Welcome to June and here’s some food for thought:
Do you love YA? Kate Hart unpacks the trends in 2011 YA covers and made a few infographics. Here’s one of them:
In today’s Brain Pickings selection, Maria Popova highlights photographer Rania Matar’s A Girl and Her Room. Here’s one photograph:
Ellice, Jamaica Plain, MA 2010
© Rania Matar | raniamatar.com
Here’s a video on Getting the Book Invented
Filed under Flipside
Congrats to our Komixathon winners:
Mica Agregado’s “So Much for Pathos”
Argin Lerit’s “The Never-Ending -URK!”
Drick Puno & Mark Espiritu’s “Papa P.”
And our Reader’s Choice Award goes to:
Magbanua & Sandagon’s “The Last Stand of Magellan”
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Last call for our 24-Hour Komixathon but in the meantime, enjoy these links:
Flavorwire features Artfully Repurposed Vintage Printing Devices, from the printing press to typewriters. For example:
James Hopkins has a series of skull-shaped shelf art (starting here). Wouldn’t you want this to be your bookshelf?
As far as the book as an artifact is concerned, check out this die-cut poetry book (via Brain Pickings).
Here’s a fun infographic on How a Book is Born:
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Every Monday, we’ll have a blog entry focusing on one of Flipside’s titles.
Xin-Mei is the author of Afraid to be Chinese |Amazon|iTunes|Barnes & Noble|Flipreads|
Can Xin-Mei tell us more about Afraid to be Chinese?
Afraid To Be Chinese is a compilation of autobiographical narratives written by a second generation Filipino-Chinese woman, Xin-Mei. She sets out a plan to write a list of secrets she wants to tell her mother so that her mother would know something about her. In writing her narratives, she pretends to be talking to her mother. “Let’s tell each other our woman secrets.”
She was afraid to be Chinese because she didn’t know the date of her birthday. Nobody blew out birthday candles for her and her twin sister. When they planned their own birthday party, they got in trouble.
She was afraid to be Chinese because there was something unwritten that girls had to do. They had to make themselves sellable or marriageable. Mothers fix up their daughters to improve the way they look or the way they speak. Mother always talks about destiny, … “there is already a boy born for you.” And there was this notion that ‘love will come after marriage’. Xin Mei thinks that only a stupid person can believe this. “Like how I eventually can love someone who is like my brother,” she said.
She was afraid to be Chinese because there was this fear of matchmaking. There was this fear of being odd and not pretty enough for any boy to want her. She knows that even if she is not pretty, she has a brain and there is nothing wrong with her brain. Teachers in her school think that she is smart and she knows how to get an A when she is told to. She talks about the friends she meet in the university and how she wants to meet new friends who are not Chinese.
She was afraid to be Chinese because her mother thinks that she is nothing. Through the love of an Aunty, she realized that not everybody thinks that she is nothing. The only reason why she flunked grade four was because she was tired of being a twin sister. There was always that endless game of comparison. Even if she flunked grade four it doesn’t mean that she is stupid forever.
The way father-in-law and mother-in-law saw life and the way they lived their lives were as different as how Xin-mei wanted to raise her children. There were gaps of miscommunication and incomprehension. Her husband became the go-between. Sometimes he was able to bridge thoughts with some language of wisdom like timed silences but most of the time when he had to choose sides. When he would not choose to be on their side, his act of ‘seemed betrayal’ would enrage his mother. She consistently used the threat of disinheritance, which resulted in producing fear, dependency and hostile feelings among the members of the family.
For many years, all information that was favorable to mother-in-law was allowed entry and encouraged. Information that will challenge her was filtered out. She spends time with her sons and daughter-in-laws who can be trusted to confirm to her bitterness to justify her feelings and justify her bitterness.
Whenever Xin-Mei would speak to brother-in-law’s wives, they were kind only up to the point of being civil. Nobody wanted to “rock the boat” and be in bad light with mother-in-law.
Xin Mei refuses to be sucked in by something she could not understand. It was the presence of some old oppressive structure found present in most Chinese families.
She took hold of something real, of something most fundamental, which was the creation of her own memories. The memories of a humanity she learned in a catholic school that dealt with love and understanding amidst a dark and antiquated world. This led her family to see the world in another order. It was a blessing hidden in a curse.
What compelled Xin-Mei to write these stories?
Maybe it was the children. When the children started to ask questions about choices, She found that they were asking the same questions she asked when she was their age. It might have dawned on her, “who else will tell them what their choices are?”
When she was their age, she never questioned authority. She was taught to only obey or else she stayed at the back of the line. She was ‘limited” and she didn’t want that for her children. She needed to have real answers and she did not know where to get them.
Writing came into her life when she needed it most. She was invited to join a writing group of accomplished women who wanted to learn how to write stories. Professor Cristina Hidalgo taught her the necessary skills of writing. In the process of writing she learned, it is not having experience that will make a person wise but it is in the reflection of those experiences.
How did you get into creative non-fiction?
When I joined a writing class.
What were the challenges you encountered during the writing and the publication process?
Unlike most writers who addresses an audience when they write, Xin Mei speaks to one imaginary person and tells her what is on her mind. That made the writing easier for her. What was challenging was the hesitation of publishing the stories. The people she writes about are still alive.
Thanks.
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Don’t forget our two events, our Mother’s Day Sale and our 24-Hour Komixathon.
In the meantime, here’s hopefully some intriguing media:
via Etsy
From the late Maurice Sendak: Unreleased Drawings and Intaglio Prints.
And then there’s this infographic on the Top 10 Most Read Books in the World.
Last but not least is 30 Gorgeous and Innovative Bookshelves.
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Every Monday, we’ll have a blog entry focusing on one of Flipside Digital Content’s titles.
Rose Fres-Fausto is the author of Raising Pinoy Boys. Her eBook will be part of our Mother’s Day Sale.
Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. For those unfamliiar with the book, could you tell us what Raising Pinoy Boys is about?
Raising Pinoy Boys is a compilation of my over 2 decades of journey raising my 3 sons Marty, Enrique and Anton. I started writing journals about my experiences as a first time mom – from the time I first conceived to the time we started choosing schools, doing homework together, acting as their referee in their everyday quarrels, teaching them how to prepare their own Balance Sheets, to the time they started getting interested in girls. So what the reader gets is a candid narration of the joys and challenges of parenting.
It also includes stories of the growing up years of successful Filipino men and boys we admire as told by their parents. These are Lance Gokongwei, Tony Tan Caktiong, Tony Meloto, Bo Sanchez, Brothers Nestor, Raul & Lorenzo Tan, Chris Tiu, and three admirable classmates of my sons.
What made you decide to write the book?
Back when the boys were very young, I bid my promising investment banking career goodbye to be able to give my focused and undivided attention to the growing up years of my sons. Before I knew it they were all grown up and I am very happy and proud that they have all turned out to be happy, confident and kind individuals who are enthusiastic about life. I can’t help but feel that I made the right decision. Seeing them grown up, I was faced with a new set of crossroads. I asked myself, “Now that they are not in need of my undivided attention, what else can I do, what is God’s will for me right now?” I found the answer in the words of a great philosopher theologian novelist Frederich Beuchner. He said, “God calls us to a place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.” I loved his message so much that I even came up with my paraphrase: God’s will is the intersection of our greatest passion and the world’s greatest need. So what is my passion? It’s raising my sons. Is there a great need in the world that intersects with my passion? I’m sure everyone will agree that there is always a need to raise our children well and raising our sons well is very important because they are the future heads of Filipino families.
I figured that I already had a wealth of materials and I felt that sharing my experiences might help other parents. In my years of learning and experimenting about this great and challenging job, I observed that even if we have different beliefs and styles in raising our kids, hearing another parent’s stories always enriches my own parenting. I also have a lofty dream that all Filipino children will be raised so well that in future we will have an abundance of talented, honest and competent Filipinos who will always do the right thing whether someone is looking or not. They will grow in number and they will be the norm and not the exception. This will be out tipping point to finally become the great nation we are destined to be. I hope that this book will be my humble contribution to this lofty dream. 
happy
Why do you think we have books on raising boys from the US, but not from the Philippines?
Maybe because we are not yet a “book reading population. We’re still more of a magazine reading population. When I looked for parenting books specifically for boys, I got to read a few good ones but as you said they’re mostly from the US. This is also one reason why I decided to write one to cater to Filipino parents, even the ones who are already in other countries but would still want to instill good Filipino values in their children. I hope that the Pinoy parents all over the world will find joy and “company” while reading the book as it is really like talking to a mom sharing her stories over coffee. They will hear stories about “tuli,” bisita Iglesia, Noche Buena, etc.
What was the most challenging aspect when it come to writing the book?
The main challenge was the big decision to share our family stories. When I hesitated for a long time, my husband encouraged me to finish the book and just decide in the end whether to publish it or to keep it as a family book. It is also difficult to put an end to an ongoing story. My sons are still living with us (yes Filipino children stay with their parents while in college and even after college) and I continue to parent them so it was not so easy where to end the story.
There’s a section in Raising Pinoy Boys where you interview various parents. How did you select them?
As I mentioned earlier, they are the successful men we (my husband, sons and I) admire. I also asked each son to name one classmate/friend whom they admire so I could interview the parents. When you look at the men and boys we featured the common denominator seems to be their humility despite their success and their integrity. After I did the interviews I found out that there were always great formators (parents, teacher, uncle, elder) who believed in them and supported them while they were growing up.
Thanks.
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