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Book Cover for: One Tribe, M. Evelina Galang

One Tribe

M. Evelina Galang

In One Tribe, the death of Isabel Manalo's unborn child stirs wide spread speculation in her small Midwestern suburb. Fed up with the noise of local tsismosas (gossips), she moves to Virginia Beach to teach myth and history to Filipino American youth. Isa Manalo walks into the chaos of drive by shootings, beauty pageants, and community politicking. At every turn she runs up against youth gangs who distrust her, community elders who disapprove of her loose outsider ways, and a Filipino boyfriend who accuses her of acting too white. Eventually Isa fights back. As Hurricane Emilia brews at the edge of the east coast, Isa opens her house to a local girl gang and nourishes their troubled spirits, instigating change sudden as the shift of tropical winds.

Book Details

  • Publisher: New Issues Poetry & Prose
  • Publish Date: Mar 1st, 2006
  • Pages: 321
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.80in - 6.72in - 1.24in - 1.96lb
  • EAN: 9781930974586
  • Categories: General

About the Author

Galang, M. Evelina: - Linh Dinh (born 1963) is a Vietnamese-American poet, fiction writer and translator. Dinh was born in Saigon, Vietnam, came to the US in 1975, and is living in Philadelphia. In 2005, he was a David Wong fellow at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England .He spent 2002-2003 in Italy as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers and the town of Certaldo. He is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House (Seven Stories Press, 2000) and Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press, 2004), and four books of poems, All Around What Empties Out (Tinfish, 2003), American Tatts (Chax, 2005), Borderless Bodies (Factory School, 2006) and Jam Alerts (Chax, 2007). His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, Best American Poetry 2004, The Best American Poetry 2007, and Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, among other places. The Village Voice picked his Blood and Soap as one of the best books of 2004. Translated into Italian by Giovanni Giri, it is published in Italy as Elvis Phong S Morto. Dinh is also the editor of the anthologies Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (Seven Stories Press 1996) and Three Vietnamese Poets (Tinfish 2001), and translator of Night, Fish and Charlie Parker, the poetry of Phan Nhien Hao (Tupelo 2006). He has translated many international poets into Vietnamese, and many Vietnamese poets and fiction writers into English, including Nguyen Quoc Chanh, Tran Vang Sao, Van Cam Hai and Nguyen Huy Thiep.

Praise for this book

In Virginia Beach, Isabel galvanizes the drifting teens with reenactments of the Filipino myth of creation and other empowering stories of ethnic identity. Yet she is criticized in the community for her "white" ways and for engendering what the parents see as disrespect for authority; they insist she stage a traditional beauty pageant instead. Her attempts to befriend the vapid, in-fighting teenage girls show her that their lives are circumscribed by tsismis (literally, a dangerous monsoon rain; figuratively, gossip) and hiya (a hot flower in bloom, metaphor for the shame of speaking up). Gradually, Isabel begins to transform herself into a "fighting Filipina" with the help of a fellow teacher's aggressive political preaching and through an autobiographical photography project that forces her to examine her own life. Kirkus Reviews"
"In Virginia Beach, Isabel galvanizes the drifting teens with reenactments of the Filipino myth of creation and other empowering stories of ethnic identity. Yet she is criticized in the community for her white ways and for engendering what the parents see as disrespect for authority; they insist she stage a traditional beauty pageant instead. Her attempts to befriend the vapid, in-fighting teenage girls show her that their lives are circumscribed by tsismis (literally, a dangerous monsoon rain; figuratively, gossip) and hiya (a hot flower in bloom, metaphor for the shame of speaking up). Gradually, Isabel begins to transform herself into a fighting Filipina with the help of a fellow teacher's aggressive political preaching and through an autobiographical photography project that forces her to examine her own life."-- "Kirkus Reviews"