31 short stories and 108 poems represent a literary history of English writing in the Philippines, from the turn of the century to the present.

Deeply moving . . . complex emotions and ideas are handled with disarming simplicity John W. Gardner, Former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. This is a book of wisdom in the form of poems, useful, yet delightful and even sometimes surprising. A single poem can shift thinking so everything is different from then on Carol Pearson, author of The Hero Within. Judys work is rooted in the shared soil of our lives, and her images help us understand how lovely and full of promise our common ground is. You hold a feast of insight in your hands. Read it and be nourished. Parker J. Palmer, author of Let Your Life Speak and A Hidden Wholeness.

Brown River is the story of Constance Gonzalez, an uncanny tomboy raised on the eastern shore of Maryland, as she journeys to become a charter boat captain on the Chesapeake Bay.Evocative of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Housekeeping, and Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, Brown River is both a tribute to the power of kinship, and a celebration of the hidden graces found in ordinary life. Weaving together family history, boating lore, and mystery, Constance's story uncovers the meaning of memory, the frailty of relationships, the struggle and dignity of honest work. Told in language colorful and meditative, Brown River is one woman's story of home- finding it, keeping it, and sharing it as an inheritance.

" ... Documents the history and development of [Post-colonial literatures in English, together with English and American literature] and includes original research relating to the literatures of some 50 countries and territories. In more than 1,600 entries written by more than 600 internationally recognized scholars, it explores the effect of the colonial and post-colonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.

Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series In the late nineteenth century, American teachers descended on the Philippines, which had been newly purchased by the U.S. at the end of the Spanish-American War. Motivated by President McKinley’s project of “benevolent assimilation,” they established a school system that centered on English language and American literature to advance the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which was held up as justification for the U.S.’s civilizing mission and offered as a promise of moral uplift and political advancement. Meanwhile, on American soil, the field of American literature was just being developed and fundamentally, though invisibly, defined by this new, extraterritorial expansion. Drawing on a wealth of material, including historical records, governmental documents from the War Department and the Bureau of Insular Affairs, curriculum guides, memoirs of American teachers in the Philippines, and 19th century literature, Meg Wesling not only links empire with education, but also demonstrates that the rearticulation of American literary studies through the imperial occupation in the Philippines served to actually define and strengthen the field. Empire’s Proxy boldly argues that the practical and ideological work of colonial dominance figured into the emergence of the field of American literature, and that the consolidation of a canon of American literature was intertwined with the administrative and intellectual tasks of colonial management.

Asian American literature is one of the most recent forms of ethnic literature and is already becoming one of the most prominent, given the large number of writers, the growing ethnic population from the region, the general receptivity of this body of work, and the quality of the authors. In recent decades, there has been an exponential growth in their output and much Asian American literature has now achieved new levels of popular success and critical acclaim. Nurtured by rich and long literary traditions from the vast continent of Asia, this literature is poised between the ancient and the modern, between the East and West, and between the oral and the written. The Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater covers the activities in this burgeoning field. First, its history is traced year by year from 1887 to the present, in a chronology, and the introduction provides a good overview. The most important section is the dictionary, with over 600 substantial and cross-referenced entries on authors, books, and genres as well as more general ones describing the historical background, cultural features, techniques and major theatres and clubs. More reading can be found through an extensive bibliography with general works and those on specific authors. The book is thus a good place to get started, or to expanded one’s horizons, about a branch of American literature that can only grow in importance.