WISH YOU WEREN'T HERE by ERIN BALDWIN

 NATHANIEL GLANZMAN Reviews

 Wish You Weren’t Here by Erin Baldwin 

(Viking Books for Young Readers, 2024)

BOOK LINK

If all I told you about Wish You Weren’t Here by Erin Baldwin was that it involves a rivalry with a popular girl, you might make a few incorrect assumptions. Perhaps you’d think it was about two straight girls fighting over a straight boy. Or that the conflict involved petty drama and high school politicking. Thankfully, Wish You Weren’t Here subverts these tropes. The two main characters are brown (The main character is Filipina and the love interest is Indian, specifically Gujarati) and the story takes place at summer camp.

 

            Oh, wait. I forgot the most important part: they end up together.

 

            You read correctly! Wish You Weren’t Here is a slow-burn, sapphic, frienemies-to-lovers romantic comedy involving two brown girls in a dreamy, nostalgic setting. What’s not to like?

 

            One of my toxic traits (that I get to express in a healthy way when reviewing books) is extensively researching why someone is the way they are. Juliette is shown throughout the text to be friendly and loving, but can lash out in moments of weakness. I appreciated reading about a less-than-perfect point of view character. In Wish You Weren’t Here, the reader is given multiple lenses from which to view Juliette’s psychology.

 

            A running theme in the book is Juliette’s battle with her core wounds. One of those wounds is feeling rejected because many people have labeled her too “intense.” This insecurity causes Juliette to resent her frienemy-turned-crush Priya, who is perceived as being poised and put together. It should be noted that any supporting character who genuinely cares about Juliette does not admonish her for being “intense.”

 

            One of the reasons why Juliette loves Fogridge Sleepaway Camp is because she can escape the judgment of her family. She has many siblings; one of them—Eloise—seems to be favored by their parents due to choosing a more “secure” career path. Anyone who grew up in an Asian immigrant family would be familiar with this pain.

 

            How Juliette’s upbringing affected her—as well as why she is jealous of Priya—can be summed up by this passage:

            “When the time came for my mom to choose between singing lessons for me and computer coding classes for my teenage sister, she chose Eloise. Because, she’d said, coding is a real skill that Eloise can make a real career out of someday. Singing is fine for fun, but we need to live in reality.

            And do you know what? She was right. Now that I’m faced with college and the real world, I see that I never could have made a career out of my voice. People rarely do. Famous artists get famous because they have connections or they’re extremely lucky, or both. Priya Pendleys get famous. Juliette Barrera-Wrights get steady white-collar jobs at The Business Factory and try to suppress the knowledge that once upon a time they were good at the trapeze.

            Not all of us can follow our dreams.” (Baldwin 125-126)

 

            Given that the entire book is written through Juliette’s perspective, it would be easy to assume that Priya is portrayed as a villain. However, that is not what happens. A lot of the conflict between Juliette and Priya is born from Juliette knowing that she does not have a justifiable reason to dislike her. Priya is shown throughout the text to be kind, diplomatic and talented at camp activities. Much of Juliette’s frustration with Priya comes from her own insecurities and perceived rejection. I deeply appreciated that the narrative recognized this and did not justify Juliette’s sometimes immature behavior.

 

            Wish You Weren’t Here is a delightfully voicey and fluffy debut. It does not have a particularly high-stakes conflict—unless you count fun banter between friends—but that’s part of its charm. I’m excited to read any future release from Erin Baldwin who was born in the Philippines, raised in Jersey City, N.J. and now lives in Colorado.

 

*****

Nathaniel Glanzman is a sensitivity reader who has read for major publishers and private clients since 2018. He creates videos on YouTube about the representation of marginalized people in fiction at @NateReadsDiversely.

 

THE SECRET LIVES OF OFWS by JET TAGASA

 EILEEN TABIOS Engages 

The Secret Lives of OFWs by Jet Tagasa

(Penguin Random House SEA, 2025)

 

BOOK LINK 

I adored this book before I read a word of it. I adored it because I heard of its concept and fell in love with its ideas, as described well on its back cover as

Overseas Filipino Workers or OFWs. You either know one, are related to one, want to be one, or are one. OFWs are so ubiquitous to the Philippines that we think we’re familiar with the kind of lives they lead. We presume we know who they are, what they’re like, or perhaps even what secrets they keep. But do we?

From mananangals to aswangs, engkantos to mambabarangs, oryols to andudunongs, and even the great Bakunawa—The Secret Lives of OFWs follows eight different stories of Filipino migrant workers who happen to be supernaturals. Forced to embark on their own migratory sojourns to seek a better life and provide for their loved ones, these stories delve into the struggles faced by OFWs and their families—and how even feared creatures of Philippine folklore are not spared from the hardships of the diaspora.

Given the horror stories of abuse and suffering too-often experienced by OFWs—including beatings by employers, rapes and even murder—I thought it appropriate for Tagasa to weave in the presence of supernaturals often considered as monsters. “The Domestic Helper,” indeed, is an excellent opening story in this short story collection. Set in Saudi Arabia, the story presents Estrelita working as a maid who is raped by her employer, the rape is later ignored by the rapist’s wife. The story ends with Estrelita unleashing the mananangal in her to kill the couple as well as their baby. She kills them by eating them given the mananangal’s predilection. Later, she escapes to a shelter for abused OFWs. She meets others abused by their employers and ends up comforting one victim to whom she delivers an implicit promise by asking, “Tell me where they live.” Given what the OFWs experienced in this story, it’s a quite satisfactory revenge ending.

I’d expected the collection to be comprised of such revenge stories. But revenge stories by themselves could become stale. Fortunately, Tagasa creates layers so that other themes are presented. For instance, “The Nurse,” set in London, is about an engcanto falling in love with a human, the nurse he’d been sent to punish. “The Balikbayan,” set in Hong Kong, is about Jennie who returns to discover that she is an aswang long-awaited by her ancestral tribe. The latter is particularly poignant when one considers how being an OFW is being an immigrant and, until one returns, one may be unsure of what exactly or all that was left behind.

The collection does end with a revenge story, “The Cook.” It’s a proper concluding tale since the story’s idea for the OFW in this story, Jona, is for her parents to travel from the Philippines to Malta to avenge the death of Jona and her baby. In Malta, they undergo a ritual possible for Andudunos (or The Walking Aswang) to determine the identity of the killer. The story—and the book—ends with the implication of the parents preparing to enact what it will take to capture the killer and wreak justice. The involvement of the OFWs’ parents—and ancestors—is fitting for drawing us full circle back to where OFWs originated. 

Each story also begins with an indicator of where the OFW character is located. For me, the locations’ names, too, have become markers of OFW life: Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Dubai, Qatar, Albania, and Malta. In 2023, the estimated number of OFWs was 2.16 million, a 9.8% increase from the previous year. The majority of these OFWs were female (55.6%), with a significant number working in elementary occupations (41.1%).

If some of the details are too violent (e.g., in “The Domestic Helper,” the mananangal OFW eats her employer’s baby in front of the mother before turning to the mother herself), they’re not as horrific as what happens in real life to too-many OFWs around the world. 

Tagasa’s stories are written in an accessible and clear manner. I hope its accessible style makes it a popular read. The Secret Lives of OFWs offers a unique way to draw attention to the plight of OFWs, including the larger picture that keeps getting unresolved by political corruption and oligarchical political families: what happens when a country can’t take care of all of its citizens and even sends them elsewhere? This is a question that should become an old story but hasn’t and doesn’t. I am grateful to Jet Tagasa for her creative way of reminding us of OFWs’ experiences, including their sacrifices.

 

*****

Eileen R. Tabios has released over 70 books of poetry, fiction, essays, visual art and experimental prose from publishers around the world. Recent releases include the novel The Balikbayan Artist; an art monograph Drawing Six Directions; a poetry collection Because I Love You, I Become War; an autobiography, The Inventor; and a flash fiction collection collaboration with harry k stammer, Getting To One. Other recent books include a first novel DoveLion: A Fairy Tale for Our Times which was subsequently translated by Danton Remoto into Filipino as KalapatingLeon and two French books, PRISES(Double Take) (trans. Fanny Garin) and La Vie erotique de l’art (trans. Samuel Rochery. Her body of work includes invention of the hay(na)ku, a 21^st century diasporic poetic form; the MDR Poetry Generator that can create poems totaling theoretical infinity; the “Flooid” poetry form that’s rooted in a good deed; and the monobon poetry form based on the monostich. She also has edited or conceptualized 16 anthologies of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including HUMANITY, Hay(na)ku 15, BABAYLAN: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Women Writers, and BLACK LIGHTNING: Poetry in Progress. Translated into 13 languages, she has seen her writing and editing works receive recognition through awards, grants and residencies. More information is at https://eileenrtabios.com

 

 

PRAYER SEASONS by HANSEL MAPAYO

ALOYSIUSI POLINTAN Reviews

Prayer Seasons by Bro. Hansel Mapayo

(Aria Editions, 2011)

Flash Book Review 283: 

Every time a poem enacts an intimate conversation between the creature and the Creator, readers sense its romantic/erotic undertones ("As you empty into a trough, / I swear to be a spring"). And there's no harm in it. Bro. Hansel Mapayo's Prayer Seasons (2011, Aria Editions) provides fine examples of creator-creature conversations. With the passionate use of internal rhyme, well-governed rhythms, and sparing caesuras, the prevailing persona reciprocates what God gives humankind: the breadth of His agape expressed in the intensity of eros. 

The poet assumes many roles, from a homecomer channeling a wandering child's soul to a flaneur in a foreign land, and between these roles is a consistent, unbending voice of adoration ("My lips depart to set free a sagging praise: / Ah, abundance herein dwells").

God's gifts of Bukidnon and Venezuela—as landscapes and subjects of Mapayo's paintings reminiscent of Monet's Les Villas à Bordighera—overwhelm the senses, but they hardly blind the poet to the miseries of his environs. The musicality of "Monsoon Rain Prayer" and "An Elegy of the Trees" (see both poems below) resonates with the Greek chorus in Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, and this socio-political consciousness renders his poetry a dual identity, as receptacle and as mouthpiece. Some of his poems recall friends and colleagues, even those he chanced upon in news headlines, who suffered under the wrath of nature and the greed of those who were supposed to be the nation's nurturers. 

The more he allows his diction to be accessed, the more the work sows itself in the reader's mind. It is only in profound thought that positive action comes. But in the midst of many misfortunes, his (and our) faith says that we hold on, that we lift our eyes and hands while mindful of our mythic ground. Faith is a response to revelation, and poetry does not only articulate the strength of our faith, but also aids us in expanding our hope. The poet beautifully said, almost bordering on an adage: "A cathedral lives in us / Even as we pray in a cogon thatch."

---

MONSOON RAIN PRAYER

Take our tears
Oh Font of grace.

Our siblings knock at our door
Asking for warm broth.

Don't you see the empty
Bowls on our table?

Bodies, nameless and faceless,
Still float in our rivers.

Our leaders continue to gaze
At their white-washed gates.

But the psalmist says,
"The floods of waters may reach high.
But him they shall not reach.
You are my hiding place, O Lord;
You save me from distress."

Cast your blessing as we come
To you with joined palms.

Breathe in your Spirit
To strengthen our faith.

Like pillars, though bent,
We shall brave the rains.

----

AN ELEGY OF THE TREES

Our trunks
Were not enough.
They took three masks
And felled your body.

Our limbs
Shrieked.

We held
Our breath
As the shot leapt
From leaf to leaf.

This Sunday,
As our bishop
Has declared—
The pews are empty.

As you pass by
Through the mourners' march,
We shake our leaves
To remember how
The loggers' greed
Cannot bring our grief
To the grave.

Now as you touch our feet,
We sheathe your casket
With unending company
Until you, like our leaves,
Turn to Mother
In an earthen embrace.

 

*****

Since 2016, Aloysiusi Polintan has worked as a Senior High School Principal in Divina Pastora College. He started scribbling poems and essays when he was 17 years old. These poems are still kept in a notebook and wait to be revised for future publication. This notebook will be revived and will give birth to language already "lived." That is why his blog is named "Renaissance of a Notebook," a blog of poems, personal and academic essays, and flash movie reviews. His book reviews, which are published and featured in The Halo-Halo Review and Galatea Resurrects, are also to be found on the blog, under the series title "Mesmerized." He believes that the ability to judge or critique a literary piece starts with the reader's being moved and mesmerized by the artful arrangement of words articulating some longing for freedom and individuality. He's now working on a manuscript of 50 poems, with a working title of Brittle Sounds.