 Okay. Shall I start? Yeah. All right. Hey, thank you all for joining us this morning and this evening, depending on your time zone and your place in the world. My name is Abraham Ignacio. I'm the librarian for the Filipino American Center and I'm welcome you to one of our Filipino American History Month programs for the Seafing and stuff. So, yeah. Well, we will be bringing you this trans specific trans oscatic trans continental hot off the press literary reading. And it's brought to you by as I mentioned the Filipino American Center and also our long time co partner and anchor organization for the Filipino American International Book Festival, the Philippine American writers and artists power. And against, we bring you this Filipino American History Month against the continuing tragedies and prevails of the coven 19 pandemic which you're still in engaged in. We marked this October's Filipino American History Month with a simple wish that a thing only one or hope will come in this case live one or light becomes a metaphor for Pagasa or hope. Another thing to mark for this year is that this is the 25th year or 25th anniversary of the Filipino American Center here at San Francisco Public Library. We serve as the gateway to the library's material and digital resources on the Filipino experience in America, the collection is comprised of circulating and reference materials of popular popular interests, scholarly research and other unique items. It contains materials in English, Filipino and other languages from the Philippines. The center sponsors a broad range of programming like you're attending tonight events and exhibitions throughout the year in collaboration with writers scholars artists organizations and other members of the community. So we welcome you and yeah and let's get the show started and maybe you can share some of the events that are coming up. Coming up in this Filipino American History Month. Oh, before that, I want to share our land acknowledgement statement that we always do for acknowledging our native peoples here in California. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that the Ramaytush Ohlone understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia. We honor the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples for their enduring commitment to water, mother earth, as the indigenous protectors of this land in accordance with their traditions though Ramaytush Ohlone have never ceded loss nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place as well for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland as uninvited guests. We affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramaytush community. We recognize to respectfully honor Ramaytush peoples. We must embrace and collaborate meaningfully to record indigenous knowledge and how we care for San Francisco and all its people. Thank you. And this is a series of slides of some of the programs coming up. Please join us next Saturday for the screening of Alimuam, hardcore Filipino sci-fi film with director Keith Seacott. Another event that will be, it's actually a hybrid event. We'll be having a book celebration of the re-release of the Manong Joaquin collected verse of, I mean collected verse of Joaquin Legasti live in our Latino ex community room at the San Francisco May library on October 24th at Thursday evening at six. And we'll also be streaming it. And there'll be a dialogue. I'll be in dialogue with a noted San Francisco Filipino American historian M.C. Conlas where we'll be talking about the war, the relationship of the San Francisco and the war in the Philippines, this Philippine American war October 23rd 1pm. And also, you know, Filipinos, we have an issue as also is the Latino ex, which we are celebrating this month, the undocumented Americans by Carla Cornejo, who will have been sensual. So please join us for that event on October 25th at seven in the evening. And these are some of the bookstores that will be care that are carrying the books of all the authors that we have here for this evening. So East wind books of Berkeley about called bookshop in the Philippines and also solidaridad bookshop in the Philippines and just a hot press development. We just received a Carolyn house. From power so that and there's only eight copies folks so hit the power in website real fast if you'd like a physical copy of Carolyn spoke which will be reading from tonight. And I handed the virtual mic off to Beverly. Thank you Beverly. Great to see you. Hello everyone. Happy Filipino American History Month. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Beverly Perino and I've been a board member of power for over two years. Power is a nonprofit arts organization and independent publisher based in Northern California. Our all volunteer board aims to create and encourage literature and the arts for the preservation and enrichment of Philippinex and Philippinex American historical cultural and spiritual values. Every other year, power in partnership with our wonderful friends at the San Francisco Public Library presents the Filipino American International Book Festival. Due to COVID we decided to offer virtual events only this year hot off the press curated and moderated by Cecilia brainered is an event of the Philbook Fest. We look forward to presenting our sixth Philbook Fest in person next year from October 14 to 16 in San Francisco. I also want to take this opportunity to let you know of other public events this month. In partnership with lit quake, we are presenting Albert Samaha and conversation with Jason Bayani on October 20. Alternative histories featuring Rico Villanueva Chosoco and Patty and Rato on October 12, and a power reading featuring six Philippinex authors on October 17. On October 19 power is also co-sponsoring a virtual book launch for Lars Sableton in partnership with Paloma press. Funds from the community enable us to support and promote writers. Please consider a gift of any amount to power to help us continue our work. You can donate via the donations page at powering.com. I would like to introduce our host Cecilia brainered Cecilia mangana mangara brainered is the author and editor of over 20 books, including the novels, when the rainbow goddess wept and Magdalena. Her recent books from University of Santo Tomas Publishing House and Philippine American Literary House include the newspaper widow and selected short stories by Cecilia mangara. She is also editor of growing up Filipino contemporary fiction by Filipinos in America and fiction by Filipinos in America. She has received the California Arts Council fellowship, a Brody Arts Fund fellowship and outstanding individual award from her birth city of Cebu and the city of Los Angeles cultural grant. Cecilia has taught at the University of Southern California UCLA, the writer's program at UCLA extension and the California State summer school for the arts. I'd like to thank Cecilia for all her hard work on curating this event today. Please welcome Cecilia brainered. Thank you. All the authors and I really want to thank the sponsors San Francisco public library and power. Thank you for for making this happen. Thanks also to our many supporters. Thank you, Beverly. You do not see Anissa Malady, but she's back there with Lisa, and they're making this happen. They're like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtains. Thank you very much. I'm very grateful. I welcome to the 2021 half of the press literary reading this year is very special. Somehow the pandemic with its negative things has made this happen where we can have people from the Philippines from Japan and from various parts in the United States be together to share with you excerpts from their new books. So this is what hot off the press is all about. It's really showcasing our Filipino and Filipino American writers and their new books. They're very many of them we can only do some of them. But here they are. And to start off, I would like to introduce Dr. Caroline how who is professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies in Kyoto University, Japan. Caroline obtained her degrees from the University of the Philippines, and her MA and PhD from Cornell University. Recently, Caroline received the Grant Goodman Prize in hysterical historical studies from the Philippine Studies group of the Association of Asian Studies. Her novel, Tiempo Muerto is her debut novel. Here is Caroline. Thank you very much Cecilia and Magandang Aral who signed up. Many thanks for this opportunity to read from Tiempo Muerto. The two short excerpts I'll be reading today are narrated by a former school teacher who becomes a domestic worker in Singapore. So here goes Sunday picnics are for sharing stories. Among ourselves, we hand down tales of maids being killed with their ammo by their ammo by other maids by other people and by themselves. One employer is fined by the government for refusing to pay her maids salary for over a year. Another deducts her Indonesian maids wages because the maid fails to slice the tofu in the correct manner. Still another calls herself Assam and maintains a blog detailing her experience of hiring and firing 10 maids and inviting readers to share their horror stories about thieving, rude, ungrateful, sullen, unteachable, vengeful, diseased and promiscuous maids regardless of whether the stories have any basis or not. How easy it is to turn household tools into weapons of torture, a flat iron, a tea kettle, a pestle, a metal spatula, a hammer, a feather duster, a bamboo pole. So too the parts of the employer's body, teeth, nails, fingers, arms, knees, feet. Worse are the words, wicking of bile and acid and the eyes and hands that follow you into corners and rooms unswept by surveillance cameras. Last year, seven maids fell to their deaths from cleaning the windows of high-rise buildings. A country as peaceful as this one is not without its dark corners, but these are not the only stories we tell ourselves. We speak of one kababayan who inherited the estate of her ammo, a doctor for whom she had cared after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I had an alaga who years later made a film about her, and I recognized the Lolita Carbon Song at the end of the film from my own radio-soaked childhood in Banoa. Still another race and alaga to become the first Singaporean and Southeast Asian to win a swimmer's gold medal in the Olympics. The grandsons of the Queen of England were raised by a Filipino nanny whom the first-born prince would invite as a guest to his wedding. The talk of automation hasn't ripened into fear yet. It may be too early to start worrying about robots taking our place, but none of us is under any illusion that we are indispensable. We know that robots make the perfect maids. They do as they're told. They can work as many hours as their batteries allow. They don't need vacations. They never answer or fight back. They never complain. They don't ask for a pay raise. We also know that it takes time before robots will be as cheap as humans. For now, we go everywhere we are needed. We foreign workers are like ghosts. We are visible and invisible, inside and outside, there and not there. We live with families without being a part of them. We work at home without being at home. We are homebound and homeless. We fade into furniture and walls, vanish around corners, hover on the edges of people's eyes and minds. We know things we are not meant to know, husbands cheating on wives, second families in China, wives battered, children molested, overly strict parents, sons frequenting brothels, daughters attempting suicide, business deals gone bad, quarrels over money, teenage pregnancy and abortion, cheating in school examinations, venereal disease, addiction to prescription drugs and gambling and internet porn, drinking, depression, psychosis. The sweat of our men binds concrete to steel and wood to create a city. That of our women offers something intangible, the gift of time to other women so that they can work, play, dream and move and shape things. To some, we are furniture, to others, accessories. We are as much a part of the house as the plumbing and lighting. We pass unnoticed in front of people as they talk about the difficulty of finding good help. We scrub away the stains of their dalliances, their frayed minds and erupting moods, their disintegration fast and slow. We stand mute and paralyzed when they scold and beat their spouses and children and elders. The red tide that rises in them and loses tongues and fists is poison to us and poison to them. The exorcisms they perform, incantations of printed words to manage our unruly thinking, feeling and doing, fail to drive us out. We work as if our bodies were immaterial, as if we don't feel tired or hungry. The slap or grope of a hand, the cut of the kitchen knife, the splash of boiling water, the torch of a cigarette, the prow and flat of a clothes iron. Our speech and skin color mark us out as aliens. When we try to speak, we are not always heard or understood. Our problems often have to be vocalized and translated for us by experienced mediums in the language of human rights before others take heed, because basic human decency and compassion and empathy are not enough. In times when we make ourselves visible and appear in public spaces, we are seen as poltergeists who scatter objects, make loud noises, foul the air with the spices we use in our cooking and the smell of long hours work on our clothes and bodies. As vocal as the complaints are, they fail to exorcise us. If we are parasites, expelling us can only disable our hosts. Not all of them are hostile to ghosts. There are those who listen hard and hear sentences in our silence and noise. There are those who take the trouble to learn our language. There are those who reach over furniture and through curtains to gently pull us into the light. When this happens, we materialize in front of them. Together, we tamp the earth beneath us, turn the sounds in our throats into words, feel our way past the curve of our shells and bear our foreheads to the indigo air. Thank you very much. It gives me great pleasure to introduce our next author. Rico Villanueva Ciazoco is a writer, educator and activist. He's a board member of Kundiman, a national literary organization dedicated to Asian American literature. He lives in San Francisco where he is great dean at the Urban School of San Francisco. His first book of stories, The Foley Artist, was published by Godi Boy Press in 2019 and was awarded honorable mention in the 2021 Association of Asian American Studies Book Award. Rico. I wanted to say thanks to Beverly and Cecilia and to Abe. I know we're not supposed to say thanks. I'm pleased and honored to celebrate Filipino-American Heritage Month from my new home here in the Bay Area, but I'm especially pleased to join a longtime Filipino writer friend. So I'm going to read from a story called Nicolette and Maribel. Nicolette was used to questions, asking for directions, responding at job interviews, answering her perky placement counselor or the immigration officer with chunky black glasses whom she met once a month at a federal building in Post Office Square. She had only lived in Boston for five months, but her life seemed a long list of questions. It was a snow like her sister meant she asked when she called long distance from Manila. Do you have a boyfriend, a job? When you're going to buy a car? So when her classmate, a Filipino-American woman named Maribel, interviewed her in sign language class. Nicolette sighed, answering with one word replies. Where are you from? Maribel asked. Nicolette spelled Manila with her fingers. What do you do? Nurse. Favorite TV show? No TV. Nicolette covered her mouth and yawned. She'd been up since six that morning, reading the last chapter of a romance novel she borrowed from the public library. She glanced at the clock and noted a half hour left of class. Do you have a boyfriend? Nicolette signed, men are, and then let out a small howl. Maribel laughed. The class turned to the two women as Franklin, their instructor, tried to settle the group down. Nicolette was a coarse, big-boned girl with spiky black hair and a pursed lip smile that often masked a scowl. Her classmate, Maribel, was as bubbly as Nicolette was cynical. Nicolette was also eight months pregnant. Following the class, she paused outside the white brick building. Tall lamps cast scallops of light on the parking lot and lit the dozen or so cars as if they were on display. In the east, a cool autumn wind brushed Nicolette's skirt and chilled her under her thin sweater. She was thinking of home, not her basement studio in Boston, but her real home in Manila and the joys driving her Subaru on a night like this beside the bay. She unclipped her purse and removed a pack of cigarettes. There was a solitude to the night that she preferred. Maribel joined her on the steps. When I first saw you, I knew you were Filipino. Guess how? Nicolette pumped her lighter, cupping it to the cigarette at her lips. She shrugged. My mom pointed it out to me. It's the button nose. She watched the pregnant woman gather her waist-length hair behind her and tie it into a ponytail. It reminded her of her own hair before she had had it cropped. Maribel's face was round and shiny, a polished plate, and her gestures seemed animated, a marionette's. After several minutes of small talk, she even popped as if someone had yanked invisible strings attached to her elbows and knees. Shit, Maribel said holding Nicolette's arm. I'm late for meeting my husband. It was nice to meet you. I like the way you talk. The way she talked, Nicolette thought her accent was undetectable. The night was cooling quickly, and she took another drag of her cigarette before stubbing it beneath her white sneaker. Beyond the parking lot, she watched Maribel rush past the diamond-hold fence. Even this far along in her pregnancy, the woman wore heels. Nicolette remembered her American cousins who visited her in Manila. Like Maribel, they possessed this same blithe manner, this same hurry to the next item on a punch list, and these cousins were lazy. Their English was less perhaps precise than hers, cluttered with idioms and unnecessary slang. When her ex-boyfriend Peter met them, he would imitate their perky voices. So what do you guys do for fun? Americans in their corny slang, she thought. She walked to the tea station deciding that she would not sabotage the possibility of friendship. So far, Nicolette had avoided making friends, reading as much as time afforded in the opulent reading room of the Boston Public Library. This week, she allowed herself to break from her studies and her temp work and lounged on the grassy Esplanade beside the Charles River, contemplating the numbered sailboats in the bay. She carried orphaned women's magazines that she salvaged for the laundromat with her because they, more than anything, seemed to echo her feelings about her new life. The modern woman speaks, career first, spouse's second. What makes a place home? Afternoon, a nervous voice interrupted her reading, and she looked up from her Nora Roberts novel to see a good-looking black man with his black Labrador retriever stooping to ask directions. Nicolette looked at him, impassively making it clear that he was an interruption. Other times on Esplanade, her sister Menci, or other Kaibigan in the Philippines interrupted her thoughts, and she would then remove the due date card from the back of her library book and compose a list of 25 things to share with them about her quiet life in the states. Still, her ability to organize, to sort her relationships into neat compartments like supplies and medical closet, frustrated her. Seated on her bench, beneath a wide cloudless bay, she would never admit that she longed for the messy logistics of a man. She could manage everything else, her career, her apartment, the demands of family and ex-boyfriends back home, but she could not will love into her life. I'm going to introduce Joanna Lynn B. Cruz. She's an associate professor at the University of Philippines, Mindanao. She's the author of Women Loving Stories in a Play and Women on Fire. She has received the Palanca Memorial Literary Awards and has represented the Philippines in various international writers festival. Her book about starting her life over in Davao City, Abinaco, or so I thought the first memoir by a lesbian writer in the Philippines was published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2020. I'm passing it to Joanna. Thank you, Rico. Buying the house on Makopa Street. Every day in the new house, I proved to myself that I am able to take care of my family and myself. I was my own woman and my own husband, as it were. I could hammer, drive screws, saw, paint, rewire, lift, put my house in order. But something didn't feel right inside. In Binsaya, the word labai is used to mean three things. To throw away, to pass through, and for time to pass. Depending on stress, the phrase, mga tuig na nilabai can mean the years that have passed, or nilabai, the years thrown away. By the time I moved to my own house in Davao City, seven years had passed. And part of me felt that in fact, they were years I have thrown away because of my foolishness. To be the fool, not just any kind of fool, requires trusting that the heart knows the way, even when it cannot see it. It sees being lost as only another way to get where we want to go. I thought about all the time I wasted on persons who were merely nilabai passing through, like ambulance peddlers of joy, or something that looked like it. They called out to me, anyone home? I kept opening my door to see who was out there, like Rumi's joy. I was afraid to miss out on what was on offer for the day, so I took everything. Especially after I finally broke up with X who passed through like a typhoon several times a year. Living in the old house in Wellspring Village taught me that every day someone would come along to offer something. Fresh catch, a bargain, an item available on installment, or even a service like gardening. I even had a Suki fish vendor who came so regularly, I would worry something bad had happened to him when he didn't. He was even on my Christmas list. Living there taught me hope and trust. But in the new house, hardly anyone came by. The fish hawker that did use the rigged scale I soon discovered, so I stopped buying from him. When I started refusing him, he asked dramatically in English, but why? It was disarming, but I wasn't going to be victimized by a cheater again. I learned to keep my door closed. And with the homeowners association for bad strangers from entering the subdivision for security because of reported burglary incidents, I was grateful. I wasn't going to take any chances. The same was true with my relationships. I was done with ambulance lung. I felt ready for someone who will stay. But the truth was, after X, I was also simply passing through. No one could get me to stay. We are supposed to say around here when we pass along a residential street we don't live in. It shows the residents were not up to no good in their neighborhood. It shows we acknowledge their territory. The first time I heard it said to me, I thought it meant they were asking me if I wanted to throw something away. How are non-native speakers supposed to know the difference anyway? And having grown up in Manila, I certainly wasn't used to people asking me permission to pass my street. Why should anyone care? But I know now how wise it is to inform people you're dating when you're only passing through, like a warning. But also as a way to seek permission. We don't have to stay long, not moving in, thank you very much. That way, no one gets their hopes up. No one cries, wow, when it's time to leave. Getting a loan to buy the house was the biggest commitment I had ever made to something that didn't even exist except on paper. Visiting the site which at that point was only land covered with cogon grass. I noted the view of Palomo mountain range on the west. I told the engineer in charge of the project to orient my house towards east as my mother had taught me. For Filipinos, east is the most auspicious direction to face because it suggests new beginnings every day. Silangan, where the sun rises, literally means a place to be born or to arise. I could commit to that. After a year I discovered that the longer mortgage term meant higher interest rates. The system was rigged to favor the lender, of course. I wanted out. At that time I was just starting my relationship with Mags who offered me the only way out, a loan, interest free. What was the catch? I wondered. She was willing to risk some funds she had saved for her retirement to free me from the honest of my mortgage. But I didn't want to feel like I had to stay in the relationship with her just because I owed her money. That wasn't the way out. That would have been a trap. I was glad she didn't frame it as a romantic proposal, which would have sent me running. I drew up a loan agreement myself with my own terms. We signed it, had it notarized, and I was free from my e-big loan. Love, however, I was only beginning to get tied up. After three years I was able to pay off my loan. I was free. Mags joked, you can break up with me now. You wish, I said. Knowing full well neither one of us was leaving our little house on the train. Not at this juncture. This time, the years passed, but we're not wasted. Mila Bai, this house, oriented towards the east, has brought me the good fortune of the new life I had wished for when I moved to Davao in 2007. I had to throw away the first seven years of indecision and flailing around in desperation to earn this second chance at my 10 of cups oracle. Now we can start building another extension to the house and finally get the damn fence painted or simply allow the house to expand and contract through the years. Thank you very much. I'd like to introduce our next reader. George Gonzaga Deosso has been a fellow for poetry in the UST IAS and Cinema National Writers' Workshops in the Philippines. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in various Philippine publications. He will be reading from his book The Horseman's Revolt and Other Horrors, a collection of dark short fiction from the University of Sampa Tomas Publishing House. He plays several musical instruments, sings, and writes poetry and prose. With these achievements at a young age, he describes himself as just a boy. George. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Joanna. And hi everyone. I'll be reading from my book called The Horseman's Revolt and Other Horrors, which is my first book of fiction. I've always seen literature, especially horror fiction as a means of interrogating the way that we are living now. Within the conventions of horror, there is this potential to reveal certain ironies whenever we choose to side with or oppose or to ignore the forces that shape our society. The excerpt then that I'll be reading would come from one such story. The story is entitled, Infected. Around us, the road remained silent. The trees and bushes which managed to live in the midst of the apocalypse waved into humid air. That's good to hear, the soldier said. You weren't one of those who would go out and protest against what we do. Why should I anyway, I asked. There's no better way of saving this country of getting rid of all those elements that harm it. I think it's just necessary so the plague would stop. He nodded, smiling as if suddenly he saw me for the first time. I have friends to join protests who raised their fists and screamed for Rada to resign. They're distraught by the number of killings. I respect their opinion, but I think they just don't understand if the authority wouldn't act as they are doing now. The plague would not stop. People would will go on dying, turning into undead themselves. Do you know what I think of people like your friends? I shook my head. They're puppets paid by the party who wants to oust our president. I've heard that before, though I was not quite convinced that it is so. Still, there's no harm to consider such an idea. Rada only had good intentions. Why people should want to get rid of her is beyond me. When we reached the boulevard, when alas came to the city just a couple of years ago, people would usually walk here, strolling idly, their gaze resting on the horizon. Someone sit on the seawall which separates the boulevard and the sea, brushing the shores of the magheta. Still, there were palm trees in the boulevard. Though people would usually be seen taking their afternoon naps under these trees, lying on benches or in blankets. Set on the grass of the traffic island between the sidewalk by the seawall and the road proper itself. Paddy cabs and occasional private vehicles used to pass by under usual unhurried traffic. Now as Philip and I strolled on this road, I felt again the weight of absence. I've always felt in all the places I went to search for Nick. The magheta was now just a copy of all those ghost towns I've ever set my foot on. They've been infected, the people, Philip said. Notting his head to the empty shops that lined the boulevard. Everything looked empty, felt empty. Tumbled chairs, doors left open, windows shattered, banners dangling on one corner, slashed through awnings. I looked around. No trace of life besides the two of us. No one was standing or sitting on the seawall. The sky was swallowed by grey clouds while the wind rose. I better get back, I said. I left my things at the university. Soon, my friend of his here would be on the seawall watching the sunset. But it's just us here. I turned and began to walk back to the school. Philip followed from behind. As I walked, I saw from a distance a figure walking towards us. It wasn't exactly walking, more like limping. The figure came nearer, a trail of red from its neck to the shoulder became visible. It was a woman in a floral dress that ran beyond her knee. One of her hands was held in front of her as she walked, slowly, as if in pain. Her mouth opened and closed. Only when she was a few steps away from me that I realized she was speaking, help me, help me please. One of her hands landed on her neck from where the trail of red forced blood. A carrier bit her on the neck, but it wasn't too late. We could still rush her to the hospital in the university. If only there were only doctors left in there. I had just taken a few steps towards her when the hand landed on my shoulder. Don't move, Philip said, tightening his grip on the rifle's lung on his shoulder. She walked towards the woman. She raised the rifle, the barrel trained to the woman's direction. He pulled the trigger. The first shot hit her on the shoulder and the impact tipped her on the ground as if she was shoved by strong invisible hands. The soldier walked to her. I could hear her pleading, help me, help me. Was it me she was calling to? Was it Philip? But she was looking at neither of us. Here's played behind her head with her own blood. She was looking at the sky, that iron sky perhaps hearing nothing but the breeze of the sea in her ears. She was looking at nothing in particular. Perhaps the chill from the breeze was her only witness, the only thing to help her. When Philip positioned the rifle for the second shot, I turned my head to the sea. That ends my reading. Let me now introduce our next author. She's Lyra Stapleton and she's the author of The Ruin of Everything published by Paloma and the lowest blue flame before nothing. Her works has appeared in dozens of pre-audicles including the LA Review of Books, Poets and Writers, The Brooklyn Rail, Miss, Glimmer Train and the Indiana Review. She received a Ludwig Wogelstein Foundation grant for writers, the University of Michigan's Hopwood Award for Fiction twice, and the Columbia Journal Fiction Prize. Thank you. And thank you to San Francisco Public Library, Pawa, and to Cecilia and Beverly and all who have helped to organize this event. It is an honor to be here. So I am going to read paragraph excerpts from various stories in my collection, so I decided I'd read them like as if they're prose poems. So this first one is the beginning of a story called The Alpha Male. She was conceived of the one wild beatnik summer of his mother's youth. His father was a foreigner who worked in the kitchen. She was earning a little extra school money as a waitress. The father well understood the nature of the affair, and so as soon as he was informed, he disappeared so that no mutual acquaintance could find him. Having the baby was an active defiance by which she proved she was morally superior. Her parents disapproved, but she was after all their little princess, how she saw herself, one for whom her doors would do anything. And so she collected such a doors in her life. There she was storming out in righteous anger, and there they were following supplicant arm spread. The second one is the beginning of a story called the intention neglect. Violet's brother was a removed cagey young man as long as she knew him, which was only 16 years. Her mother had left him in the Philippines when she married a white man. He was two when she left him 11 when she brought him over. He had an accent and though Lansing, Michigan was equal parts black, Mexican and white the Vietnamese came later. And his foreigners and brownness were nothing new. He got beat up every other day because he feared getting beat. Sudden moves made him start and that made people want to hit him. Remember the greasy kid in the back who is getting beat up at home is most likely to get beat at school as well. Unless the child is also entitled enough to become a bully. This counterintuitive combination is not so uncommon. The boy or girl will be humiliated by children and teachers alike. Teachers are more subtle with sighs and glances and cruel notes on exercises. This is the end of a story called new. In this room in this museum in this family's home in the Treme in New Orleans. I felt like I had arrived at some truth I'd needed all along and it felt like home to me. My American self, the meeting place of three peoples bursting against each other in the cyclone of history. Two continents or four, and two of those three peoples, perhaps known but certainly denied the unsung the stubborn the radiant ships that a distant capacity for wonder, a cop apocalypse and holocaust, holocaust apocalypse. And I will not leave you with an image of the dispossessed wandering up the roadway, the undead groping up the roadway after the dead, the disease, the rotting innards, the search for nourishment. Nor will I leave you with an image of the genius instruments of torture, its iron rods and orderly systems, nor the terror, the wild eyes of the bill wielding unknown. I will leave you with the image of beloved warriors and horseback, cherishing their families, protecting their neighbors, riding into the next world, fierce like deities, gentlest poets, soft as hatchlings, as magnificent as every last dusk. And this is another ending of a story called the glory of there was a time when I figured the only way to make a person love us is to know they will. It's amazing, we cannot believe that is not good enough, we have to know, we can't walk out into the world of the searching hoping to make them truly love us. One has to know and fear they will. One has to feel eyes upon us and know what is mean, what what it means, and I never knew that in my young life, and so I never had love. Sometimes, sometimes in my thinking, I believe the magic life was conceived not with Tommy, but the moment before Tommy, somehow in that evening, the fateful place spot space where his eyes came upon me. Somehow in the distant, in the instant before I knew I was lovable and then saw that Tommy was the one to do it. Sometimes I believe that that inconceivable joy, those jolt of cool adrenaline from inexplicable sources came the instant before him. And the young woman next to me is blabbering, imitating Tyson's effeminate list and looking over at Tommy, and he is, he is saying to someone, but everyone is saying, my God, can you believe this my God look at that asshole and I know what time and I know that Tommy does not love me anymore. This is the beginning of a story called Godspeed. The James Baldwin short story Sonny's Blues is about two brothers who grew up in Harlem during the Second World War. One, the eldest is a bit righteous, an upstanding citizen type, a teacher and a family man. The other is a jazz musician and a heroin addict. The parents died while they were young, and the eldest tried to be a father to the youngest, but could never care for him in the way that he wanted. The Algebra instructor, he's only slightly more disgusted with the penis than he is with himself, and disapproves sadly, mistrustfully, mistrustfully for most of the work. And then at the very end, the older brother who is the narrator goes to see the younger whose name is Sonny perform. The narrator who remains nameless enters this higher realm, this golden room in which Sonny's veins bore royal blood. The music is sublime and the narrator somehow makes peace, at least for that moment with the trials they've suffered. And this is the end of a story and the end of the book. The story is called Flesh and Blood. She made accusations about my mental health according to the graduate studies of her firm lady of guidance. These things were similar to what Tommy wanted to say but didn't. It is clear to me now. The guidebooks say I am to suffer. And Tommy and Marta believe this too, but it is really so simple. It is also simple. And here I am pressing center left with my own will. And I can feel my faint love, my loving place in the world. I can feel my flesh and blood, the center left, my animal heart reviving like a patient now given an antidote. My love will grow immense. It's bigger than two people in my own small life. It is my offering to everyone, to my neighbors in this gray city block and to remote villagers under the hot distant sun. It is my offering to suffering children, the antidote to all. Thank you. And I am now going to introduce Brian Ascalon Roly, who is a professor and award winning author of Filipino and American descent. In 2020 he became a national endowment of the arts literature fellow. He also received fellowships and awards from the University of Cambridge Cornell University, the Ohio Arts Council, the Jarasi Foundation, Ragdale and the VCCA among others. His books include American Son, A Novel, which was an LA Times Best Book, New York Times Notable Book, Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize finalist and winner of the Association for Asian American Studies Pro's Book Award, among other honors. His collection The Last Mistress of Jose Rizal Northwestern University Press appeared in April 2016. Thank you. I'm very honored to be here. And just thank you to everybody who who's involved in organizing. Okay, I'm going to read some poems from Ambus gave my, my latest chat book, sibling rivalry. The boy brain cannot understand why we smile at him more than at you. Perhaps someday you may appreciate what it is like to have a doctor tell you that your child will die young if you lack vigilance. How a cold afternoon can encumber an already overburdened mind. How a simple cold can fell him. But what at what cost to you Jacob. Lately you have been hitting him in his walker or wheelchair tipping it over from the back. He fell face forward the other morning cheek against the dirt knocking a tooth out pinkish and bloody. He stole his beloved stuffed cat gouged her eyes with my purple grading pencil. We turn kitty onto his bedsheet ready to be found with cloth warming out of her sockets. You have discovered his emotional ability that frontal lobe damage that can make a person cry, simply by scene, a cartoon character frown, or to laugh in response to a stranger smile. You have learned by now how to make him weep by presenting a sad face by killing a butterfly against the glass by telling him daddy was sad last night, because he cannot walk. They say we are not supposed to over mediate and sibling fights. And perhaps I do overreact when I come over to break it up. My voice frightening your eyes my feet pounding wood floors demanding what have you done Jacob to make your brother so upset. You look down, frown, face in an angry sulk. You say nothing, but look up to see if you had pushed too hard. I see the fear there and stop myself from grabbing your hand to drag you to timeout chair. Instead, I gather my breath. And you'll beside you direct your face to mine and say, do you know you're your you are your brother's keeper. You are four years seven, and already I am anticipating my own death. This one's called blessings. I walked to our son's bedroom door and watched him napping his mouth the gate head limp to one side. You try to think of such a child as normal, as capable as anyone else, because you are supposed to, and because you do not want to hold him back, but also because it is easy enough to deny his difference and the future when he laughs. But when he is sleeping you can see in his slack face and recall last night when he vomited, and you took him to the hospital for an IV drip had to help the nurse, hold down his arms, while he struggled, screamed, and the gurney brunt as a second nurse maneuver to push the needle in. And I did it held him down, kissed his ear sweetly, while his legs kicked my chest and he screamed, no daddy please gathered courage by the possibility of his pale bluish face there on the hospital gurney. His lips cold turning cold and new organ exchange. You read about the father you read about the fathers who give up an organ or body part for their sick suffering kid. On TV, a man wanted to give his heart to his boy, who had the red ragged red fibers heart disease we knew about, but the doctors wouldn't let him so we hung himself. Fortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, he didn't quite die, didn't quite finish the job. So we beg the Maverick doctor who breaks all the rules to give the boy his heart. I'm about to die anyway, he said, but it doesn't work that way the doctor said the heart goes to someone in a queue. And I wouldn't give it out to anyone, the man said, you have to do it please, he beg. The doctor said, but you damaged the heart. Okay, this one is called holding court wheelchair boy, some kids said as we entered the hotel lobby. Later, another one asked me, what happened to him. As I helped you walk to the bathroom by holding your hot six year old hands. Later that night in the restaurant bathroom and third boy asked, why are you in that. And I forced myself to let you answer for yourself and wash my jittery hands. I can't walk you said, so I took your hands, helped you wobble to the sink and placed your palms beneath the water and soak them whispering, you can walk, you just need a walker or hand to help. I answered apologetically, I just meant I can't do it on my own, and lowered your eyes. The apolitetic tone hurt me like an uppercut, and I swore at myself not to show my worry, and kept a tight smile, as children came up to us in the pool singing that cheerful phrase, the wheelchair boy. Our puckered skin smelling of chlorine and see in bed, your mother and I wonder what the other kids say to you at hotel day compo. Back in snowy Ohio, we saw you in your classroom trying to talk in your halted manner, and the other kids would give up listening before you finish just walk away. The compo is really just a pretty fried daycare center done up in fake Tahiti, with eucalyptus spa sense meant to cover up the smell of disinfectant and potty, where bamboo framed windows open to the breezeway so adults can peer in as they pass and make sure staff are not abusing children. My mother passed by her neck was a wilted orchid still dangling about her neck glanced in and saw you there at the head of the table talking as other kids watched on. He was holding court, she told me later, and giggled with her characteristic cheer, to which I said, What do you mean, holding court. I mean they were watching him talk who the teachers other children. I shut my eyes and tried to imagine this, the rumble of the sea on sand felt different here, and then the cradle of my late childhood, the coast of California. Did they seem interested or entertained, my wife asked abruptly looking up from her magazine and leaned forward with hunger. My mother seemed confused and search her memory to discern the meaning. She often mistook my wife's meanings due to the slipperiness of accents. What does it matter, she said, he had their attention. I leaned forward, licked my lips and said, Tell me more. Okay, thank you. Now my pleasure to introduce the next your next reader. Mary Spicio. Mary Spicio writes middle grade novels full of heart and hope. She's the author of the house that Lou built, which won an Asian Pacific American Libraries Association Honor Award was an NPR best book and was named by many state reading and best of lists. Those recent books are any day with you, and how to win a slime war. She lives with her family in the suburban wild of northern California. Thank you Brian and thank you everyone I'm very excited and very honored to be here and I'm excited to read from my next or for my latest middle grade novel how to win a slime war. So this book is all about a boy a Philippinex American boy named Alex Manalo, who moves to a new city with his dad in order to take over their families, struggling Asian market and so in his new school, Alex wants to stand out. And so he joins a sixth grade slime war. The only problem with that is that his dad has very different ideas and expectations of what Alex should be doing with his time so ultimately this is all about a boy who learns to find his voice. So I will, I'm going to read from toward the beginning of the book and each or a lot of the chapters start with a slime recipe for anybody who wants to try making slime at home. Okay, super stretch in Lola and Lola's kitchen. I shake a can of shaving cream and squirt it into a plastic tub circling until it peaks into a tall foamy mound. The last time I made this slime dad got mad, since I used his whole can but he won't miss this, even though it's been a few weeks since we moved, there are still boxes and packing paper scattered all around. The tub doesn't look like much until suddenly it does, because here's what happens white glue is a polymer, a molecule with thousands of atoms, and when you combine it with certain ingredients and give it a lot of care, they stick to each other. They turn into something new slime. Sometimes butter slime crunch slime sand slime glow in the dark slime and one time an edible batch that tasted like juicy watermelon. Sometimes I create rainbow colors. Other times I plop in teeny beads so it feels unexpected as you're squishy. This batch sticks to the bottom of the bowl until I ball it up. I need it like bread, then pull it like taffy as wide as it'll go the length of my arms. I twist it up until it fits neatly into a small clear container. And the bright green shines through. I write out a label and slap it onto the lid. Super stretch. Alex, let's get going dad yells I peeked my head through the kitchen door. Dad's waiting with a big smile. I'll get my helmet I say, How about we drive there's a box I want to bring home from the market. It's okay I'd rather bike I say meet you there. Dad nods. I strap on my helmet and head out. I'm getting used to it around here. It's different from our old home, where we lived in a tall condo on a busy street surrounded by giant tech companies and endless lines of electric cars whizzing by. Here I roll past boxy houses with trim lawns past a pat coffee shop a bustling tire shop past a grassy park of slut smiley people walking their dogs. My grandparents store isn't far from the house. I mean our store. I stopped to get used to saying that. On the way I stop under a large leafy oak in the park. Some light peeks in through the trees and makes cob web shadows on the pavement. I stare at a building across the street. I'm in Valley Middle School. I'll start sixth grade there tomorrow and I'm somewhere between ready and petrified. My old school had boys twice my height who called me by the wrong name Alan Felix Alec. They made fun of me for playing with boogers at lunch when I brought an Uzi batch to school once everyone laughed. Now I start fresh. In a few minutes I reach a corner of shops. Some boys around my age are biking through the parking lot to I wish I had friends to goof off with already. My family's market is in a little strip mall along with a mailbox and shipping place and nail salon and an empty storefront with a for lease sign. The way is a similar looking block but with fancier shops like an olive oil store that sells every flavor of olive oil. Why? And a store that sells unfinished tree stumps. Also why? We've seen lots of businesses come and go but my family's has been here the longest. I sling off my helmet, lock up my bike and push through the glass doors. A bell jingles and a sign says new and improved Manalo market coming soon. This is the whole reason we came here and I'm ready. Okay, CEO. The sunlight floods through the store, I'm sorry sunlight floods the store through floor to ceiling windows. Dad grew up in the market and I spent a lot of time here too while staying with my grandparents on the weekends or sometimes the whole summer. 12 years of the same happy memories people coming in and out, the smell of savory Filipino food and a bright mix of languages and laughter. Whenever I walk in I always have the same feeling of home. The market has a small seating area and aisle stocked with local and imported food and trinkets from China, Korea, India, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines. There's a packed colorful row of candies and crackers and guava juice boxes that go tastefully with salty dried squid snacks. The rice wall is stacked with pallets of giant rice sacks and has a no climbing sign. True story that signs there because of me and my cousins. It's one of our favorite things to do. I zoom past the rice wall and smack the bags like drums. I find the counter ringing up a mom and her little kid. A small TV plays Filipino soap operas in a steady hum of taglish to Galu words mixed with English. We don't really watch the shows but since we miss Lola, we keep, we keep it on. The register bings and dad hands the woman some change. Hold on don't leave yet I say to the lady and I reach under the counter for a small box of candy. I pull one out. It's peach colored with a clear wrapper and I hold it up to the boy. Do you dare me to eat this with the wrapper still on? The kid's eyes widen and before he can answer I pop it into my mouth. The rice paper melts on my tongue. For you I say and I hand him the whole box. Thanks guys see you soon. The mom says waving in the door swing clothes. Do you know her? I asked. Dad shakes his head. Probably a regular. Everyone around here loves my grandparents. They trust them. Plus Lola always gives treats candies or almond cookies or sweet rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves that Lola bakes to any cute kid or neighborhood buddy who drops by. It's never something for nothing Alex Lola likes to say owning a store is about building relationships. Dad grabs a clipboard and begins roaming the aisles making notes. I slide my backpack onto the empty takeout bar which used to sell fresh steaming hot Filipino dishes. But we're bringing it back bigger and better. It's on dad's list somewhere. Right there. And I have the pleasure of introducing Randy rebuy. Randy rebuy is the author of an infinite number of parallel universes. After the shot drops and most recently patron saints of nothing, which received five starred reviews was selected as a Freeman book award. Randy was born in the Philippines and raised in the United States. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches high school full time. Please welcome Randy. All right, what's up everybody. Thank you for the intro. And just as a quick side note, I have my toddler just like off frame here so you might hear him. And that's just going to be one of this. All right, I'm going to read a little bit from patron saints of nothing for you. The story about a Filipino American teen whose cousin in the Philippines is killed as part of the drug war. Also a quick shout out to Maria Resta and her noble peace prize when on Friday. All right, let's see this happens a little bit later in the story you don't need to hold a lot of context at this point the main character has figured out some things and still has some other things to figure out. The waves roll in and out in and out from small colorful flags from polls flap in the wind. A couple of kids run past kicking up sand stray dog it's main g copper for matted with the oceans water chases after them. I stopped just shy of the waters reach and look in the sky to the horizon to my feet. The water is quiet and gathered. And then it comes roaring back in a low wave that breaks 20 or 30 feet out. The water is ashore, sliding over my feet with surprising warmth and rising to cover my moments later it slips away, leaving my toes sinking into the sand. And it sounds stupid to say this, but I feel like I'm home. Maybe everybody feels like this when they leave a place like Michigan kickback on a sunny beach a few degrees from the equator. Maybe in the same way I find myself suddenly considering unenrolling at U of M. They dream of quitting their nine to five jobs moving here and opening a beachfront restaurant or something. The overwhelming piece of waves and sunlight makes everything else seem inconsequential. But I can't help but feel like it's something more for me than a tourist fantasy. Most of the time when I tell someone I was born in the Philippines, they're very interested for a moment. Oh, when did you move to America? They'll ask. When I was one, I'll answer their interest will fade like I was just messing with them. Then they'll say something like, Oh, it doesn't really count them. You don't remember anything. I guess not, I'd say. Because I never really know what else to say. Let's stand in here with my feet in the water, looking into the sound of the gallogue and other languages mixed with laughter and the crashing of the waves. Smelling the chicken in its style, porcupine howling behind me, as swallows flip past overhead to their nests high in the surrounding cliffs. I feel like that first year mattered in a way I've never felt it did before. Surely the air, your lungs first breath matters, the language, your ears first hear, the foods, your nose first smells, your tongue first tastes, the soil you first crawl upon. My conscious brain might not remember, but something in me does. I step farther into the water until small waves break against my chest, pushing me back toward the shore. But I keep moving forward as I've headed for the distant islands. Sand and shells crunch underfoot, I shiver, dunk my head, stay under as long as my lungs will allow, and then break the surface. The water runs down my hair, my face salts tingling on my lips. I go out a bit more until my feet no longer touch bottom, treading to keep myself afloat. I look back at the beach and wave at my teeth that's chilling in the shade. They wave back, and one of them shouts something I can't hear. I wave again, turn to face the open sea. It starts to rain lightly, even though the sun is still out. It seems impossible that at this moment this country contains countless girls in the same situation. Rainow is in countless men whose unchecked appetite serve as the key to the trap. It strikes me that I cannot claim this country's serene coves and sun-soaked beaches without also claiming its poverty, its problems, its history. To say that any aspect of it is part of me is to say that all of it is part of me. Thank you. And keep it short. I have a short attention span, so. All right, and also my toddlers like asking for more cookies. I'm honored to introduce the next reader, our last reader, Gina Apostol's fourth novel, Insurrecto, was named by publishers Weekly, one of the 10 best books of 2018, selected as an editor's choice of the New York Times. The New York Times calls Insurrecto a bravura performance. Apostol is a magician with language. Think for his think now the car. Her third book, Gun Dealers Daughter, when the 2013 10 open book award for first two novels, Biblio lepsi and the Revolution, according to Ramundo Matat, both won the one Liya prize for now. The Philippine National Book Awards. My son is excited to. And she was a fellow at the Citibicella. He's very excited. Umbria, Italy, Emily Harvey Foundation among others for essays and stories. I've appeared in New York Times, Los Angeles, or policy review, Massachusetts review and others. She lives in New York City. And grew up. She teaches at Houston School in New York City. Gina, take it away. Hello. Can everyone see me I need to figure this out. Hello. Thank you to everyone for being here. And thank you for the organizers of this reading. I'm going to read from the revolution, according to Ramundo Matat, which is coming out in paperback soon. This is what it looks like. And what we have here is the cover is the one Luna painting of Jose Rizal. Ramundo Matat is a historical figure, very minor. I found out that he was one of the two people who were in the pitan. When Dr. Pio Valenzuela went to the pitan to ask Rizal if the catifuna should go to war. He was an online patient, a decoy patient, the alibi of Dr. Pio Valenzuela to visit Rizal. And his voice is not heard in history. This part of the novel is in his words. The bats of the pitan, my brothers, followed us to the grounds, rubbing about and testing my shaky steps with their whirring, whistling wings, their panicky moves. He's in the pitan, the island of Zambuanga, when he actually meets Rizal. It's towards the end of this novel. Suddenly I felt homesick. Or what is it you call that humid swell of longing like a wave in the chest. In my case, activated by one creature's passing caress. A sulfur in his flight, a frozen grist of tears, caught in his graveyard wings. The changeling orbits of these creatures' progress, night scores of grief, reminded me of the lush caverns of Gavite, with its cold groves and banyan ghosts. The haunting, sorcerous of their flight recalled another twilight moment a long time ago. I wondered at my distance from my hometown, up here by the foreign drawl of the southern sea. If I fell, no one would remember my name. If I drowned, no one would follow. An ancient undertow took me into its claws, a grip of sadness. How did I get here? On top of the rock I was dizzy, disconcerted, and I imagined from this vantage I would never escape this island. I understood then the weight, the burden in this place, the sour night bloom of exile and remorse in the pitan. Slowly distinctly, we left the bats to their derangement, and Rufino pulled me downward and downward to meet Smog Bulag, his feet firmly on the ground who said, Aha, did you feel it? What, Rufino said, the hand of the Capre from the rock? No, said Rufino. Yes, I thought, but I did not admit it out loud. As we shuffled back toward the huts, we heard it clearly, the hero's voice. We were standing to the right beyond their can, under the shadow of the rock, and so the sea grows. The hero was saying, still talking about his fructapaho, snorted Rufino, shh, whispered Bulag. I hate to say it, there was something unconsoling about the voice. Its echo of unspeakable remove, I knew I should leave, but I couldn't. A pall oppressed me, a black despair. On the pitan, if I were not careful, oblivion would swallow me up. Lombongo was the end of the world, as far as anyone could tell, from the top of that rock, and there was nothing. With all the pig herding, coffee planting, fishnet hauling, butterfly gathering, mango eating, drainage, fathoming, eye saving, Spanish teaching, carpet flying, even love making. There was nothing to live for under its stricken endless stars. It was disorienting the pearl of the Orient. I could see no horizon against the beach. They had flung us far from the flat world. Anyway, what was the point to retrieve the illusion of wholeness for this random and sinking archipelago, this patchwork of bamboo and coconut planets speaking idly and in tongues from where I stood? To say, a geography as well stitched from the confused leaps of flying fish, as from the solicisms of foreign lunatics, it was true. Into the dumb chattering world, we had been born from the mad mistakes of Magellan and one day, who knows, we will perish from our own. My doubts blinded me even from more than my senses did. Cosmologies built from spontaneous horror have the virtue of dubious detail. And for a minute, I saw the precise outlines of my country's fruitless map etched in a plot of grass, which I visited beside the peat and sea I grieved. It was undeniable. In fact, I was surprised to see as I looked about the disjoint, yet unmistakable shape of the archipelago in the distance, scraped out and shaped from a careful scrub of leaves. What the hell? Did the man plan out even the topiary of the nation? From this vantage, the notion of Filipinas was at best a fluke, or were someone else's error? The resolutions of the association are just patriotic and timely. The hero murmured, especially as now Spain is weakened by the revolution in Cuba. So what are we to do? The hero sighed, an escaped phantom from the chest. I patched his sounds from the air. Sonar gambles. How distant for him were the fights for the Cortes, newspapers, propaganda fevers, Europe's museums, streets of Gibraltar and Suez, maidens of barrettes and lewd London, the scientific nightmare that was New York, and ships of bobble in which, to his misfortune, he alone understood words people used to slander one another. Childhood between the mountain and the bay, all the generic names of putative loves, they were mirages. He pondered daily which are the following most depressed him. To remember the sweet songs of his old yaya and her tobacco tales of mystical lace, or to admit that those days would never return. To what end revolt? He had said it already, better than most. He had balanced the syllogisms of further predations, proximal Japan or enormous America, take your pick worse, and personally he did not wish to live to see that day to look at ourselves in some abject distance and so gay at the hopeless deformity of our hopes. For the moment he made no answer. His silence drowning drowned among the bats. In Hong Kong, he said tentatively, I have a library. Thank you. Thank you. Cecilia here to just to close the reading portion of the program. Thank you, authors. You are all really wonderful. It was a marvelous performance everyone. And thanks again to the audience supporters are sponsors San Francisco public library and power. We hope that this performance program gets more people interested in Philippine and Philippine American literature do pick up copies of the authors books. This will support not only the authors, but also the publishers and the booksellers, all at the same time. Remember Christmas is around the corner. Goodbye for now. Thank you. That was so amazing. Thank you, Cecilia for organizing this Beverly for co hosting and all you authors. Oh my gosh so powerful. The words your stories Bravo. So that folks save the dates this is an example of what we will be presenting to you live and in person. October 14 through 16 and 2022 real hot off the press in and usually in our rooms downstairs in the lower level in our current auditorium so please join us. So check that on your calendar October 14 through 16 2022 the sixth Filipino American International Book Festival here at the San Francisco main library so check the power. Inc. com website or filled books festival.org website for updates on the upcoming six Filipino American book festivals so thank you again and have a good evening and have a good morning wherever you are. Everyone thank you.