The following is the introduction by the poet and novelist James E.Cherry of the writer Cecilia Brainard at the Second Literary Symposium in Jackson, TN.
CECILIA BRAINARD INTRODUCTION
by James E. Cherry
Cecilia Manguerra
Brainard was born and grew up Cebu City, Philippines. She is the award-winning author of nine books,
including the internationally-acclaimed novel, When the Rainbow Goddess
Wept. She has edited four books and co-edited six others. Her work has been translated into
Finnish and Turkish and many of her stories and have been widely
anthologized. She co-founded Philippine
American Women Writers and Artists, a collective of Filipino artists. Mrs Brainard has received a California Arts
Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing
with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the
California State Senate. She teaches creative writing at the Writers Program at
UCLA-Extension and is married to Lauren R. Brainard; they have three sons.
Without a doubt, this is an
impressive list of accomplishments. But
these awards and accolades are not who she is.
Cecilia Brainard is a cultural and literary warrior. She is a fierce and fearless cultural and
literary warrior. She loves the
Philippines and she loves the Filipino people that it produced. She has deeply rooted herself in Filipino
culture, has embraced its customs, mores, legends, myths, heroes and
villains. She celebrates its beauty and
is not afraid to confront the ugly aspects of its nature as well.
Like some writers of color, she
could take the easy and lucrative way out by seeing the world through
Eurocentric lenses. Instead, Cecilia
Brainard lowers her bucket of imagination into the well of creative expression
and from it extracts stories that are steeped in Filipino history and heritage,
stories that exceed the artificial boundaries of race, ethnicity and national
origin. At the heart of her writing is
fear, love, hate, revenge, joy, loneliness and how we as human beings overcome
or fall victim to such emotions.
In this regard, she is no different
from other writers who have used their own culture as a springboard to address
universal themes. Writers such as the
Englishman William Shakespeare, Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky and the African
American writer, Richard Wright.
Jackson TN
04/23/2016
~~~
James E Cherry is the author of three collections of poetry, a collection of short fiction and a novel. His second novel, Edge of the Wind, will be published in September 2016 from Stephen F Austin University Press. Cherry has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and resides in Tennessee. Visit him on the web at: jamesEcherry.com.
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- Tags: literature, writers, Southern writer, authors, Filipino, Philippines, Philippine American, novelist, James E. Cherry, Cecilia Brainard
- This is all for now,
- Cecilia
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