PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDAR – Saturday, Nov. 6, 5:30-7 pm, Angelica’s Daughters in San Francisco– a reading/signing of ANGELICA’S DAUGHTERS, A DUGTUNGAN NOVEL, in a PAWA sponsored event, Saturday, November 6, 5:30-7 p.m. at the Bayanihan Community Center, 1010 Mission Street, San Francisco, California.
ANGELICA’S DAUGHTERS, A DUGTUNGAN NOVEL
Released by Anvil Publishing during the Manila International Book Fair last September, was a landmark novel entitled, Angelica’s Daughters, A Dugtungan Novel, a collaborative work written by five established Filipino and Filipino American women writers. The five authors came from different countries during the creation of the novel: Cecilia Manguerra Brainard and Veronica Montes lived in California; Susan Evangelista and Erma Cuizon were in the Philippines, and Nadine Sarreal was in Singapore.
The five writers were members of an Internet writing group since 2003. After a few years of writing exercises, the group sought greater challenge and decided to write a dugtungan novel. A dugtungan is a genre of Tagalog novel popular early in the 20th century, in which each writer creates a chapter and hands it off to the next, who writes another chapter without direction.
The result is a novel about a diverse group of modern Filipinas – among them a FilAm whose marriage has disintegrated, an even younger Cebuana involved in a forbidden love affair, and a ballroom dancing Lola – who share a common ancestor, Angelica.
The novel has received praise from noted Filipino critic, Isagani Cruz, who says, ““This tale of two women living a century apart (and the women and men in their lives) told sequentially by five women is truly an ensemble performance worth a standing ovation.”
Award-winning Filipina writer, Felice Sta. Maria describes the novel as follows:
“Chick lit with a comfortable dose of smartness and historical verve. Angelica’s Daughters celebrates audacious heroines primed by deep passion and fairytale romance! Set in the heat of a 19th-century Asian revolution and what its setting becomes by the 21st Century, Angelica’s Daughters beguiles with its mythic splendor, threat of a generational curse, masterful betrayals, and female leads readers can fall in love with.
The story is a delightful read by five writers who cherish their Hispanic, Filipino, and American cultural roots.”
Brian Roley, Filipino American award-winning author likewise praises the book by saying, “Part of the pleasure of reading Angelica’s Daughters is seeing how deftly the authors deal with the challenge of writing in this resurrected literary form. The result, in this case, is an ensemble performance that contains something of the exhilaration of theatrical improv. One watches these accomplished authors inventively weave a historical romance, creating gripping heroines and turns of plot, crossing decades and national boundaries, tapping into cultural roots of the Philippines, Spain and America. Reading Angelica’s Daughters is a gripping experience.”
In the Philippines, the book is available from Anvil Publishing (www.anvilpublishing.com); in the US, the novel is available from PALH (www.palhbooks.com) and Philippine Expressions (linda_nietes@sbcglobal.net). Arkipelagobooks.com in San Francisco also has copies.
The novel has a site at www.palhbooks.com/cbrainardangelica.html, and a blog at http://angelicasdaughters.wordpress.com.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses 