anvil publishing – Page 6

Looking Back

I discovered historian Ambeth Ocampo’s essays back in high school: we were taking up the Noli and El Fili in Panitikan (Literature, in Filipino) class and our teacher wanted us to compile newspaper clippings about Jose Rizal. We didn’t have a newspaper subscription, but I lived a few blocks away from the Inquirer office so I went to their library to get some clippings. The library lady handed me a whole folder of articles (pre-digitization; this was the late 90’s) — most of them were from Ambeth Ocampo’s newspaper column, and I remember being so engrossed reading them that the librarian had to walk over and nudge me to let me know they were closing for the afternoon.

As soon as I enrolled in Ateneo for college, I had my heart set on taking Ambeth Ocampo’s History 165 (Rizal and the Emergence of the Philippine Nation) class, and fortuitously, I got a good random number during reg that sem I was scheduled to take that subject so I was able to enlist in his class.

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Soledad’s Sister

I’ve seen some of Butch Dalisay’s work in the movies and I’ve read his newspaper column every so often, but I must admit that I’ve never read any of his stories, and I thought I’d start this year. I normally try out authors by starting out with their shorter works, and I’ve got a copy of Dalisay’s Old Timer and Other Stories somewhere in my Everest of TBR book. But I’ve always wanted to read Soledad’s Sister, not just because it was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007, but because I read the back-of-the-book summary and it seemed quite interesting to me.

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Banana Heart Summer

For those who love to love and eat
For those who long to love and eat

I fell in love with the book Banana Heart Summer by Merlinda Bobis as soon as I read the title of the first chapter of the book (quoted above). Those words, strung together, told me I was going to like the novel — I’ve always subscribed to the idea of a correlation between loving and enjoying food.

Banana Heart Summer is a Filipino novel published locally by Anvil Publishing (internationally by Delta), which tells of a summer in Bicol (right at the foot of the Mayon volcano) in 1960. Twelve-year old Nenita,inspired by the myth of the banana heart (Close to midnight, whent the heart bows from its stem, wait for its first dew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat the heart of the matter, you’ll never grow hungry again), leaves home to become a helper in the house next door so she can earn her mother’s love and put food on her hungry family’s table.

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10 interesting things about Marianne Villanueva

Last Saturday, I was holed up at Libreria again with fellow Flippers and book bloggers for a meetup with author Marianne Villanueva, arranged by Rocket Kapre. The Flippers were supposed to have a breakfast meeting, but I went home well past midnight from the previous night’s office party, got an hour’s sleep before dragging myself out of bed for the dawn mass, and then went back to sleep. I was alarmed when Gege’s text woke me up at 10am, when we were designated to meet! I threw on a shirt, shorts and flipflops (and I forgot my camera, too!) and hightailed it to Cubao, just in time for lunch at Ali Mall.

I was still bleary eyed by the time we went back to Libreria, but the discussion was well underway, and I think I was barely coherent while I was nursing a couple cups coffee. Unfortunately I had to hightail it again back home to Makati for a change of clothes for a girls’ night out with my high school friends, but I did get my copy of The Lost Language: Stories signed, and enough interesting factoids about the author to make me want to read the book!

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Connecting Flights

connectflight spread temp copy Last month I attended the launch of Anvil Publishing’s new book, Connecting Flights: Filipinos Write from Elsewhere edited by journalist and author Ruel S. De Vera. I reviewed it for a travel magazine together with some other travel-related books — I’ll have to check if the issue is out already.

Connecting Flights is a companion to Writing Home: 19 Writers Remember Their Hometowns, also by De Vera. It’s a collection of poems, essays, and fiction by 20 contributors, including Dean Francis Alfar, Jose Dalisay Jr., Lourd De Veyra, Karla P. Delgado, Rosario A. Garcellano, Ramil Digal Gulle, Christina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Alya B. Honasan, Marne L. Kilates, Angelo R. Lacuesta, Ambeth R. Ocampo, Charlson Ong, Manuel L. Quezon III, D.M. Reyes, Sev Sarmenta, Alice M. Sun-Cua, Yvette Tan, Joel M. Toledo, Alfred A. Yuson, and Jessica Zafra.

“These dizzying days, we constantly move from home to in-between places before landing somewhere else,” De Vera notes in his introduction. “But I believe that we Filipinos bring our true selves along with us on every leg of every journey. We leave with it — and we treasure it enough to take it home, changed perhaps, but always overjoyed to have returned.”

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