Cover Check out these Filipiniana books (Photo: stylised with Canva)
Check out these Filipiniana books (Photo: stylised with Canva)
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Suddenly have enough free time? Reading these books is worth a shot
It doesn’t have to be National Book Day or any other holiday dedicated to literature for us to open our books and have a read or two. This coming Holy Week, a long break awaits us, and what better way to spend it than to spoil our inner bookworms?
Recent news of Filipiniana novels migrating towards the big screen is making noise—Bob Ong’s Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan (translated in English as Mama Susan’s Friends) is a prime example. However, Bob Ong is one of the most brilliant and celebrated Filipino authors. Many Filipiniana books also deserve mainstream recognition—or at the very least, acknowledged by the masses.
More from Tatler: World Book Day 2022: 15 Must-Read Books By Asian Authors
Today, we’re putting the spotlight on books written by Filipino authors. Whether you’re looking for a quick but striking read or one that screams progressive, it's all here.
1. ‘Banana Heart Summer’ by Merlinda Bobis
Above ‘Banana Heart Summer’ by Merlinda Bobis
‘Banana Heart Summer’ by Merlinda Bobis
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Banana Heart Summer, Merlinda Bobis’s debut novel, tackles food, family, and longing.
Twelve-year-old Nenita, who grew up with five siblings, searches for happiness in the magical smell of the deep-frying bananas of Nana Dora, who then tells Nenita the myth of the banana heart. To them, food is synonymous with love.
Change is inevitable in the summer of broken hearts, new friendships, secrets, and discoveries—transforming the young girl's life in ways she could never imagine.
2. ‘Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture’ by Doreen Fernandez
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‘Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture’ by Doreen Fernandez
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Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture by Doreen Gamboa Fernandez is a self-explanatory title.
In an excerpt, when asked, “What’s cooking?” Fernandez says: “The old and the new. The provincial and the pop. The slow and the fast. The past, the present, and the future. That’s what’s cooking in Philippine cuisine. This means that, as the most popular (people-created, people-processed and people-consumed) segment of popular culture, it is dynamic and changing, living and lively.”
3. ‘House of Memory’ by Resil Mojares
Above ‘House of Memory’ by Resil Mojares
‘House of Memory’ by Resil Mojares
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National Artist for Literature Resil B Mojares’s essays in House of Memory address the meanings behind each part of a house. “What does a house speak? It speaks many things: of certain enduring affections, of absence, neglect, infidelities of distance, distraction, forgetting.”
In this book, he makes his way into the past by framing his memories and musings as parts of a house—eliciting nostalgia from his childhood home and dreams.
4. ‘Tingle: Anthology of Pinay Lesbian Writing’ by Jhoanna Lynn Cruz
Above ‘Tingle: Anthology of Pinay Lesbian Writing’ by Jhoanna Lynn Cruz
‘Tingle: Anthology of Pinay Lesbian Writing’ by Jhoanna Lynn Cruz
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Palanca-awardee Jhoanna Lynn Cruz says all the write-ups in Tingle are about a spark of recognition, whether at the beginning, the middle, or the end. It highlights the idea that one loves a woman as a woman.
“Here we are taking our stories of women loving women in our own hands and making ourselves visible on our terms. When the initial thrill of desire is passed, the tingle is ultimately the recognition that what we have found cannot remain in the dark—we must love and be loved in the light,” she explains in her book.
5. ‘Love Woman’ by Ophelia Dimalanta
Above ‘Love Woman’ by Ophelia Dimalanta
‘Love Woman’ by Ophelia Dimalanta
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The poems in Love Woman by Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta are a classic. This fifth volume of hers, which derives its ‘metaphorical centre’ from Doris Lessing’s novel Love Again, contains 19 poems on myriad themes seen from the perspectives of a woman's compassionate heart and ever-expansive mind.
6. ‘Lamyos’ by J Neil C Garcia
Above ‘Lamyos’ by J Neil C Garcia
‘Lamyos’ by J Neil C Garcia
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Written in three Philippine languages by various young Filipino authors, the 12 stories in Lamyos: New LGBTQ Fiction from the Philippines by J Neil C Garcia seeks to present a variety of sexually dissident, gender-nonconformist, and queer subjectivities.
The book also aims to problematise heteronormative gender, sexuality, and the appropriations of these and all other ‘global’ forms of desire in the country.
7. ‘Gun Dealers’ Daughter’ by Gina Apostol
Above ‘Gun Dealers’ Daughter’ by Gina Apostol
‘Gun Dealers’ Daughter’ by Gina Apostol
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Gina Apostol’s Gun Dealers’ Daughter is about a young Soledad Soliman who falls in with radical friends, defying her wealthy parents and their society crowd.
Drawn in by two romantic young rebels, Sol initiates a conspiracy that quickly spirals out of control. Years later, far from her homeland, she reconstructs her fractured memories, writing a confession she hopes will be her salvation.
8. ‘Kulang na Silya’ by Ricky Lee
Above ‘Kulang na Silya’ by Ricky Lee
‘Kulang na Silya’ by Ricky Lee
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National Artist for Literature Ricky Lee’s Kulang na Silya at Iba Pang Kuwentong Buhay tackles the highs and lows of being a writer. This particular book is the first volume in a series. It aims to encourage writers to continue practising their craft.
9. ‘Mars, May Zombie!’ by Chuckberry Pascual
Above ‘Mars, May Zombie!’ by Chuckberry Pascual
‘Mars, May Zombie!’ by Chuckberry Pascual
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Mars, May Zombie is by award-winning author Chuckberry J. Pascual, with the cover illustrated by artist Iñigo Fadul. The book revolves around the gay teen Marcelo “Mars” Manapat, who lives in a post-zombie apocalypse Philippines, along with a sassy best friend and an even sassier lola.
In the novel, Mars hatches a plan to get into the nearest zombie-free Blue Zone and discovers a secret that may even be worse than the flesh-eating monsters roaming across the country.
10. ‘The Face of Urban Poverty in the Cinema of Brocka’ by Veronica Isla
Above ‘The Face of Urban Poverty in the Cinema of Brocka’ by Veronica Isla
‘The Face of Urban Poverty in the Cinema of Brocka’ by Veronica Isla
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Veronica Isla’s The Face of Urban Poverty in the Cinema of Brocka aims to unlock the hows and whys of Filipino filmmaker Lino Brocka’s representation of poverty.
According to the book, “to cinematically represent a social reality as complex as poverty is no easy task. Mediated by Brocka's temperament, background, experiences, worldview, response to specific sociopolitical circumstances, and exposure to or association with certain institutions, personalities, and artistic works, some aspects of it are inevitably excluded in the representation.”
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Angela Nicole Regis Guiral is the assistant digital editor of Tatler Philippines. She studied journalism and has since written features that look closely at how culture, lifestyle and social impact converge, while occasionally wandering into the worlds of style and travel.
