About The Book
A groundbreaking survey of contemporary Philippine short fiction across seven different languages.
From the foreword by Gina Apostol. “As a Filipino who dreams in Waray, I have waited too long for Ulirát.”
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A man grows mushrooms from his nostrils, a town elects three mayors at the same time, a woman gives birth to a snake, and a boy wonders if his soldier father is an aswang.
Ulirát: The Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines offers alternative visions of the islands beyond poverty and paradise. A vital survey of the richness and diversity of modern Philippine short stories, Ulirát features fiction from Filipino, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Ilocano, Waray, Kinaray-a, and Akeanon translated into English for the first time for international audiences. Vigorous writing from Filipino writers living in different parts of the archipelago re-animate Duterte’s Philippines, dramatizing everything from the drug wars and widespread corruption to environmental degradation in surprisingly surreal and illuminating ways. Ulirát, which is Tagalog for “consciousness,” champions a more expansive, nuanced conception of Filipino literature beyond the confines of English-language Filipino literature.
About The Author
Born in Saigon, South Vietnam (now Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam), in 1968, Monique Truong came to the US as a refugee in 1975. She isbased now in Brooklyn, New York. Her novels are the bestselling TheBook of Salt (2003) and the award-winning Bitter in the Mouth (2010). Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, U.S.-Japan Creative ArtistsFellowship, and Hodder Fellowship, she has taught fiction wring at ColumbiaSchool of the Arts, Princeton, and Baruch College as the Sidney Harmanwriter-in-residence.
Blurbs/Endorsements
“This collection is a classic. . . . no other anthology has given me this pleasure: the existential jolt of recognizing ways of seeing my world that I have, in fact, experienced but, despite all my years of reading, have not encountered on the page. . . . Above all, these stories lay bare blunt historical, political, and economic realities that remain, on many levels, unspeakably surreal. . . . as a Filipino who dreams in Waray, I have waited too long for Ulirát.”
—Gina Apostol, author of Insurrecto, from the “Foreword”
“With a manifesto-like introduction which crashes in with guns blazing against the hallowed literary establishment, the stories in this collection are translated with such riveting, bawdy, hilarious, smelly, violent, Pinoy force that we are almost led to believe, once again, in the glorious possibility of translation.”
—Ramon Guillermo, author of Ang Makina ni Mang Turing and Translation & Revolution
“A dazzling collection of new stories originally written in Filipino, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Ilocano, Kinaray-a, and Akeanon . . . . This landmark anthology presents an alternative canon . . . distinctly Filipino in its temperament and consciousness, but happily accessible to the rest of the world.”
—Jaime An Lim, author of The Axolotl Colony, Hedonicus, and Literature and Politics
“These stories are populated with non-humans—animals, insects, shapeshifting aswangs—and the no-longer human—dismembered bodies, spirits, saints, voices on tapes—and through them we are brought to a Filipino ulirát of what humans mostly suffer.”
—Edgar Calabia Samar, author of the Janus Silang series of books and Walong Diwata ng Pagkahulog
“Lyrical and gritty, myth-infused and naturalistic, horrific and tender . . . . A must-read for anyone interested in the quotidian travails and wondrous metamorphoses undergone by denizens of a haunted republic in a haunted world.”
—Caroline S. Hau, author of Demigods and Monsters, Tiempo Muerto, and Necessary Fictions
“Sublime moments of discovery and connection, shadowed by horrifying historical backdrops, are what Ulirát offers on virtually every page. . . . The writers of Ulirát blend folklore with tropes from the Western canon and brutal colonial history. Layers of references to different times and colonial regimes stack like sediment, threatening to bury the verbal fun and games. There are no fairy-tale endings, just the effects of serial colonization and downstream capitalist economics. . . . In assembling a more comprehensive picture of Filipino consciousness, the collection proclaims the strength of the archipelago’s diversity of cultures and perspectives. Ulirát gives English readers an opportunity to pay attention.”
—Necessary Fiction
“Ulirát’s context is full-frontally one of expanding literary landscape. . . . I found something of interest, charm, and/or wisdom in all [the stories]. . . . I appreciate Ulirát because I appreciate how it's making lemonade from the lemon that is colonialism by turning the previously-enforced language of English into a gateway to bringing Filipino stories back to colonizers and rest of the world.”
—Eileen Tabios, The Halo-Halo Review
“Ulirát has virtually everything you might want in an anthology of short fiction: a wide spectrum of authorial voices, thematic concerns, and tones ranging from realism to the uncanny. But the anthology also manages the impressive feat of feeling like a solid survey while also working as a consistent whole.”
—Words Without Borders, selected for The Watchlist, March 2021
“The book offers a dynamic snapshot of Philippine letters.”
—Poets & Writers, selected for “The Anthologist: A Compendium of Uncommon Collections”
Publisher
https://singaporeunbound.org/gaudyboy
Title: Ulirat: The Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines
Author: Tilde Acuña, John Bengan, Daryll Delgado, Amado Anthony G. Mendoza III, Kristine Ong Muslim
Publisher: Gaudy Boy
ISBN: 9780999451427
Book Size: 140.0 mm x 216.0 mm
Pages: 378
Weight: 529.75g
Year: 2021
Genre: Translation anthology