while elsewhere in the world the discussions for women’s day and women’s month 2016 have been on the level of celebrity women’s bodies and slutshaming, role models and raising our young girls, in the Philippines we have a government that cannot even pretend to know what women need, much less what we want. (more…)
Because for whatever reason the President and the Liberal Party have no shame in telling us all that they are trying very very hard to get Mar Roxas and Grace Poe to come together as one team for the 2016 Elections, it also seems imperative that we point out who’s the biggest free rider of all: Senator Chiz Escudero. (more…)
Probably the one thing I am most thankful for having gone to UP Diliman for an undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature in the latter half of the 90s, were the set of literature teachers and minds available to me, the ones who were well-grounded in nation and how and where theories are limited in capturing where we are, what we think, where to go from here. (more…)
I will always spend some hard-earned cash on books proclaimed as “bestsellers” – not by the non-existent bestseller list of local books (because we compete with uh, Fifty Shades of Grey), but based on the ever reliable, absolutely credible opinion of the National Bookstore ate manning the cash register.
These two books are placed among the magazines at the cashier’s counter, and with one hot pink cover, and another that’s filled with eye-catching illustrations, these books easily catch one’s eye.
Dear Alex, Break Na Kami. Paano?! Love, Catherine by Alex Gonzaga (ABS-CBN Publishing 2014), and Paano Ba ‘To?! How to Survive Growing Up by Bianca Gonzalez (One Mega Group Inc. 2014), are less than 200 bucks each, and as per the Ate kahera at the National Bookstore in Robinson’s Magnolia: “Sobrang benta po nito Ma’am. Laging nauubusan.” She was of course referring to Gonzaga’s book in bright pink, with a poodle and a photograph of her on the cover, a face now made familiar by TV.
About Gonzalez’s book meanwhile, the Ate kahera in National Bookstore Shangri-La Mall said: “Maraming bumibiling teenager Ma’am.” (more…)
Here’s to the friendship
that could have been ours:
wife of my lover,
lover of my husband,
lover of my lover.
For women at both ends
are always rivals:
smiling for points
at a beauty contest,
icing the cake
at a cooking competition,
sprinting for the gold
as they race to a man’s heart. (more…)