediants. The depiction of the narrator’s early years was just marvelous.  We hear  stories from Filipino mythology told by his grandmother and his yaya.  We are there when he moves to Metro Manila, a tropical mega-City of over twenty million.  As you can imagine this was very much a shock and a sensory overload.  He enters a private military School where “new boys” are subject to  initiation rituals in which they are expected to preform homosexual actions on each other to gain acceptance.

Slowly he begins to discover feelings for other young men.  After his time in the military school ends he gets a grant to study in London.  I have spent a bit of time there and really enjoyed the account of the narrator’s time in London.  He ends up back in the Phillippines.

The rhetorical methodology of Riverrun is very creative.

Riverrun is a celebration of the people of the Phillippines, their ability to endure with a smile twenty typoons a year, dangerous volcanoes,corrupt governments and for better or worse the all powerful Catholic Church.

There are no explicit sex scenes in Riverrun.  In an interview  linked above Remoto says his publisher of the 2020 reissue asked him to add some vivid sex scenes but this would be out of character for narrator so he added two very mild interludes.

I give my unreseved endorsement to Riverrun.  I cannot 

imagine any literate and curious reader not loving it. 

Danton Remoto is a writer, educator, media personality, and the founder of Ladlad, the LGBTQ political party of the Philippines. His novel, Riverrun, about a gay young man’s coming of age in a military dictatorship, is one of the first gay novels — if not the first gay novel — published in the Philippines. Originally published in 2015, a newer global edition is now being printed by Penguin Random House SEA. There is more information on his website.

Mel u

“Can't Go Out" - A Short Story by Elizabeth Joy Serrano-Quijano - 2019 - translated from Cebuano by John Bengan

Words Without Borders - November 2019 - Writings from the Philippines

My Posts on the Literature and History of the Philippines

"Can't Go Out" - A Short Story by Elizabeth Joy Serrano-Quijano - 2019 - translated from Cebuano by John Bengan

From Words Without Borders - November 2019

I was delighted to discover that for the first time ever Words Without Borders in The November 2019 edition is featuring Short Stories, Poems and Essays featuring writers from the Philippines. For a writer to make use of one of the 156 indeginous languages is a political as well as a literary statement, an affirmation old ways can endure in a Society increasingly dominated by mega malls and Facebook.

In years past I have posted on  pre-World War Two short stories and stories by National Authors of the Philippines as well as non-fiction. Readership on these posts is very high, showing there are lots of people interested in older Filipino literature.  These stories are a great resource for those into the history of the Philippines, a cultural treasure.  Soon all with a living memory of this era will be gone.

Elizabeth Joy Serrano-Quijano’s story “Can’t Go Out” is set in the southern Phillipines, among indeginous people of Davao Del Sur

(Davao del Sur (Cebuano: Habagatang Dabaw) is a province in the Philippines located in the Davao Region in Mindanao. Its capital and largest city is Digos.) 

The time of the story is not explicitly stated. Probably it is sometime in the 1950s.  The central character Is a young woman.  She has heard of televisions but not yet seen one, she has seen cars but never ridden in one.  

I think the beautiful opening will be enough to illustrate the author’s ability to bring rural Philippines perfectly to life 

“Darkness falls in the afternoon. It’s going to rain again. The carabao and the goats have been herded off to shelter. The newly harvested corn has been covered. The house smells of fuel because our tiny lamp has been lit. Smoke rises from the hearth, a signal that Mama is cooking something. The five of us can’t go out. I want to go out so I can wait for Papa. I want to look out for what he brings, but I can’t go out.

The other week, Papa brought meat from hunting. Mama prepared it in a delicious broth. Rod and I fought over a large piece of wild boar meat. Mama got upset because we shouldn’t fight at the table. 

But last night, she and Papa were arguing. The five of us slept on empty stomachs. I couldn’t find my malong cloth. I fell asleep in our cold corner of the forest in Datal Fitak, a mountain in Matanao.

My teacher asks if we have ever seen a TV. I’ve seen one in a picture but I don’t know what it’s for. I haven’t been to Digos or to Davao, but I’ve heard about those places. So many people, they say, so many vehicles. Sometimes I don’t feel so bad because so many people and so many vehicles might run me over.  “

The story displsys the intense closeness of Filipino Family.  We see tbe role of the mother as care giver, Family rule giver and nourisher. Elizabeth Joy Serrano-Quijano makes marvelous use of food.  

I will leave the action of the story for you, it is very intense.

I have a theory sbout the history of the Philippines not in full accord with what is taught in schools.  We are taught that the Philippines was founded by traders from Malaysia and China.  The problem with this idea is they came without women.  The contribution of aboriginal proples is way underestimated.  Historical linguistics suggested a region with many languages has a very ancient culture.  Probably about 500,000 years ago archipelago began to be settled by people from Siberia.  

I mention this as I greatly respect the efforts of Elizabeth Joy Serrano-Quijano to keep alive history.

Elizabeth Joy Serrano-Quijano received a BA in Mass Communication from Holy Cross of Davao College, where she developed her dedication to journalism and passion for creative writing. She works as a college instructor, teaching Development Communication at Southern Philippines Agribusiness and Marine and Aquatic School of Technology (SPAMAST)–Malita, Davao Occidental. She is proud of her Igorot, Kapampangan, and Blaan roots. Her writing is also her advocacy for the indigenous people of Davao del Sur. It focuses on indigenous people, motherhood, and children, as she is also a mother and a wife.

John Bengan teaches at the Department of Humanities in the University of the Philippines Mindanao. His work has appeared in Likhaan 6, Kritika Kultura, BooksActually’s Gold Standard, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, among others. He holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School. A recipient of a Ford Foundation International Fellowship, he has won prizes from the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards and the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for his short fiction. He lives in Davao City

Mel u

Rampage MacArthur, Yamashita and The Battle of Manila by James M. Scott - 2018, 640 Pages

Rampage MacArthur, Yamashita and The Battle of Manila by James M. Scott is a wonderful book, must reading for anyone interested in  World War Two, the Philippines or Douglas MacArthur.  In order to hope to understand the Philippines today you have to ponder the terrible consequences of the Battle for Manila.  For five years after the battle was over the population of the city declined due to lives shortened by injuries, poor diets and rampant diseases.

The book very interestingly  begins with a chapter on MacArthur detailing his life long involvement with the Philippines.  MacArthur had a giant ego, many of those who served under him worshipped him while others nicknamed him "Dug out Doug", feeling he kept himself safe, eating steak while his men were abandoned on Corrigidor Island to the Japanese, he escaping to Australia.  Many of his troops despised him, including his one time aid Eisenhower.  Scott does not take sides here, just shows us the facts.  

The second chapter tells us of the pre War history of General Yamashita, a fascinating account that helped me understand the command structure of the Japanese military.  Yamishita was a poet, served in Europe as an envoy before the war  and  had a German mistress, as MacArthur a Filipina.

The book goes into great detail on the battle for Manila.  The Japanese were determined to destroy Manila, they nearly succeeded, and to kill as many civilians as they could.  They behaved just as they did during the battle over Nanking, raping thousands of women and young girls, killing babies for sport.  The purpose of the Japanese was to delay an American invasion of Japan.  The Japanese were enraged by the very pro-American attitude of the Filipinos.  Additionally they seemed to love causing as much misery as possible.  The Japanese acted  in a barbaric subhuman fashion.  Scott spares no details in showing the pointless cruelty of the Japanese.

Time Line

December 10, 1898 - Spain Cedes The Philippines to The United States

December 7, 1941, a few hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan launched an invasion of The Philippines 

January 2, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur  declared Manila an open city hoping to spare the residents from the war, the Japanese take over Manila 

Manila then has a population of 684,000

April 9, 1942 - The American forces were now headquartered on Corregidor Island.  General Douglas MacArthur, acting on orders from President Roosevelt, leaves the Island, along with Manuel Quezon then president of the Philippines,

for Australia.  His men are taken as POWs.  MacArthur's  pledge that  he would return became the mantra of his life.

Americans as well as Canadians and Europeans were placed in detention.  The largest prison site with about 3400 captives was at The University of Santo 

Thomas.  James Scott greatly details the terrible conditions endured by the captives and made me sense their joy when the Americans liberated them.  The university, founded in 1611, predates Harvard by 25 years.  Our middle daughter graduated from college there in 2017.  Scott does a great job describing the campus converted to a prison.

October 17, 1944 - The Americans invade, coming ashore on the beach at Lingayen Gulf, near the birth place of my wife, about 150 miles north of Manila, on the big Island, Luzon.

October 17, 1944 Douglas MacArthur comes ashore, with coverage from Life Magazine and American army reporters filming it, says “I have returned”.  

The Japanese had 432,000 troops in The Philippines.  

February 3 to March 3 1945 - The Battle For Manila.  The Japanese were determined to kill as many civilians as they could and destroy the city.  As they did in Nanking, the Japanese embarked on a rampage of murder and rape.  Babies were bayoneted for sport.  The Japanese military knew they could not win, their mission was to delay the Americans in their anticipated invasion of Japan.  The Japanese burned or killed with a sword as many as they could, needing to save bullets.  By the end over 100,000 civilians were killed, many by American bombs and strafing.  

Sporadic Japanese resistance, mostly near Baguio, continued until September 5, 1945 when Japan surrendered.  An estimated one million Philippines citizens were killed in the war.  In the war crimes tribunal, over 125,000 incidents of murder of civilians were listed.  The Japanese also executed American and Filipino POWs, contrary to international laws agreed to by the Japanese.  About 10,000 American troops were killed and 225,000 Japanese in the fight to retake the Philippines.  Even though I knew the outcome, Scott made it very exciting.. The incredible fanaticism of the Japanese was a factor in the decision to use the Atomic Bomb.  For five years after the war, the population of Manila continued to decline from war injuries, poor medical facilities, and pestilence.  The economic basis for Life was destroyed.  A once beautiful city, known as “The Pearl of the Orient" was 90 percent destroyed.

General Yamishita, the Japanese commander in the Philippines, was found guilty of war crimes and hung. His defenders at his trial, as shown by Scott, tried hard to advance the claim that Yomishita did not know of the atrocities committed by his troops.  Most of the Japanese troops in Manila were under the command of an admiral, in theory subordinate to Yamishita.  The admiral killed himself rather than be captured.  Yamishita was headquartered in in Bagio, about five hours even today from Manila.  Scott does a very good job helping us to understand the Japanese mentality.  

July 4, 1946 - Philippines Independence Day

Even though we know the outcome, Scott made the battle very exciting if horrifying. This is just a wonderful book, full of great details and fascinating people.  

A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, James M. Scott is the author of Rampage and Target Tokyo, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus, The Christian Science Monitor and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His other works include The War Below and The Attack on the Liberty, which won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award. Scott lives with his wife and two children in Mt. Pleasant, SC. 

From http://jamesmscott.com

From the publisher

"American General Douglas MacArthur, driven from the Philippines under the cover of darkness at the beginning of World War II, famously vowed to return. This is the untold story of his homecoming.

The twenty-nine day battle to retake Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city and a rampage by Japanese soldiers and marines that terrorized the civilian population. Landmarks were demolished, houses torched, suspected resistance fighters were tortured and killed, countless women raped, and their husbands and children murdered. An estimated 100,000 civilians were slain in a massacre as heinous as "The Rape of Nanking."

Based on extensive research in the Philippines and the United States, war crimes testimony, after action reports, and survivor interviews, Rampage recounts one of the most heartbreaking chapters of the Pacific war.

James M. Scott is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the author of several critically acclaimed books of military history."

If you are into World War Two history, you will binge read this book, as I did.

(My father served with General MacArthur in New Guinea as a junior officer.  I dedicate this post to an observation of his 100th Birth Anniversary

Mel u

America is not in the Heart by Elaine Castillo - 2018,468 Pages

I

America is Not in the Heart, the debut novel of Elaine Castillo, is a vivid detailed portrayal of the lives of immigrants from the Philippines in the 1990s in pre-Silicon valley California.  The characters are mostly 


hard working, settled in, buying houses and have obtained citizenship.  One of the main characters often works 16 hour shifts as a nurse.  One of the men was a well regarded physician back home but in California he cannot practice medicine and works as a security guard.  Outside of work, they are caught up in a vast network of family members, relatives and friends also from the Phillipines.  Castillo does a wonderful job bringing out the details of their lives, I wish I could have been there for a big lechon feast!  Castillo seems to me to capture her characters conversations perfectly..  The characters mostly speak English but they do sometimes, maybe in moments of emotional intensify, they use expressions not just from the lingua Franca, Tagalog, but from The Regional languages of Ilocano and Pangasinan.  (I do notspeak Regional languages but Family members do and they verified the use of the expressions.)

There is a lot of drama in the plot, mostly generated by a woman born into a wealthy family with ties to President for Life Ferdinand Marcos.  While in medical school she drops out and joins up with communist rebels in the north.  For ten years she acts as their doctor until she is caught by government troops and tortured.  Her Family does not want her back so she has to Choice but to move to California to live with her uncle.

From here things get complicated and I will leave things unspoiled.  

Castillo does a very good job showing how status conscious Filipinos can be.  She also lets us see important where you grew up is to Filipinos.  There are lots of food references.

America is not in the Heart is a very good account of Filipino immigrants lives.  I recommend it highly.  Castillo has a deep understanding of the culture, history and myths of country, a place much more complex than most putsiders realize.

ABOUT ELAINE CASTILLO

Elaine Castillo was born in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. America Is Not the Heart is her first novel. 

From The publisher’s Website

“A saga rich with origin myths, national and personal . . . Castillo is part of a younger generation of American writers instilling literature with a layered sense of identity.” —Vogue

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.

An increasingly relevant story told with startling lucidity, humor, and an uncanny ear for the intimacies and shorthand of family ritual, America Is Not the Heart is a sprawling, soulful debut about three generations of women in one family struggling to balance the promise of the American dream and the unshakeable grip of history. With exuberance, grit, and sly tenderness, here is a family saga; an origin story; a romance; a narrative of two nations and the people who leave one home to grasp at another.

Featured in * New York Magazine * Entertainment Weekly * Elle * Lit Hub * Shondaland * The Millions * Time Out * Vulture * Real Simple * PopSugar * Paris Review * Cosmopolitan * Southern Living * Buzzfeed * Refinery29 * Marie Claire * Vogue *

End

I think anyone interested in the Philippines will love this book

Mel u