I am writing this blog a block from where my father passed in 2003. When I go home every day, I walk past the Veteran's Hospital in Manhattan on 23rd Street. I would look up and acknowledge, although I no longer remember which floor was the ICU. I can't go inside anymore, no reason to. Although I have been going to veteran's hospitals both in MetroManila and in New York City since I was nine. I tell people I grew up in the VA, amongst the aging veterans, my father's generation and beyond, at least 40 years older than I. Veterans, on whose faces, a record of history, each one different. My father had his own, "survivor" written all over it. War, to this day and to my future, is everlasting. 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. He had a baul full of helmets and army paraphernalia. His name written on the side with his title: Arch. Engr. Augusto Roa Realuyo . There was a bolo on the wall. Everyone on our street knew he was a Bataan surivor, a guerilla, and therefore scared of him. My family never really knew what any of it meant, the war, Bataan, Death March. Just history's whispers. We would grow into its legacy, in America of all places. I was protected by that world. By that Bataan that even in the seventies three decades later, people still remembered and knew. Manila was a violent place. Martial Law made sure of that. Police was enabled, protected. No due process. Authoritarian. Dark clutch. We were raised in a bubble. My mother kept us inside. No politics. No activism. My father made sure of that. He had seen it all. After his release from the Japanese concentration camp in 1942, he would become a guerilla, as if it wasn't enough to survive both the Death March and the camp. He was fact. Marcos' WWII medals were fiction. But both would create the Philippine history I grew up to know. The first time I wrote an essay about my father was in 1999, published both in the U.S. and in the Philippines. It was the year my first novel came out. In the Philippines, its publication in the Sunday Inquirer magazine, would coincide with an interview about my first novel, adding context to the writer none of them knew existed until then. It was the first time I engaged with war remembrance. When I tackled Manila as memory in my first novel and Philippine history in my first poetry collection, the doors to history would open a bit. I avoided Bataan all my life. It was hard to enter it, too personal. I collected books instead, for the day I was ready to return and brave enough to understand. My father would be hospitalized many times before he left us in 2003. We got to go back to the Philippines in 2000 for the Roa-Realuyo family reunion, our last. I got to see Manila through his eyes for the first time. I would get to see Oas, Albay, his hometown, from that experience. Very little of it pleasant. The baggage I brought back was heavier than the one I carried to Manila. I would learn that I was never really wrong about the country I grew up in. It was always complex, and I had no reason to regret my feelings about it. History would revisit in 2022. After the pandemic and after my husband's open heart surgery in 2021. Months of watching k-drama about Korea and Japan during Covid, after reading Pachinko and other historical novels like The Glass Palace. I would take apart my short story collection and take out the two Bataan stories, its emotional bookends. I decided to develop them into a novel. I would receive a grant for it. Every day then, at dawn, I would walk to a coffee shop in Jackson Heights, Queens, while its dark outside and write #BataanNewJersey. For the first time in my life, I was allowed to enter the narrative. I wasn't afraid of it any longer. The characters let me in. Bataan let me stay. And in three years, I finished the novel one block from the VA. Today, in the morning, the same time when I got a call from the VA doctor that my father had already passed, I sit in a cafe blogging, across from a WWII memorial, a block from where my father was exactly 22 years ago. When my father was my current age, his son, who would become a poet-novelist, was watching his father in the Veteran's Hospital in MetroManila (Diliman, QC). The boy didn't know anything about Bataan or World War II, although he had heard so much about them. He was already marked by a legacy he would one day had to face. My father survived Bataan to tell. I am alive now to tell. My father, the son of Bataan, and I, its legacy, in America, the other country he fought for. Such is war. Such is war. In memoriam, Augusto Roa Realuyo, 1921-2003.

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.   But Leonard Casper would leave me a gift, an article he wrote in Philippine Studies that I have bravely included here so his spirit could join my voyage as I publish #BataanNewJersey and tell the story of the men and women of his generation.   It was never easy to explain to readers or critics, especially in America, why I wrote The Umbrella Country. We writers are not really here to explain our work. Some get it, some don't. Some use the "American ethnic studies" lens to read it, some use the "Filipino" lens. It is no surprise that my reviews in the Philippines were far more complex and nuanced than those in the U.S. Hovering over the surface, reviewers in the U.S. assumed that I wrote a novel about the Philippines. Period. About Gayness. Exclamation point. The need to box us in was always there. Asian American Studies, much of Chinese and Japanese ingredients, never questioned why Filipino first gen authors cooked books in English. There was always a key there. In the English. By an author raised by women. Perhaps feminist, too. But one, Leonard Casper, a white American, understood. But then, he was a reader of Philippine literature in English, and he knew its history and scope. I never had the opportunity to meet Leonard Casper in person, but I knew of his circle of writers and artists from the Philippine literary world.  I met a few after I published my first novel and went to the Philippines to promote it.  My publication early in life catapulted me into a world that I didn’t really understand nor ever really expected.  My first novel is already 25 years old and still in print, thanks largely to people like Leonard Casper who at some point in the book’s early voyage wrote about it with praise.    The wonderful writer Cecilia Manguerra Brainard wrote very fondly of him and his book Will You Happen, Past the Silence, Through the Dark?   in her tribute in Positively Filipino :   The book starts with family information, including his military service during World War II. It moves on to show his early literary success: letters from editors, including those from the prestigious Southwest Review who asked him to send stories from the European front during World War II. There are numerous exchanges between Leonard Casper and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Penn Warren on whom Casper wrote his dissertation for his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In fact, Casper wrote two critical books about Robert Penn Warren (the first book was the “first” written about Warren).   Syracuse University houses his letters. Below is the entry in his biography.   L eonard R. Casper (1923-2018) was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison and emeritus professor of English from Boston College where he taught for 45 years. He was the author or editor of numerous books on Philippine literature, as well as several pieces of fiction and two volumes on the works of Robert Penn Warren. Casper taught in the Philippines on five separate occasions, twice as senior Fulbright lecturer, and was contributing editor to Solidarity (Manila) and Pilipinas (Kansas; Arizona State). His wife Linda Ty Casper is a noted Filipino novelist.   From Philippine Studies vol. 49, no. 1 (2001): 123–129 The Filipino Writer in the United States Leonard Casper   Early in the sixties, having served on the Voice of America's staff in New York, Celso Carunungan published there his novel, Like a Big Brave Man, whose protagonist Crispin comes of age by reconciling the contending cultural pulls of Philippine and American life. Neverthe­less, back in Manila, Carunungan joined his countrymen in complaining of the limited attention being paid Philippine literature by U.S. publishers.1 That collective compliant did not fall on deaf ears. In 1960, my special Philippine issue of the Literary Review had already ap­peared. So also, in 1962, had my edition of Modern Philippine Short Stories;  and in 1966, my New Writing from the Philippines: A Critique and Anthology.2 A special Philippine issue of Literature East and West (1965) was followed by a vernacular issue in 1969.   The number and caliber of such "advertisement," calling attention to a cross Pacific literary phenomenon, hardly  signified complete indifference on the world's part, although two Filipino writers not yet included in these earliest collections angrily responded with "crablike" disparagement far too common among  kababayan critics. Perhaps that negative attitude was born of the frustrating competition for print space in their homeland. Bino Realuyo says, "Literature is a luxury for most Filipinos, whether it is reading or writing."3   It is precisely such annoyance with alleged cultural cronyism-the perceived requirement that one's labors be "sponsored" by someone powerful (and sometimes insensitive to the most intangible literary values) within the Establishment-that has led so many novelists and poets to write in English and to find self-assurance through publica­ tion in a sometimes friendly, though foreign, land. The search for greater appreciation abroad is reinforced by the elevated image of colorful Emigrant #1, Jose Garcia Villa, that first Philippine National Artist who nevertheless often acted as if he had broken not just national but even cosmic boundaries: Have Come, Am Here . Must Go Find My Wings. Whatever their motives, writers in English have persisted; and the degree of their still evolving success has been measurable, particularly during the nineties. Though some of their creative energy may have been influenced by resistance to the repressive, censorious regime of the Marcoses, and have been re-inspirited by centennial reconsidera­tion of wars against Spain and the United States for national recogni­tion, surely the maturing talent of many individuals seeking to express the very selves they were in the process of forming and discovering has been creating, in a variety of harmonics, the voice of the nation itself. The reconnaissance is over; the renaissance in well underway.   One cannot but be impressed by the literary record of Filipinos-in­-America for the last decade:4   Cecilia Manguerra Brainard,  When the Rainbow Goddess Wept. Nick Carbo, Secret Asian Man; El Grupo McDonald; ed. Returning a Borrowed Tongue: An Anthology of Filipino and Filipino American Poetry; ed. (with Eileen Tabios) Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers. Luis H. Francia, ed. Brown River, White Ocean; ed. (with Eric Gamalinda)  Flippin': Filipinos in America. M. Evelina Galang,  Her Wild American Self Eugene Gloria,  Drivers at the Short-Time Motel. Jessica Hagedorn, Danger and Beauty; Dogeaters; The Gangster of Love; ed. Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. F. Sionil Jose, Three Filipino Women; Sins; Dusk; Don Vicente. Bino A. Realuyo, The Umbrella Country; ed. The NuyorAsian Anthol­ogy: Asian American Writing about New York City; ed. "Am Here": Con­temporary Filipino Writing in English. Ninotchka Rosca,  Twice Blessed. Michelle Cruz Skinner,  Mango Season. Lara Stapleton,  The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing. Linda Ty-Casper,  DreamEden. Marianne Villanueva,  Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila. Bert Florentino requires separate attention: famed playwright and founder of the Peso Book and Storymasters series, in New York under the rubric  Ilustrado  he has now begun cyberspace productions, includ­ing Rizaliana, selected texts from  Balintataw,  interviews with Filipino/ Filipino American writers.   On a different scale it is Realuyo's first novel, The Umbrella Country, which has attracted rare admiration. The Umbrella Country   Among Filipino producers of the printed word in America, Sionil Jose leads with his entire Rosales epic gradually appearing under the Random House/Modem Library imprint. On a different scale it is Realuyo's first novel, The Umbrella Country, which has attracted rare admiration. Both Jose and Realuyo are writers with a strong, broad (non-ideological) social conscience. Jose can present the action and motives of both rich and poor; Realuyo so far has provided access only to the latter, but his sensitivity to language (he has also published in America, a book of poetry entitled In Spite of Open Eyes) provides in­ timate nuances which prevent his principal characters from seeming pitiable stereotypes. His language serves rather than competes with the authenticity of his characters. They are as they are, but their starkness comes in multiple shades of chiaroscuro. (It should be pointed out that, when Realuyo became guest editor of the second special Philip­ pine issue of Fairleigh Dickinson University's Literary Review,  Spring 2000, he entitled that issue "Am Here." Admittedly he was proudly imitating Villa's proclamatory  Have Come, Am Here. Yet "here" becomes not America or the New York metropolis of the  arriviste, but "Wher­ ever I am." The title therefore could just as well have been simply "I am," which is really the theme of that issue and of many other Phil­ ippine American writers. "Here" is "Anywhere; everywhere. See me seeing you!"). The Umbrella Country occurs during the endangered days of martial law; but with only slight variations its human environment could just as well depict the country's malaise under each of the three presidents who have succeeded Marcos: Aquino, Ramos, Estrada. Although the San Juan family of critics might prefer to interpret the "Philippine condition" in this novel as the result of class warfare (Epifanio San Juan, Jr.) or, less inappropriately, of gender imbalance (Delia San Juan), any such narrow agitprop emphasis would wrench the novel's alignment away from the original author's purpose and constitute an abuse as severe as those dramatized in the novel itself.   Characters in The Umbrella Country undeniably come from Manila's underclass ("casual" construction workers, often drunkenly inflicting their failures on blameless wives and children). But in the midst of all that evil flickers a heartening bond beyond bondage: between mother and children, between adult sisters, between young brothers-between blame and mea culpa. The same umbrellas that provide protection against the typhoon's torrents keep off the biting sunlight as well. They are the shield against excess; they are the balancing device safeguarding the tightrope walker. Whatever compassion, whatever human communion defends the staggering self against despair: that is the umbrella image secretly lodged in Realuyo's imagination and released with a subtlety that, yes, is vulnerable to manipulation by the hasty Uncritic but that, yes, ultimately is inviolable.   Picture the monocular Director in his weatherproof office in the States, which he "heroically" chooses to call "the belly of the beast"; and though himself an empowered, sometimes hegemonic expatriate: consider how he will mock Daddy Groovie's dream of escape-to­ America. Yet Realuyo, who is anything but naive, can admit that America "saved me and my family from poverty"; can be appreciative of opportunities, without feeling himself the object of condescension or special treatment; can say that he has been born again, like many an other Filipino abroad, unashamed of having two navels, two homes. He is determined to find his own voice, so that he can also speak for his silent countrymen wherever in the world they may be. It is this sense of shared suffering which, in his novel, offers the best way to alleviate/mitigate that suffering. The desperate sociopolitical situation in The Umbrella Country is soul-wracking: in the name of manliness Daddy Groovie regularly beats his wife Estrella. Through the same unrestrained violence he nearly emasculates his elder son Pipo, by refusing him the shelter of "Miss Unibers" fantasies, because they remind Daddy Groovie of his own delusion of manliness, his over-dependence on his sister abroad in America. Pipo, in search of comfort, becomes the rape victim of the bakla beautician, Boy Manicure, who may be addicted to mixed-gender fantasies of his own. In the "cave scene" (the tall grass along the old railroad tracks) Pipo becomes the center of a milling crowd of home­ less boys anxious to touch one another, starving for companionship. Finally Pipo decides to follow Daddy Groovie to New York: what propels him? Masochism? Uncontrollable fate? An undeniable desire to be accepted by his father, whatever the cost, as male-enough, as elder son? An intuition that both he and his father share some terrible in­ completeness but that (as in so many of Tennessee Williams' plays, where the helpless are one another's best help) they must try to be each other's cure?   The Umbrella Country is as open-ended as a wound-but it may be novel's nearly overwhelming pathos, its miseries and agonies ready for the Uncritic's reflexive search for someone, some habit native or im­ ported, to blame (then why not just Adam? Or Satan?); at the core of that cascade of evil glimmers the flame of good. Good in the refusal of Gringo, the younger brother, to hate Pipo when the latter tries to tum their father's bamboo yantok onto his back. Good in the self-pro­tective, yet sacrificial decision of Mommy not  to accompany her sons to America. Good in the abandonment of the family by Ninang Rola, followed by her return ("People who run away," she says, "always end up in the same place") and by her offer of companionship to Estrella who may never again see the rest of her family. Neither son was originally wanted because of the timing of their birthing. Yet now Estrella knows how much she does love them; and it is with love that she sets them free. That is not abandonment so much as Mommy's releasing them to their potentials, as Felipe and Gregory. It is consis­tent with her acceptance of both their unplanned births. Each time, she says, she gave life to them--her life. Pipo's preserved umbilical cord is nearly fossilized, and in her long suffering she may seem like a Stonewoman: but each of these is a true icon.   The fact is that however seriously dysfunctional this family is, The Umbrella Country celebrates life as an ideal, in the form of family, ex­ tended to barrio community and democratic nation, and even to one's once and future blood-brothers (at Bataan). Is the Philippines dysfunc­tional? Yes. Is  the relationship between the United States and the Philippines dysfunctional? Yes.   Is the solution to these mismatched relationships despair, a with­drawal into narcissism and hedonism? Realuyo seems to think not. After all, selfish greed is itself one of the prime causes of dysfunction. Some dreams disable, some enable: discerning the difference is often difficult. But not to dream, at all, ever-not to have faith in the pos­sibility of grace and the redemption of man is to risk dooming oneself irretrievably. Not to have forbearance, not to try to understand (forgiv­ing is always easier than understanding, and meaningless without it), not to be willing to concede, to sacrifice something in every human ne­gotiation--not to  love, despite everything: then life  is  futile. "Listen!" Realuyo seems to say: the man with the bamboo stick may be crying out; the rapist may be expressing a need that even he wishes didn't exist. "So, listen well!" Who heard Boy Manicure's scream during his mutilation? In this novel hate is as strong as lightning and thunder under the shawdowless pine trees of the Cordillera. Yet the answer to violence is not more violence. The answer to the two-handed sword is the shield-the umbrella.   Much of what prevents  The Umbrella Country  from being disheartening, or disgusting, is the author's decision to have Gringo be the principal narrator. His innocence is constantly under attack, yet sur­vives; experience puts an edge on his voice, but he will not remain mute. Not only is this text essentially bilingual/ multicultural: in italicized sections, the interior voice of several others-- Daddy Groovie, Ninang Rola-- is brought to the reader's empathetic attention. And there are minor characters such as Titay, Boy Spit, Sergio Putita who may be immature or behave bizarrely but are not permanently de­formed. Each within his or her limited capacity reaches out, blindly perhaps, often with surprising tenderness, toward human contact; a hand, not a fist: be my umbrella; save my better self from my worst; I was not born to be this depraved, or even this deprived; help, help me--so I can help you. What will happen to Pipo, once he is beyond shame, being anonymous in America? To Gringo? To Daddy Groovie? What will happen to America, with such immigrants as these? Will they ever see Mommy again? Can they possibly forget her? God knows, but is as silent as Sergio's wooden statues--unless one listens.   Is Realuyo someone who remembers hard times as material simply to be exploited for an assumed hardened "American market"? Not likely. His memorial to his father, survivor of the Death March and Camp O'Donnell Concentration Camp/ testifies to his ability to honor the worth of those who endured great suffering with no loss of dignity. The father is depicted as "Quick to anger, hard to approach, with­drawn," only to reveal that he suffered post traumatic stress disorder--"while all the time I simply thought that my father didn't know how to love." That love was secretly expressed when Augusto R. Realuyo applied for U.S citizenship and, having been sent to the VA hospital in Manhattan, successfully  petitioned for his family to follow. As the author did with italicized portions in his novel, so the feature article writer lets his father's personal record speak in its own voice, that of a peaceful man, and therefore a "tortured man of war." After the example of such a "hero," Realuyo could hardly fail to real­ize that some traumas go on and on, and disordered life goes on then too; yet that triumph later, "souls intact," is possible. For all its description of misery, The Umbrella Country is at heart a courageous offer of hope, based on faith in incorruptibility and the power to recover innocence after the fall. As Ninang says, Filipinos are like grass and can grow anywhere.   Many Filipinos have the adaptability and tenacity of grass; and beyond these qualities some have fidelity, loyalty, love.   In their veins will always be their parents' presence. So far apart; and yet so connected.     Notes 1.            See the author's "Dominion over the Horizon," Solidarity (Oct.-Dec. 1966), pp. 129-33. 2.           A checklist of Philippine fiction and poetry appearing in American sources before 1965 showed over 300 items. 3.            In the Reader's Guide to  The Umbrella Country  (NY: Ballantine, 1999). 4.            Their place within the centenary achievements should be more apparent when Bert Florentino completes updating his 1963  Midcentury Guide to Philippine Literature in English. Florentino and Linda Nietes have in progress a definitive summary of such literature to the present. 5.            As Luis Francia has said, "if you're writing literature, you're not writing propaganda. Because they think that because you have the'right politics therefore you must be good." "Confessions of a Born-Again Filipino: An interview with Poet Luis Francia," The Dispatch (Spring 1986): 11. 6.            "A Conversation with Bino Realuyo," appended to  The Umbrella Country. 7.           "When Heroes Are Not Dead: An Easy in Two Voices," Filipinas (Aug. 2000): 43- 45, 71.      Thank you, Leonard Casper.

In the Philippines, we have this saying "lukso ng dugo." Lukso (jump/leap), Dugo (blood), the ethereal mesh of "leap of faith" and "blood is thicker than water." The things we do for things we can't explain, as if our blood is directing us, not our minds. In my historical novel, Bataan New Jersey , I created a fictitious matrilineal family saga. Four generations of strong women going back to an ancestor in southern Philippines. The story is partly based on my own search for blood connections on my mother's side. My mother is a Chavacano, which might not mean anything to people until I reveal a few more facts. It's the only Spanish creole in Asia, and it formed in Zamboanga, the last stronghold of Spain in the Philippines. While the history of Philippine colonization is one of evangelization and not native replacement (unlike in Latin America), something else happened in the South, in Zamboanga, around Fort Pilar. Where my mother has deep blood roots. Hispanic Wanna Bes But Filipinos, because of our Spanish last names, have always been confused by Mother History's little hand tricks. Many still think they have some blood connections to Spain, although there weren't enough Spaniards in the Philippines throughout its 333 colonial history to create that bloodline (again, unlike in Latin America). Filipino cinema is hometown to mestizaje, but if we really go into it, we will earn that many of these actors are mixed with American blood from the early 20th century (1900s) when Americans colonized the islands. Take Gloria Romero. Nida Blanca. None of them was Hispanic. The very few known Hispanic lineage was kept by the landowning Spanish clans like the Ayalas. And we can see it on their faces. Then there are the likes of my mother. Light-skinned. "Mestiza" type. Curly hair. A face that one could easily find in the mestizaje of Latin America. But she is a Chavacano from Zamboanga. One of mysterious ancestry. 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. Mostly the work of Governor General Claveria. Roa is one of my paternal last names. Former Pres. Duterte is a Roa. The association is horrifying enough. So my interest ended there. My DNA Check Ten years ago, when I did my DNA ancestral check, it showed a 5% European origin. It made me curious, but it was not significant enough to interrogate. I imagined the % to be coming from my maternal side. After all, and once again, my mother is from Zamboanga. Did most Filipinos have the same colonial %? Was this something worth pursuing? Lukso ng dugo. For me, there was a always a pull toward Latin America ever since we immigrated. I learned to be fluent in Spanish. I studied in South America and traveled every year to Spanish-speaking countries. Eventually, I would marry a Central American, and Spanish would be the language spoken at home. Lukso ng dugo. Even if my 5% wasn't thick enough. Spanish would be my third language. Portuguese would be my fourth.  I am according to my DNA 5% Spanish/Portuguese.   Blood can’t distinguish and break apart the Iberian peninsula.  As my 95% places me in Southeast Asia. If there was a pure blood Spaniard in my family lineage, he would be at least from 200 years ago—or so I thought.    The Claveria Decree I have Filipino friends who go to Spain and look for their Spanish last names there. The whole world is confused by the Spanish last names of the Filipino people, especially when their native-looking faces don't match what they wish to be. Colonial mentality is much embedded in the Filipino mind. Filipino cinema compounds such confusion, as much as the Filipino national sport, beauty contests. When in doubt, Google "The Claveria Decree." You will find the following: The Claveria Decree was a decree issued by Spanish Governor General Narciso Claveria on November 21, 1849. The decree required Filipinos to adopt Spanish surnames, and it had a lasting impact on Filipino identity.  What did the decree do?  Compiled a list of Spanish and indigenous surnames; Sent the list to provincial chiefs, who then sent it to towns; Gave the list to locals who didn't have surnames; Required families to systematically adopt Spanish surnames; Allowed families who had had surnames for four generations to keep them Case in point: My last name is Realuyo. Where my father was from--Oas, Albay, Philippines, everyone's last name starts with the letter R. A lot of Roas. These Filipino writers' last names are from there as well: Remoto and Ribay. We are not related by blood. Possibly by marriage, although in such a confined space, it really doesn't say much. Most like, related by street block. Studies Because of ancestry sites and a quicker and organized process to find one's DNA history, Filipinos are learning the truth the hard way. The reality that most Filipinos, despite their Hispanic last names, have no ancestral lineage to Spain could be a blow to our long standing romance with colonial mentality. Studies have grown about Filipino ancestry, one study after another debunking the Spanish ancestry myth. From "Multiple migrations to the Philippines during the last 50,000 years. The Philippines was a Spanish Colony for 333 y from 1565 until 1898. However, we only observe significant population-level signals of European admixture in some urbanized lowlanders, Bicolanos, and Spanish Creole-speaking Chavacanos ( SI Appendix , Table S7 Y ). Some individuals from Bolinao, Cebuano, Ibaloi, Itabayaten, Ilocano, Ivatan, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, and Yogad groups also presented low levels of European admixture ( SI Appendix , Table S7 Y ). This admixture is estimated to have taken place 100 to 450 y ago, which falls within the Spanish Colonial Period ( SI Appendix , Table S7 Z ). In contrast to several other Spanish-colonized regions, Philippine demography appears to have remained largely unaffected by admixture with Europeans. More here . 15% Mysterious Blood My mother is getting older, and I also couldn't wait much longer to find out a little bit more from my maternal heritage that I know next to nothing about. Early this year, I finally convinced my mother to do her DNA. What will be added to my own mysterious 5% European DNA? My mother and I are connected in mysterious ways. I find that most of my illnesses are also my mother's, not paternal, like those of my siblings. On my father side, cancer seems to be the killer and they all seem to cross the plane of life and death once in their 80s. My father passed when he was in his 80s and so did his identical twin. Will the same happen to me? Or will I take the path my mother is about to cross, our similarities in blood leading us the same way? My mother always claimed that her father was a Spaniard. By that, she probably meant a "mestizo." Unfortunately, we don't have any surviving photographs of her father. I have never met him, and her own mother passed when she was. only seven. In the Philippines, we have historical terms for such mixtures, although most of us were not educated to call label them correctly. The fact that Filipino/Chinese mix were also called "mestizos" complicated it more. My mother's DNA would reveal a 15% European ancestry (Mostly Spanish/Portuguese like mine, and 3% of which -- Italian). Since my mother and I did the same DNA test, my 5% European ancestry was moved to her side of my lineage as soon as her DNA results appeared. None on my father's side. For me, 15% is huge. The full-blooded Spaniard in her ancestral line was closer than I imagined. It further proves that her face was not an anomaly, and it reveals a story of Spanish colonization that many Filipinos do not share--a blood lineage. As a Chavacano, she could have easily descended from a Spanish soldier that was sent to Fort Pilar. But I can only assume so much. The fact is, given the country's faulty records, we may never know. We are not Ayalas or other landed families who connected with their Spanish ancestors by blood and inheritance. I descended from people whose story was always missing in the annals of oral interpretation handed down the generations. When I wrote Bataan New Jersey, I ended the historical novel in Zamboanga. Before learning my mother's 15%, I wanted to explore what mestizaje meant to me, if that were even true. And now that it is indeed true and undeniable, my interest in the matter has grown. There is a story in the 15%, one that we can and may only learn from writers who are willing to go inside and explore it, albeit in the imagination. Lukso ng Dugo may sound like a hyperbolic use of a Filipino saying, but it still defines much of my own personal history. Latin America has always been close to my heart. And Spain, as much as Wokeness dictates that it be erased and questioned for its dark colonial history, is also inside my artery. That Spanish would become my third language, and I would eventually speak it at home means that Lukso ng Dugo could very well dictate Fate itself. Fort Pilar, Zamboangra. Zamboanga was a trade route for hundreds of years, even before Spain. However, Chavacano was the language born to the mixing of native Subanons and the Spaniards who found themelves in the Spanish Fort. Read more: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8020671/ https://zamboangagirl.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-citys-abiding-devotion.html https://www.nature.com/articles/ejhg2013122 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/y0trF8pipBs http://www.filipinogenealogy.com/2012/02/claveria-and-myth-of-spanish-ancestors.html#google_vignette

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 independently study the colonization and mental conditioning of the Philippines, without having to return to Asia. I would find answers in countries with parallel history. Before the Caribbean, I traveled quite a bit looking for a writing "colony," not the package artists applied to, but one I created on my own. I went to Mexico a few times, as the Philippines was managed through Nueva Espan~a/Modern Mexico. But I would the find inspiration not in Acapulco or Mexico D.F., but in Puerto Rico, another island conjoined with the Philippines in 1898. I always used to say, I grew up on an island but I never saw the sea. As an adult, I cherished the communion with the ocean. In fact, after my father passed in 2003, I moved to Puerto Rico. But my romance wouldn't last very long after that. I noticed the climate changing. It had become more fanatical that every Friday, there was a cultish procession on the streets of San Juan. When my family came to bring me back, I never went back to Puerto Rico again. Most of my works after my first two books were written there. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic became my next sojourn. I made an annual pilgrimage to La Zona Colonial, so excited to find myself in the seat of Hispaniola. But even that would end, as if these island obsession was to turn a leaf. Indeed, my voyage to the Caribben would come to a halt, but not without a gift in 2011, for my birthday. A dog named Poker, named after Lady Gaga's famous song at that time. A friend gave him to me so I would have a companion in Manhattan. I traveled with months old Poker on the plane (he was in a dog carry-on under the front seat) to Miami and eventually to New York. I never had a pet. My family was dog averse. We had seen enough dog-butchering in Manila to understand the peril of having a dog in our lives. Poker would change that. At first, he lived with me on the Upper East Side, so fearful, he had to sleep between my thighs every night. When I left for work, he would go hysterical. And I would come back to a puppy spinning around in endless anxiety and chaos. But such was my life, and there was no choice but to leave him alone if I had to keep him. I would bring him to our house in Jersey City. My mother and my brother would fall in love with the tiny Poker. When I asked they if they wanted him to stay, they said, Yes. Our house was a palace for tiny Poker. There were three floors, a stairs where he could run up and down, and a backyard, an open air to play in. More than that, no one would leave him alone at home. He always had company. That's where he would end up for the rest of his life. And that's also how he became my mother's best friend. Our dog-averse family would turn around on pet-hood, thanks to Poker's character, a loving, caring, and lovable sunlight of a dog. Soon, he was a Realuyo. For fourteen years, he kept my mother company. I wouldn't text my mother without mentioning Poker. We panicked when he got sick. We worried. We celebrated his milestones. We calmed him whenever he trembled in the animal hospital waiting room. I never really understood until then why dogs were called "a man's best friend." My mother texted me his picture every single day for the past 14 years. I would always text back: "Goodnight/morning, Mommy and Poker. Love you." Poker kept her company all these years. Whatever makes my mother happy makes all of us happy. That was always Poker and his uncanny ability to center Grace. Poker had been very weak for the past few weeks. We knew he had aged. 14 human years was simply a very long time for him. Even if we knew somehow that he might leave us soon, we would still be unprepared for his passing. But he saved my mother from the trauma of witnessing his death. My mother went downstairs to prepare his puree of food, and when she returned to her bedroom, Poker was gone. I was about to get on the train when my mother called. I knew he had passed. My mother didn't know that I had answered her call and I could hear her wailing from where I stood on the train station. A paralyzing moment to hear my mother's pain. She had lost her dearest baby, as she would refer to Poker. But we are grateful to Poker. He had changed our lives. Gave us balance. Showed us love in his most special way. He came as an Angel and left as Sunlight. Thank you, Poker. We will miss you and we love you.

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 pursuing Engineering at the University of the Philippines would be recruited into the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) in 1941 to prepare the Philippines for war is unconscionable. World War II was not the first war inflicted on Philippine soil by a global power. Spain was already there for 333 years when the U.S. took over in 1898. And in 1941 Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and occupied the Philippines. In 1942, my father, Augusto Roa Realuyo found himself in the Fall of Bataan, the Bataan Death March and eventually, a Japanese Concentration Camp in Capas Tarlac. He had just turned 21. He survived. In human history, survivors held the testimonies. But my father kept them all, having to face the shame of being attached to a historical fact: the Fall of Bataan was the biggest military surrender in American history. To make it worse, the American Congress denied them wartime benefits by passing the Rescission Act of 1946 . Where would you go from there? While the world slowly moved forward, leaving the shameful past behind, my father and his peers suffered in fading shadow of war. When I was born, my father was pushing 50s. Just like many men of war in the Philippines, he married late for reasons only novels could untangle. Even with Engineering and Architecture degrees, he would struggle all his life running from war nightmares and trying to keep a family of five together. The world I grew up in was what anyone would expect in the belly of Manila. All of us characters in the aftermath of World War II. Bringing his family to America was his last act of forgiveness. He was after all brought here a last resort to reverse chronic and worsened war illnesses that piled on him in his twilight years. That was how our family found ourselves in the fabric of New York and New Jersey. America was his gift to us. It's the other country he fought for. He, just like all Filipinos, was an American national during the war. A history as complicated as our relationship to America. "I Shall Return" was a Filipino mantra during the torments of war, a song of hope. It was only three years ago that I became brave enough to tackle our legacy of war. While I collected World War II and Bataan books, I couldn't find myself in that trench. I asked my father's spirit to be there with me, every day, at 6am, in coffee shops, writing Bataan New Jersey, before I went to my FT management job. I asked myself what happened before, during, and after 1941. His story had grown much, much bigger. 100 years from 1921-2021: the history of the Philippines against the superpowers that destroyed its young heart makes more sense once human stories are thrown into the fray. And I began to understand my father and his generation more. In the same vein, I also understood the complexity of wars. It's always easy to protest against it, but what happens when it's brought to our doorstep? My father, at 20, knew what he had to do, whether he thought it a calling or a mission. Our family has sacred months. January because of my father's birth, and April because of the Fall of Bataan and his death on April 26, 2003. I lost him early in life. My first novel came out in 1999, and he would not see my second book. I never told him I was ever interested in writing about Bataan, although I knew that in the genre of WWII, the Filipino voice of Bataan was always missing. Majority of the people who died in the 65 miles of the Bataan Death March were Filipinos. Bataan was always in my blood. I will always be a son of a survivor. It's a legacy I understood when I wrote and published my first novel. Social justice is rea l for me. It has always been. Not a trope. Not social media virtue signaling. Not armchair activism. History is as complex as the people it railroads. But some of them survive to tell. Today is his 104th birthday. I thank and honor him. The burden of legacy of telling is Light.

#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 basis. I didn't leave Twitter/X although I am hardly there too. For me Facebook is easiest as it is connected to my private accounts, and I can manage it well. It also is where I do a lot of my quick readings as I follow a lot of Facebook pages. But with 16,000 followers on my FB author page , I also understand the need to honor them. The other night, I ran into a book pitch campaign on BlueSky (apparently on X too), and I decided to take a bite. I have had many pitches for #BataanNewJersey and I am still not quite sure which one grabs attention. The one of this website is what I have sent in my literary agent queries. And it has gone through many iterations. On #P2PPIT event, we were allowed to post three pitches during the 12-hour event online. And so quickly, without giving it much thought, I put together pitches at different times of the day. I wanted the pitches to be visceral, not overplanned. Straight from the gut. Like I would my Facebook posts. For each of them, I attached an image that I had used before, with the original pitch on the post. The BlueSky word limit is definitely constraining (but hey, I wrote a book of Sonnets). First was this. Fall of Bataan: the biggest military surrender in American history.  So many books written.  None from Filipino POV.   A survivor’s son pens an epic 100-yr literary novel about 4 generations of a Queer family reshaping the aftermath of wars inflicted on Philippine soil.  BATAAN NEW JERSEY.   #P2Ppit #UW #PW Second, I thought, why not try to pitch in NUMBERS. The novel is 700 pages, already epic in scope and depth, but what makes the pages running are the numbers in the story. The first few pages of the novel includes a timeline and DATES! So here goes: 100 years 1921-2021 4 generations of a #QUEER Filipino family 3 successive wars inflicted by Spain U.S Japan 65 miles of #BataanDeathMarch 4 languages 4 countries  in 1 epic literary novel inspired by a survivor of Bataan Death March (my father) #BataanNewJersey  #P2PPit #UW #PW #amquerying #A And last, I thought about going personal, but really personal. My original pitch to Literary Agents begins with me being a son of a Death March survivor, and then it goes off to comps and a short description. But how about I bring my mother in. She after all inspired all the women in the book. Inspiration.  My father survived the #BataanDeath March.  My mother was born during #WWII.   Their stories made me curious about what happened before, during, and after.  The result was #BataanNewJersey. 100 years. 4 countries. 4 languages.  1 Epic novel. 4 generations of strong Filipino women. #QUEER #amquerying #P2Ppit #PW #BluePit #UW. Watching other writer's pitches, I learned about Mood Boards and Guides for Literary Agents, all visual. A relatively younger group. Fun to actually watch them. I am a GenX and a world a part from many of them. Here they are with a new strategy in getting Literary Agents to notice the novel. And Mood Boards? I put Canva to work. I posted the following on social media and it actually got a response. My first attempt at Mood Boarding. A story in pictures. Some elements of the novel are there. The women all look alike for a reason. Love these young writers! The women on this mood board are the A.I. versions of my mother. She is the inspiration for all of them. The landscape of finding an agent has changed since the last time I was represented by Harold Ober. But that was now 26 years ago. I have always been tech savvy, and I did win a pitch event at Harvard, not to mention I taught "How to Pitch" workshops in a leadership organization. People can only read or hear so much of a pitch, so even the few words (not too esoteric and gimmicky) may or may not land quickly. Keep it simple. Even if a literary agent doesn't say a Yay now, the goal is to be remembered--or brought up in a future conversation. In a query letter, the pitch has to blend in naturally but without compromising one's writing style. Personal style still needs to jump at the reader. This is writing after all. And so yes, the voyage continues. It's 2025, and I am #querying.

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.   For #BataanNewJersey, it’s important that I collect as much information for marketing purposes.   I have just started looking for a #LiteraryAgent, the first gatekeeper toward a gated community we would need to blast open.   That in itself is a gargantuan task, almost like looking for a dream FT job.   One of the reasons why I waited this long to send my work out again for publication was because of this—the business of publishing is time-consuming and personal.  And I have a FT job.   Writing books is my religion.  My DNA.  I just do it, with a lot of effort that I actually enjoy and cherish.  But the publication process takes the joy out of Art for many of us artists.  And so we look for a champion who will take the burden off our shoulders.  The first one would be a Literary Agent.   For The Umbrella Country, I was represented by Harold Ober, the oldest and storied agency that has ceased operations.   Even then, I knew that my job as a novelist wasn’t over once I handed over the book and signed contracts. 25 years since, I have become more experienced in managing what I cannot literally control.   84 years: the memory of my father lives on while the war and interest in WWII fade through time.  WWII professors are aging and retiring.  We have a new generation whose connection to WWII was a distant relative, a great-grandfather, possibly dead.  The question for me complicates through time:  where are these organizations that might be interested to hear from a son of a Bataan Death March and Japanese Concentration Camp survivor?  What would be the best way to approach this research without pigeonholing myself into a topic that might not even exist anymore?   For the past weeks,  I have returned to the coffeeshop.   Where I write this blog.  With my excel, I put together an organized lists of war-related organizations.  At first, my entry point was "WWII" until my chances thinned out.  I am now approaching it from a “War and Society” perspective, and this has given me access to universities and war-related organizations that I otherwise would not know had I stayed on a limited “WWII track.”  The research landscape has changed.  A lot of interest in Wars, an expansion from WWII.   But #BataanNewJersey is not only about WWII—the majority of the book is the impact successive wars on a family of four generations.     Last weekend, I ran into Zooniverse, a “people-powered” research hub, and found The American Soldier, launched in 2021 on the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor by thousands of “archivists.”   While it’s not an organization per se, it shows that there is still much interest in WWII in our time.  The modern lenses haven’t completely faded.  They are simply focused on other things never examined before:  War and Women, for instance.  Widening my research means capturing more organizations that might in part cover WWII.  An eclectic example of my growing list is below, not a deadend but in fact a tiny door to wider space of thinking. The first link seems suspect but once inside, you would see a deep common interest.   https://www.cyndislist.com/ww2/societies/ https://www.smh-hq.org/index.html https://www.docsteach.org/topics/wwii https://www.historians.org And this one moved me. My father used to receive a physical copy when he was alive. Glad to see its last issue as it turns into another legacy organization: http://www.axpow.org/bulletins/bullcur.pdf   #BataanNewJersey has an audience. Historical novels enthusiasts. War genre followers. Asian American historians. Historians in general. And those who love and enjoy a good story in the most unknown and vivid landscapes. At the heart of every novel is a human story, one that transcends time. Time-traveling is yet to happen, but we can already do it in our literature. For now, the dream is to add #BataanNewJersey to my own collection of World War II books. The honor is to see the spine next to these gifts I could only be grateful to have held and kept.

Every year since I was 19, I have spent time in another country to find a piece of Life I could grow old with. Wisdom is the seed of so many cultures, old and contemporary.   My inner core has been made from those seeds.  At my best and worst, what sprang from those seeds kept me going. And I continued traveling. And learning from complete strangers and wisdom givers. Our family spent the past two weeks immersing ourselves in the lights of Christmas in Europe, as we have done in the past few years. My best Christmases were in Manila, even if we didn't have much. I have never experienced that again since we immigrated to NY. But I thought the spirit, cultural not religious, is still out there somewhere, and so we started a tradition of following Christmas markets. The world has always been troubled, and no matter how rare and fleeting, Joy still exists. Finding and experiencing it, even for a short-term, is a Life of wisdom-sharing. 2025 marks my family's 40th year in America. Four decades of absorbing culture and wisdom brought me here. 2024 was and will always be a special year, the year I finished writing #BataanNewJersey — pulled from two stories from a short story collection I couldn’t get published.   While Bataan is known for its historical surrender, its legacy in Bataan families is to never ever give up.  I move to 2025 with the same spirit and grit to carve a space I never had.  Finding a literary agent is one step toward publication, a true challenge, but now I have three completed manuscripts.   Big enough a reason to go against the wave again.   Life has no clear paths.  As Machado said, we make it by walking. 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 always been like this. #BataanNewJersey was born of such entangled truths. I can only be grateful I finished it. All 700 pages of it. And now, with all the grit I have, I go forward to get it represented, printed, and read. And so the wisdom-giving continues. (Photo taken at Maison de Victor Hugo ) Why drinking coffee? Adding this photo to my cache of "drinking coffee" author pics. Taken at Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris. I have grown tired of the "pretentious" author portraits, so I thought what could be more pretentious than pictures of myself drinking coffee in different cities in Europe. :-) My images on my Google imprint has been Me and my Coffee cup for the past five years. All taken by my husband.

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 young. It's the face that inspired the writing of Bataan New Jersey. While the heart of the novel is Bataan, it is about the impact of successive wars on Philippine soil on the characters, especially Lourdes. One cannot write a novel without seeing the faces of the characters. They have to move, talk, cry, scream, and appear in the writer's consciousness in all possible ways. They have to be real in that alternative world of fiction. Their gestures are the language of fiction, the quiet moments that are often better than dialogues. When I started writing Bataan New Jersey, I already knew what Lourdes, Dominica, and Eugenia looked like. They are three generations of women with the same face. My mother's face. My mother, Virginia Almonte Realuyo, is a Chavacana. She is a polyglot. I took that DNA from her. Because of her background, I studied in South America. I wanted to understand that colonial voyage from early on. I learned Spanish, but not the creole that my mother's family spoke for centuries. I headed to Argentina to study. Ferdinand Magellan landed in Patagonia, Argentina first before running into the "Philippine" islands. My mother is from Zamboanga, home to Fort Pilar, the Spanish stronghold in the south. Chavacano is the language and culture born to the interaction of the Spanish soldiers and the natives of the south. My mother is born out of that heritage. I created a whole world from my mother's face. The stories of her people, so un-acknowledged in a country that embraced Americanisms over Hispanidad, will hopefully be a part of a moving literature. It is my heritage too. I am a Chavacano just like her.

An offering for today, a Rebel Sonnet "Dear Blood" 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. Dear Blood on Missouri Review, with an introduction: https://missourireview.com/bino-realuyo-dear-blood/ And thank you to Savage Mind's Himati for featuring Dear Blood and creating this moving visual rendition. Here it is beautifully read by Broadway actor Marc De la Cruz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJwFTeSOIOA

It's Veteran's Appreciation Month. I can't think of a better time to create a new website. Since I started writing Bataan New Jersey three years ago, I have reconnected with all things-VETS. I knew my late father guided me through the writing of a 700-page book and will be there through its publication. As someone who collects Bataan books, I can safely say that there is almost a non-existent Filipino voice in the WWII and Bataan genre. A couple of books I have are both from the Philippines, and not even Filipinos have heard of them. My shelf is full of Bataan books written by Americans, mostly white Americans. I am grateful for being able to add to this volume of literature. Bataan, after all, is in the Philippines. World War II came to the islands, where most had never seen a war of this magnitude. 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 darkness. Thank you, Min Jin Lee and Abraham Verghese. I would like to take a different approach to blogging, less pressure, short and quick. I don't want this to be some literary task. More stream of consciousness, like the rest of this website. Some aspiring writers might visit, and I'd like them to see the human behind the work. I do work outside the MFA system. I designed this website myself (based on a template of course). I have been developing websites going back to the Geocities days. Thanks to Wix, it has become incredibly easy. Thank you for visiting. Please know that if you encounter an unfinished page, it's because I am still working on this website.

Many things to be grateful about in a difficult world. I am grateful for my research in the past three weeks on literary agents. I have queried around 15 agents so far. I can’t imagine how many queries they get but I do believe in the cosmic system of right time, right place. The literary agent who will represent my work will have to go through a journey with me with my works. A 700-page literary historical novel about WW II’s Bataan is very timely, but the added contemporary touch of most recent sociopolitical events will make it controversial. War after all is a recurring human event, and most of us don’t connect them with each other. As if unrelated events. Human ecology is much about threads of time. I do miss the characters. Three years of writing and editing, truly every day in the early morning, was so fulfilling. Walking to the coffee shop while it’s dark outside and listening to my playlist so I would be in that world but the time I sat down to write their stories. Something I had not done before. What dreams are made of. 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. Suddenly I felt the urgency to write it now. It finally called me. Asked me to sit down and listen. I understood Bataan better when I finally dove into the narrative. As it turned out, Bataan was not a singular event. The ripples began decades before. In my novel, I mentioned a theory about WWII—that Japan started it, not Germany. That’s one aspect of the novel I would like to explore more in Book 2. For now, the mission is to get Bataan New Jersey represented and published. For today and the gift this manuscript has brought me, I am grateful. 🙏🙏🙏