The Halo-Halo Review is pleased to interview authors in the aftermath of their books’ releases. This issue’s featured authors include Elizabeth Ann Besa-Quirino.
What is your most recent book?
Every Ounce of Courage: A Daughter’s Reflections On Her Mother’s Bravery
This is a food and history memoir about a Filipina civilian, my late mother Lourdes “Lulu” Reyes Besa, who was also a decorated heroine during World War II.
Every Ounce of Courage is a daughter’s story of her mother’s courage, brave struggles, and humanity in the bleakest of circumstances.
It all started one late night as I baked ensaymadas. I received a phone call from a stranger that changed my life. “You don’t know me, but your mother saved my life,” the caller said. That late night conversation with an American WWII veteran and POW revealed to me the untold stories of my mother Lulu’s wartime heroism in the Philippines and sparked a twenty-year journey of discovery about Lulu Reyes’ lifelong acts of bravery and compassion.
In my mother’s story, I discovered a complex life full of joy, sorrow, selflessness, and survival, and learned precious lessons about how the timeless bonds of family, the steadfast strength of faith and the power of an indomitable will can provide solace and sense in a world of uncertainty.
When was it released?
Every Ounce of Courage was released on June 15, 2023 – which coincidentally, was my birthday.
What has been the response/ what has surprised you most about the response?
The response has been positive and overwhelming, from readers. During my writing process for this book, I did a deep dive into a trove of old letters, photographs, news clippings, journals, history books which had first-hand accounts of my mother’s bravery, and old family recipes going back to my grandmother’s time at the turn of the century. The result was a story of courage, family and life in the Philippines through the prism of generational family recipes and wartime stories.
Every Ounce of Courage opened doors of opportunities for me, as an author and memoirist. I was invited numerous times since the release of the book, to popular literary events and book festivals on the east and the west coast here in the United States.
My book is available worldwide in paperback and in eBook format on various online bookstores and platforms. On Apple Books alone, the digital copy is sold in 51 countries.
The most heartwarming response has been the feedback from families of WWII veterans who read my book and mention that they had a grandparent, or a relative in the Philippines and they thanked me for my mother’s bravery in bringing aid to the POWs back then.
Tell me something not obvious or known about the book.
Also, since the narrations were filled with wartime history stories, I spent about 20 years of factual research to make sure I had the data accurate. It was difficult to find first-hand accounts of the wartime, and of my mother’s brave work helping American and Filipino POWs, because by the time I was writing, most of my mother’s friends and relatives had already passed away.
As for the family recipes included, my team and I worked on recipe-testing and adjusting the process to faster cooking times and substituting ingredients more accessible in present times.
But one of the best types of feedback I got from readers was this: “I now know historical events that happened during WWII which I never got to read about in our history text books in the Philippines. Lulu Reyes was never mentioned in history books, and I believe Philippine history should include her and her heroism.”
What are you working on right now?
I’m currently working on my next books, which are food-related. I enjoy the story-telling and writing a back story, especially a historical background about recipes, the dish and what memories they evoke, so that will always be part of my writing. My readers seem to clamor for my food stories and recipes all the time—they express that in their feedback.
*****
Elizabeth Ann Besa-Quirino, Filipino American cookbook author, is a multi-awarded winner of the Plaridel Writing Awards for best in journalism, given by the Philippine-American Press Club in San Francisco, CA. Her food essay “A Hundred Mangoes in a Bottle” has won a Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award (Manila, Philippines). She was an awardee of the FWN Filipina Women’s Network 100 Most Influential Women of the World in 2013 (San Francisco, CA).
Betty Ann, as she is fondly called, was born in the Philippines, raised in Tarlac province, and now based in New Jersey, USA. She is also freelance journalist, and food writer.
Her writing has been published on Simply Recipes, The Kitchn, and Taste of Home digital food publications. She is also a contributor to Positively Filipino.
Her most recent book is a food and history memoir Every Ounce of Courage: A Daughter’s Reflections On Her Mother’s Bravery.
She has written three cookbooks: Instant Filipino Recipes: My Mother’s Traditional Philippine Food in a Multicooker Pot, a follow up to My Mother’s Philippine Recipes, a collection of her late mother’s favorite Filipino classic dishes which Betty Ann transformed to everyday cooking in her American kitchen. Recently, she was a contributor to the Adobo Chronicles Cookbook: A Collection of Unique Adobo Recipes and Candid Essays on the Filipino Adobo(Philippines, 2020). Other books she has written are How to Cook Philippine Desserts, Cakes and Snacks and Statesman and Survivor Elpidio Quirino, 6th President of the Philippines. She also illustrated Color and Cook Food Coloring Book, an adult coloring book of Filipino food.
Betty Ann travels often to her home in the Philippines in search of traditional recipes and stories about culture and history.
Ms. Quirino is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionasl (IACP) and is on the Board of Advisers of the President Elpidio Quirino Memorial Foundation.
Accolades:
- Multi-awardee of the Plaridel Writing Award for Excellence in Journalism (Philippine -American Press Club, SF) - 2013 to 2019
- Doreen G. Fernandez Food Writing Award for A Hundred Mangoes In a Bottle essay 2012
- Filipina Women's Network 100 Most Influential Women of the World award 2013
- Positively Filipino Magazine (SF), correspondent
- The Kitchn, contributor
- Simply Recipes, recipe developer and contributor
- Taste of Home, contributor
- Instant Filipino Recipes Cookbook, author
- My Mother's Philippine Recipes, author
- How To Cook Philippine Desserts, Cakes and Snacks, author
- Statesman and Survivor Elpidio Quirino 6th President of the Philippines, co-author
- Color and Cook Food Coloring Book, author and illustrator
- TheQuirinoKitchen.com, blogger, recipe developer, and founder
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