A new short fiction collection from multi-awarded Filipino American writer and poet Eileen R. Tabios

PAGPAG The Dictator's Aftermath in the Diaspora (Paloma Press 2020)

My first encounter with the work of Eileen R. Tabios was in the middle of 1999. I was in the middle of sorting submissions and curating intentionally diverse work for a flash fiction anthology I had proposed to Anvil Publishing in Manila, that eventually came out in 2003, and was called Fast Food Fiction: Short Short Stories To Go. Tabios’ story in this book was a deft piece, just 469 words (I asked for flash of no more than 500 words, and many writers went far beyond that), focusing on a man who puzzles, genuinely it seems, over the aftermath of passion that had evidently gone too far, with the use of a black leather crop. Adding further interest, the title chosen for the story was, “excerpts from After She Left The Hotel Room” and its text was divided into four petite sections headed, “W, X, Y” and “Z”. 

Not only did I love the dark little story, I admired such clever little conceits suggesting to the reader that submerged beneath this sharp tip is an iceberg of more mysterious life, indeed, the entire alphabet’s worth of it. Noting the (many) books she has authored subsequently, I found none called After She Left The Hotel Room. However, further reading led me to an intriguing discovery. On her blog, Tabios has shared the blurbs for her first novel, Dovelion A Fairy Tale For Our Times, forthcoming this March 2021 out of the arts publisher, AC Books. The blurb from France-based Filipino Reine Arcache Melvin, author of The Betrayed (Anvil Publishing 2019), ends like this, “Tabios uses her pen like Elena uses her whip, provoking tenderness through intense sensation as well as illumination through sensuality and a passionate, hungry mind.” 

Reading this, I stopped short, delighted. Could this “whip” be the same black leather crop owned by the same “she” who “Left the Hotel Room” and is Dovelion's Elena this "she"? 

Out of the Blue

In the last quarter of 2019, two books were published by Ateneo University Press’ new literary imprint, Bughaw (Blue), and I lost no time in getting my hands on them. They are, Angelo R Lacuesta’s book of selected fiction, City Stories, and The Collected Stories of Jessica Zafra. It was an occasion to celebrate, to have two such wonderful books come out in quick succession this way—two books from writers I'm likely always going to want to buy.

Both Lacuesta and Zafra are keen observers of the Filipino psyche: they capture current and contemporary Filipino life in all its rich, textured, variegated complexity. Set aside the old cliché—300 years in a convent, 50 years in Hollywood—we’re talking about a country and culture unlike any in Southeast Asia, always set off parenthetically as “different” for its flawed US-style democracy, its proud, resilient, imperfect people who have, all too willingly, inclined themselves along authoritarian political posturing due to the abject failures of the governments between Marcos Martial Law and today’s Duterte-an ipso facto dictatorship. We Pinoys speak English (not as well as we did), work hard, are friendly and happy-go-lucky, in spite of everything. We want our K-pop TV series, our bootleg Hollywood DVDs, our fake designer goods from China and our junky American fast-food, all the while paying barely audible lip-service to being a strong, independent society, one in which family and tragically, family dynasties, reign supreme. There aren’t two better writers than these here right now for acquainting oneself with the country today.