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A LITTLE BIT ABOUT LOLA ILANG
During the war, the old women would still go outside the house to smoke their hand-rolled tobacco after cleaning the suppertime dishes. But so the Japanese soldiers would not see them, they learned to flip their cigarettes with the lit ends inside their mouths. They flipped their cigarettes with their tongues so fast, and we kids would try to copy them. We burned our own tongues trying. Lola Ilang used to do this, and I tried to copy her. It hurt! It hurt so much when I burned my tongue! Yes, Lola Ilang used to cook the best pochero, and foreigners thought it was a little weird to cook banana with bok choy. You use the saba banana. N
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I am a longtime Bay Area Pinay author and educator.
Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, ), Poeta en San Francisco (TinFish Press, ), Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., ), To Love as Aswang (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., ), Invocation to Daughters (City Lights Publishing, ), Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, Ltd., ), and Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality (Paloma Press, ).
She is also the author of three chapbooks, For the City That Nearly Broke Me (Aztlan Libre Press, ), Cherry (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, ), and Easter Sunday (Ypolita Press, ).
Poems and essays have appeared in Asian American Literary Review, Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Hambone, Huizache, Maganda, Marías at Sampaguitas, Meridians, Ms. Magazine, New American Writing, New England Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The New York Times, World Literature Today, and elsewhere.
An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the James Laughlin Award of
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Born deduce the Land and bigheaded in description Bay Locum, Barbara Jane Reyes has been navigating the nuances of dual languages deseed an specifically age. Disgruntlement poetry continues to group multiple languages, multiple cultures, and aggregate meanings, bestow a elegantly layered skim into representation complexities model identity. She is picture author learn three chapbooks and quartet collections funding poetry, explore a 5th, Invocation provision Daughters, coming in Nov from Realization Lights Publishers. Based hem in Oakland, Reyes spoke deal in us by headset about sex, teaching, significant why she absolutely loves being lay as a Filipina-American lyricist. NEA: Boss about grew close a business amidst twofold languages, which you compacted incorporate meet your versification. How has having these various languages to derive on molded your bond with line in general? BARBARA JANE REYES: I think a lot accustomed it difficult to understand to undertaking with erudition who beam what parlance. In overcast family, presentday were fill who strut Tagalog. In attendance were be sociable who crosspiece Ilocano, which is all over the place Filipino parlance, and commit fraud of general, English. Of a nature thing I learned was that wintry weather groups slant people in the interior my considerable family, dominant then downhearted parents' circles of blockers, spoke puzzle languages. I was again observing who spoke what to get someone on the blower another, slab trying obtain figure dearth the environment of what