Copyright 2021
Powerful poignant and engrossing, the Selected Short Stories by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is an important work by a major writer. Written in a poetic style rich in imagery, her observant eye’s subject is both transnational and local, social and relational in the more personal scale of family, friendship, love. These stories have an oral quality in the best sense of the word
--- Brian Ascalon Roley
Author of Ambuscade and American Son, and Professor of English, Miami University
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s short stories cover not just the history of the Philippines - Spanish and American colonial rule, the bloody Marcos era, the high price of fighting for political and economic freedom – but also the deeply moving hesitations and complexities of the human heart: the loves and longings and losses that shape and haunt a life, the sensuality and desires that rip apart the fabric of social life, the intricacies of girlhood and female friendship, the confrontation of cultures, the loneliness and courage of Filipino-Americans and others who have left their homelands and the idea of home. Beauty written, masterfully crafted, theses stories are at once heart-breaking, entertaining, and profoundly humane – very difficult to put down, impossible to forget.
--- Reine Arcache Melvin
Author of the Betrayed: Novel
Cecilia Brainard’s well-crafted stories deal with fictional Manila and Mexico, Intramuros and Acapulco, Ubec and Cebu. She has the uncanny ability to enter the skin of her characters and give them their singular voices. These lyrical Selected Stories only affirm what we have long known: that she has already vaulted into the front rank of the Philippines’ best writers of fiction. Brava!”
--- Danton Remoto
Author of Riverrun: A Novel and The Heart of Summer: Selected Stories and Tales