WASHINGTON, DC—Growing up an avid reader, writer M. Evelina Galang never encountered stories about young women role models, or stories about Filipino Americans. The absence of these subjects has motivated Galang to write stories that empower young women, specifically telling the Filipino American experience.

 

Galang’s latest novel, “Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery,” is about a teenage girl who becomes actively involved in the second Philippine People Power Revolution in 2001. In the novel, the young activist faces the loss of her father and a move to Chicago from the Philippines. The novel also takes a look at the present-day struggles of surviving Filipino comfort women of World War II.

Galang draws inspiration from the strong Filipino women in her life and from young women activists who work in the movement of Filipino comfort women, or “lolas.”

“I like to write the stories [about] Filipino American women because we have been traditionally silent when it comes to mainstream literature,” Galang said. “That has been my experience, where you don’t read about the women in our lives [and] you don’t see them on television. It’s happening more, but it was not that way growing up.”

 

Much of Galang’s work, including sections of her latest novel, is based on her research about Filipino comfort women of World War II. Galang has been researching comfort women and activists since 1998 and has spent time in the Philippines interviewing and bonding with both such women.

Galang also helped former comfort women document what they experienced. She is also working on another book entitled “Lolas’ House: Women Living with War” to tell more of their stories.

“Their first and foremost goal is to get a formal apology,” she said. “When you ask them why they continue to tell their stories it’s because they don’t want it to happen again, so I think that writing the novel gives me the opportunity to bring that back.”

 

Angel de la Luna’s story takes place as President of the Philippines Joseph Estrada is removed from power. Angel is in the middle of the chaos, activism and community organizing when her mother decides she wants Angel to come to the United States.

 

The novel explores the American Dream and how everybody wants the dream, but nobody realizes how difficult it is to maintain.

 

Angel does not want or believe in the American Dream and wants to go back to the Philippines with her grandmother and sister. She associates the U.S. with colonialism and oppression and at one point in the novel says she wants to go back to “reality” that is her life in the Philippines.

 

“There is the assumption we make that everybody wants to come (to the U.S.), but not everybody does. To have (Angel) be a Philippine nationalist, really connected to the work of the people of the Philippines and to be yanked away from that provides an interesting question,” Galang said.

Angel’s story is not exclusively for Filipino or Filipino American readers. It’s about strong women making their way through adversity as well as a mother-daughter story for a universal audience.

 

Another aspect of Galang’s latest novel involves weaving in Tagalog in context and without translation. When holding events with young people, Galang observed that young readers with no knowledge of Tagalog have no trouble understanding the global aspect of the work.

“I am finding that the young people are completely open to the idea of writing text and reading text in more than one language,” Galang said. “It’s actually not meant to turn readers away or to keep them from entering the dialogue. It’s actually an opportunity be in an intimate space in a world they would not have access to.”

 

Galang, who has been teaching at the University of Miami since 2002 and has directed the creative writing program since 2008, is also encouraging people of color to tell their stories. One of these efforts is through incorporating many other languages in multilingual texts.

“For everyone, whoever we are, it’s time to write our own stories. I think it’s time we start reading our own stories written by our own people,” Galang said. “If we don’t write our own stories, somebody else will write them for us.”

“Angel de La Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery” is available on coffeehousepress.org and Amazon.