Recent Project
Here’s a recent collaboration that I did with the Filipino-Chilean writer Elizabeth Medina.
Sampaguitas in the Andes now available in Kindle or any other eBook reader and mobile device.
Sampaguitas was originally released in Spanish (Chile). The English translation is meant to reach the English speaking generation of Filipinos.
Andrea Gallo, a professor at Universität “Ca” Foscari in Venedig interviewed Medina in 2008, writing about a chance encounter between the author and Angel García. Mr García is of Hispano-Filipino descent and was visiting the Philippine embassy in Chile. (the following translated from Spanish):
Her reencounter with her “mythical” grandfather took place in Santiago de Chile in 1990. During a buffet at the Philippine Embassy, Elizabeth, by chance, came into contact with a “hispanofilipino” who had known her grandfather and who “delivered, unintentionally, a message from my grandfather.” It was this unexpected encounter that led the author to “a secret desire to return and recover the point of origin” and made her aware of “the internal need to complete things” (p. 85). For this, she realized that it was necessary to travel, or rather, to travel to those remote regions of memory, in northern Luzon, and see “beautiful” places “in the middle of nowhere” (p. 110), speaking with witnesses who could provide fragments of truth about herself, her family and personal history. The rediscovery of memory: “The psychological importance of such an act transcends the mere revelation of ”true facts“ or anecdotal reality.
Medina in her book also discussed certain historical matters that might be considered unpopular. Her work touched on the hispano-filipino past, reevaluating its language and culture which vanished when America annexed the Philippines.
More about the book on this blog.
