A lot of Independence Day reflections happening in America. Mine will always be more complicated. But I reflect nonetheless. The...

José Rizal, like many men of his time, is complicated.  A wealthy elitist from a politically troubled family traveling the world,...

Because I have spent every year of my adult life traveling abroad, I don't really feel the need to apply to writing residencies. But...

When I was born, my father was pushing 50. I didn't watch him age. He was always old, while the rest of us, including my mother, generations behind him. I don't remember seeing him with black hair. It was alway gray, thick and full. Bataan, that memory, was part of our daily breath and bread. It had a life of its own, like a member of our family who only cared to show up whenever it wanted. Our house (a rented apartment) in Manila was full of traces of World War II.

The late literary critic and professor Leonard Casper was from my father’s time.  He was two years older than my father, born 1921.  Both served during World War II.  Theirs was a generation of men that I understood from having “grown up” in Veterans Hospitals in Manila and New York City.  I was surrounded by them as a child, one thing I never really questioned as I was born when my father was pushing fifty.  They were all just wise, old men.  And one by one, they left.

Suffice to say, I don't know much about my maternal ancestry. What I know about my lineage came from my father. There are tons of history there. A landowning family from Oas, Albay, the home of the last names that start with the letter R. All Rs in one place. Mother History's hand trick.

Poker Realuyo 2010-2025 For over a decade, I took a month off from my FT job and wrote in the Caribbean.  In my 20s, I was trying to...

Augusto Roa Realuyo was 21 years old when Bataan Fell in 1942. World War II is a horrifying memory. That a 20 year old Filipino who was...

#P2PPIT flyer on BlueSky I just joined BlueSky. I was hesitant to start another social media platform that I can't manage on a regular...

This month, on the 19th, my late father turns 103 years old.   In 1941 when he found himself stuck in Bataan, he was only 20 years old.  That was 84 years ago.   We have not seen another world war, and there have been many international organizations that made sure it didn’t happen again.   WWII is the most documented of all wars. There are many missing stories, like Filipino-told Bataan, but the internet still brims with what most would be looking for.

2025 is the year I walk and clear a path made by and for me.   I can only be thankful to those who taught me how to live, love, fight. For the seeds, for the wisdom that grew from them. And grateful to be able to share the same with the next generation of artists and world travelers. On a full-time management job, I find time to do Art. I write. I enter the temple where I become an artist in his fullness. The artist's life is more tangled. But I also think it has al

Virginia A. Realuyo ca. 1970s Today is my mother's birthday. The picture above is one of the few pictures we have when my mother was very...

I came of age in the 1990s in New York City during the AIDS crisis. The era created what I am today. Survival was very personal. Information was critical. Anger was necessary. And death often around the corner.

I didn’t know I could write about Bataan. It has been a terrifying legacy of my family. For years, I collected books about war and Bataan. But writing about it was different act of commitment.

As I search for a literary agent (Wish me luck!!!), I have also decided to create a new website. I wrote Bataan New Jersey in the early mornings at a coffee shop every day (!!!) for three years. I finished it early this year, and I spent the following months re-reading and editing, and layering it with poetic language. I can only be grateful to the books that inspired it: Pachinko and Cutting for Stone. These big books gave me permission to see what was possible in da