English is often a primary literary language for Filipino writers--not only for those in the Philippines but for those resident in the US; both groups are included in this anthology of 31 stories and 108 poems documenting a tradition that began at the turn-of-the-century. Manila-born poet and writer Francia, an editor at the Village Voice, gathers and validates creative work that has had limited distribution not only here but in Asia. In the Philippine context, what is foreign and what is indigenous has always been a tricky and ultimately impossible subject, '' Francia writes in his...

The centennial edition of major Filipino writer Jose Garcia Villa's collected poetry
Known as the "Pope of Greenwich Village," Jose Garcia Villa had a special status as the only Asian poet among a group of modern literary giants in 1940s New York that included W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, and a young Gore Vidal. But beyond his exotic ethnicity, Villa was a global poet who was admired for "the reverence, the raptness, the depth of concentration in his] bravely deep poems" (Marianne Moore). Doveglion (Villa's pen name for dove, eagle, and lion) contains Villa's collected...