As a Filipino-American patron of the arts, I consider myself fortunate to live during a time when Fil-Am artistic and creative expressions are at their peak. The history and legacy pf economic and political turbulence in the homeland has produced a diasporic community of Filipinos across the world who are making meaning of Filipino identity and place in a culture that is both foreign and familiar.
Grateful for the opportunity to contribute to The Halo-Halo Review, curated by author, poet and publisher Eileen Tabios. In this edition, I reviewed Cristina Querrer's debut poetry collecton "By Astrolabes & Constellations;" excerpt below.
Cristina was born and raised in the Philippines, post Vietnam War, during the Marcos regime, pre-Mount Pinatubo eruption, as a (US Air Force) military child. She graduated high school from former Wagner High School, Clark Air Force Base, Philippines, in 1985.
Querrer has two published books of poetry, “By Astrolabes & Constellations” and “The Art of Exporting”. She is a U.S. Army veteran, a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) candidate at University of South Florida, has an MFA in Creative Writing degree, and is a writer, artist and podcaster. She received an honorarium as an invited reader and panelist to the "Isang Mundo: Humanity, Diversity, and Resistance in the Arts" at the 5th Filipino American International Bookfest held in San Francisco, October 2019, and received a Literary Champion Award to attend the 2020 Muse & the Marketplace Literary Conference held in Boston in April 2020.
Poetry often serves as the language of truth-telling, of speaking truth to power. With her debut poetry collection By Astrolabes & Constellations makes a noteworthy contribution to diasporic Filipino literature. Both imagined and observed, the gendered truths revealed in Querrer’s poems are located in islands in the Pacific, undoubtedly encumbered by expansive reach of U.S. military empire and ongoing cultural subjugation.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Querrer’s diasporic lens is colored by her experiences as a military child and later, as an enlisted servicemember. Querrer’s poetry offers a subtle, but nuanced and informed critique of the impacts of U.S. military action, both on those who have served and those who have been orphaned and abandoned after being used and spit out by a system built to molest bodies and minds, creating a “wild civilization of souls” (“At the Outpatient Pharmacy”). She raises a feminist voice to accentuate the experiences of becoming and being a woman in hyper-masculine military culture, designed only to extract and exploit. Truths woven in longing takes us to the scene of a go-go bar, until one is nauseated by what it smells and feels like, taking in the visceral experience of prostitution through a brown woman’s bleak reality (“From a Retired Disco Queen” and “Mango Man”).
Read more at Halo-Halo Review
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| Cristina Querrer |
Cristina was born and raised in the Philippines, post Vietnam War, during the Marcos regime, pre-Mount Pinatubo eruption, as a (US Air Force) military child. She graduated high school from former Wagner High School, Clark Air Force Base, Philippines, in 1985.
Querrer has two published books of poetry, “By Astrolabes & Constellations” and “The Art of Exporting”. She is a U.S. Army veteran, a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) candidate at University of South Florida, has an MFA in Creative Writing degree, and is a writer, artist and podcaster. She received an honorarium as an invited reader and panelist to the "Isang Mundo: Humanity, Diversity, and Resistance in the Arts" at the 5th Filipino American International Bookfest held in San Francisco, October 2019, and received a Literary Champion Award to attend the 2020 Muse & the Marketplace Literary Conference held in Boston in April 2020.
Poetry often serves as the language of truth-telling, of speaking truth to power. With her debut poetry collection By Astrolabes & Constellations makes a noteworthy contribution to diasporic Filipino literature. Both imagined and observed, the gendered truths revealed in Querrer’s poems are located in islands in the Pacific, undoubtedly encumbered by expansive reach of U.S. military empire and ongoing cultural subjugation.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Querrer’s diasporic lens is colored by her experiences as a military child and later, as an enlisted servicemember. Querrer’s poetry offers a subtle, but nuanced and informed critique of the impacts of U.S. military action, both on those who have served and those who have been orphaned and abandoned after being used and spit out by a system built to molest bodies and minds, creating a “wild civilization of souls” (“At the Outpatient Pharmacy”). She raises a feminist voice to accentuate the experiences of becoming and being a woman in hyper-masculine military culture, designed only to extract and exploit. Truths woven in longing takes us to the scene of a go-go bar, until one is nauseated by what it smells and feels like, taking in the visceral experience of prostitution through a brown woman’s bleak reality (“From a Retired Disco Queen” and “Mango Man”).
Read more at Halo-Halo Review