Essays/Excerpts
May 4, 2024
“The Realities of Family Abductions Told in Surreal Terms.” My review of Mauro Javier Cardenas’s American Abductions. In the NYT.
February 22, 2024
No Democracy Left Behind: Nation, Narration, Resistance. Speech for Daniel and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals, University of Hawaii-Manoa.
June 8, 2023
“Despotism Meets Disco in Here Lies Love.” Interview of David Byrne for Washington Post. PDF here.
June 2023
Foreword for Wilfrido D. Nolledo’s But for the Lovers. Exploding Galaxies, Manila.
February 7, 2023
“Dancing with America Has Been a Curse for the Philippines.” New York Times. PDF version on my linktree.
January 30, 2023
“Let the Knife Speak: On Jose Rizal.” Los Angeles Review of Books. Some corrections on this piece: Rizal returned to Philippines 1892; he spoke more than eight languages (I’m just noting languages in the Noli and Fili: some say he spoke 22 languages).
June 2022
“The Court Case.” Excerpt from La Tercera. Issue Number 33, The White Review.
Spring 2022
“May Your Muse Still Be Singing.” The Hopkins Review. Volume 15, Number 2. PDF of full essay on my linktree.
January 4, 2022
“Towards a Radical Hope and a World-Changing Rage.” Conversation with Preti Taneja on her book Aftermath in Los Angeles Review of Books.
December 1, 2021
“At the Hotel Sirena.” Excerpt from La Tercera. Reading and Discussion on The Climate Crisis. Massachusetts Review. Winter 2021 Issue.
December 1, 2021
“A Year in Reading.” The Millions.
Spring 2021
"A Speech of One's Own." Foreword to Ulirat in Evergreen Review.
November 27, 2020
Keynote Speech, Pandemic Playbook, BDAP conference, Manila, Philippines
October 11, 2019
Excerpt from Insurrecto III in The Arts Desk (UK)
October 9, 2019
Excerpt from Insurrecto II in The Arts Desk (UK)
October 7, 2019
Excerpt from Insurrecto I in The Arts Desk (UK)
July 11, 2019
Excerpt from Insurrecto in Granta Magazine
December 13, 2018
PW's Top Authors Pick Their Favorite Books of 2018. I chose Elaine Castillo's America Is Not the Heart, which is a tour-de-force in novel and Fil-Am writing.
January 17, 2018
Francine Prose's Problem. How to read postcolonially, published in Los Angeles Review of Books
January 12, 2018
NYT Op-Ed: Who Hits Golf Balls into the Sea. Class, history, and golf balls at the beach
May 19, 2017
NYT Op-Ed: Speaking in Fascism's Tongues. How shifts in language mark fascism
April 17, 2017
Foreword to Nick Joaquin on Fiction Advocate. My foreword to the Penguin Classics edition of Nick Joaquin, Woman Who Had Two Navels and Other Tales of the Tropical Gothic
October 14, 2016
Duterte and Philippine Revolutionary History. I was troubled by Philippine president Duterte's remarks on the Filipino-American war, so I wrote this op-ed for CNN Philippines
2016
On Gun Dealers' Daughter. I spoke about writing Gun Dealers' Daughter at Summer Forum, a sharp, lovely group of artists and thinkers who go on retreats in order to think slowly and communally about world issues. This Summer Forum retreat was at Joshua Tree (a first for me—never been to the Mojave). My talk is published in their journal Dilettante—it is the second piece in the collection, which is available free on pdf.
May 9, 2016
Duterte: Strongman, Jokerman. Op-Ed in CNN Philippines on the 2016 Philippine presidential elections winner, President Rodrigo Duterte
October 27, 2015
Cornell University Lecture. I lectured on "The Filipino-American War and the Writing of a Novel." Cornell has it on Cornell cast, link above.
December 2, 2014
"Dancing with Dictators" An essay on David Byrne's play Here Lies Love in the Los Angeles Review of Books
July 2, 2014
Overdetermined. A post on the 2014 World Cup in the blog by Noel Shaw, Eric Gamalinda, and Ubaldo Stecconi, tickytocka.tumblr.com
June 26, 2014
Italia. A post on the 2014 World Cup in the blog by Noel Shaw, Eric Gamalinda, and Ubaldo Stecconi, tickytocka.tumblr.com
June 21, 2014
Decolonized. A post on the 2014 World Cup in the blog by Noel Shaw,Eric Gamalinda, and Ubaldo Stecconi, ticktytocka.tumblr.com
June 9, 2014
Listening to Bong Revilla is Worse than Cancer. Essay in ginaapostol.wordpress.com
April 29, 2014
"Imperialism 2.0" Op-ed in Foreign Policy
March 4, 2014
"Why Benedict Anderson Counts" Essay in Los Angeles Review of Books
Winter 2014
Beyond the Horizon of Death?: Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan and Unnatural Disasters. Dialogue among Dylan Rodriguez, Gina Apostol. Joi Barrios-Leblanc, Kale Bantigue Fajardo, Sarita See, and Teresia Teaiwa
January 17, 2014
"Transparency: Relieving the Body of Despair" Op-ed in ABS-CBN News
November 14, 2013
"Surrender, Oblivion, Survival" Op-ed in The New York Times
October 30, 2013
PEN America. Literary Award Page (PEN/Open Book Award) excerpt from Gun Dealers' Daughter
August 18, 2013
"Borges, Politics, and the Postcolonial" Essay in Los Angeles Review of Books
July 16, 2012
The Margins, AAWW. Excerpt from Gun Dealers' Daughter
July 12, 2012
The Collagist, Dzanc Books. Excerpt from Gun Dealers' Daughter
April 28, 2012
"In the Philippines, Haunted by History" Op-ed in The New York Times
June 24, 2012
Sunday Salon. Video of reading (Bibliolepsy, Revolution, Gun Dealers' Daughter)
June-July 2009
Civitella Ranieri. Excerpt from The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata
Forewords & Some Anthologies
Foreword to Nick Joaquin
“I read him when I was a child in Leyte. MacArthur had landed on my island in 1944; and since May 1, 1898, when Spain’s ships fell to American cannons in Manila Bay, the Philippines–condemned on that May Day to English–has made art in English from seeds of violence.
For the Philippines, an archipelago geographically fragmented, linguistically fissured, occupied by not one but two invaders heralding a fierce but frayed republic dominated by the oligarchic spoils of our split, postcolonial selves–in a land tectonically and climatically doomed to dissolution–for the Philippines, perhaps it is only through its fictions that it can conceive itself a unity.”
Foreword to Ulirat
“What I hear in these pages is the fun, high jinks, audacity, ease of mind, voluptuousness, dexterity, confidence, and genius of artists in command of their world. To be brief, this collection is a classic.
The stories have this sense of powerful license, their worlds embodied in hilarious, outrageous, fantastical, and sobering ways. This is partly because the writers have chosen to make art in their tongue-ina—their mother-tongue.
"(The other part is that the editors selected with a great eye for the strangely quotidian so that the familiarity of the stories slaps you in the face.)
And when I say their worlds are embodied, I mean it—these writers speak the body—in all its bawdiness, its frank flesh, its smells, sweat, and saliva.”
“The Unintended”: excerpt
Note: the excerpt called “The Unintended” in Manila Noir is part of the novel Insurrecto.
In this anthology, brand-new stories by: Lourd De Veyra, Gina Apostol, Budjette Tan & Kajo Baldisimo, F.H. Batacan, Jose Dalisay Jr., Eric Gamalinda, Jessica Hagedorn, Angelo Lacuesta, R. Zamora Linmark, Rosario Cruz-Lucero, Sabina Murray, Jonas Vitman, Marianne Villanueva, and Lysley Tenorio.
“Cunanan’s Wake”: story
“The Mistress”: story
“Fredo Avila”: story
Coming soon.
I wrote a foreword for But For the Lovers, the 1970 masterpiece by Wilfrido Nolledo, coming out from the Philippines in late 2021. Below is my copy of the US first edition, from Dutton. Fingers crossed, the Filipino pub will be coming soon.
other stories
“The Unintended” excerpts
also occur in Go Home (ed Rowan Hisayo Buchanan); A Kind of Compass: Stories on Distance (ed Belinda McKeon), and in Massachusetts Review
“The Mistress”
was my first published story, in Gettysburg Review (Autumn 1988), which also published “Tita Beth” (Winter 2005)
“Fredo Avila”
also appears in Balikbayan: contemporanei storie filippini (ed Ubaldo Stecconi) and Flippin’ (ed Eric Gamalinda and Luis Francia)
“Wilmington”
was published in Catfish Arriving in Little Schools (Anvil 1995) along with “Fredo Avila” and “Bibliolepsy: a dissertation”
Cornell Lecture
on novel writing and the Philippine-American war, introduced by Benedict Anderson, who spoke about film as political act in his comments on Insurrecto when the novel was still called The Unintended.
