Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila

by Marianne Villanueva

Overview

Please fill in Nominee Manila Critics Circle Award These beautiful and poignant stories evoke a complex and empathetic picture of the Philippines. They reveal characters trapped in the extremity of urban violence or the crushing poverty of the provinces. The reader comes away with new insight into human nature and the valor and courage of the Philippine people. copy

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780934971287
Publisher:	Calyx
Publication date:	09/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	714,616
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Marianne Villanueva, a former Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford, has been writing and publishing stories about the Philippines and Filipino Americans since the mid 1980s. She currently teaches writing and literature at Foothill College and Notre Dame de Namur University. Born and raised in Manila, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Editorial Reviews

Villanueva's debut collection of probing, dreamlike tales about the Philippines during Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorship provides a haunting picture of the island's landscape and an intriguing glimpse into the minds and hearts of its people. In these 11 stories, Villanueva tells of villagers and city dwellers struggling to retain their humanity in the face of military repression. She also explores the clash between old and new values in a country overshadowed by Western influences. Despite their sorrow and confusion, Villanueva's protagonists derive strength from natural surroundings whose power she skillfully conveys. ``I have the feeling that the garden is alive and speaking to me,'' says a villager whose mother has died. ``My mother's voice comes from the heart of the trees, where the sap and the root and the life of the world come together.'' Whether she describes the ghost of a boy, slain by a corrupt colonel, ``dancing across the rice paddies'' or a graffiti artist fighting ``the will of the dictator'' with magic chalk, Villanueva pk injects a sense of forboding. Hers is a milieu where it is hard to distinguish myth from reality and lies from truth. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly