Booklaunching of Magnificat: Mama Mary’s pilgrim sites at festival of Philippine Arts and Culture

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, California – In celebration of the birthday of the Blessed Mother which falls on Saturday, September 8th, a book dedicated to her will be launched at the booth of Philippine Expressions Bookshop during the Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture this weekend at Point Fermin Park, San Pedro, CA. Magnificat: Mama Mary’s Pilgrim Sites, collected and edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is a collection of 24 essays which are profoundly Marian and beautifully written as personal experiences by twenty-one female and three male contributors. “This book assembles a tableau of witnesses to how a visit with Mary can turn into a life-changing introduction to her Son” – Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD., President, University of San Carlos, Cebu, Philippines. Leopoldo C. Jaucian, SVD., DD., Bishop of Bangued, Philippines, writes “To our fellow devotees and would-be devotees of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you will surely fall in love with Magnificat: Mama Mary’s Pilgrim Sites and love our Blessed Mother even more.” The book carries the Imprimatur of Luis Antonio G. Tagle, D.D., Archbishop of Manila. It features fifteen Marian pilgrim sites in the world and nine sites in the Philippines.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard and three contributors to the book will be present to sign copies: Brian Ascalon Roley, Lucy Adao McGinley and Linda Nietes-Little. Brainard is a multi-awarded author and editor of nineteen books. Her other books include Out of Cebu: Essays and Personal Prose; Vigan and Other Stories; Magdalena: A Novel; Finding God: True Stories of Spiritual Encounters; and Angelica’s Daughters, a Dugtugan novel with four other authors. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish, and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. She lives in Santa Monica and teaches Creative Writing at the Writers Program at UCLA-Extension.

Roley is the author of the much-acclaimed novel, American Son which won the 2003 Association of Asian American Studies Prose Book Award, a Los Angeles Times Best Book, a New York Times Notable Book and a Pacific Rim Prize finalist. It has been translated into French. His fiction and nonfiction have been anthologized widely. He earned an MFA from Cornell University and is currently an English professor at Miami University. McGinley was born in Paete, Laguna and a graduate of Maryknoll College in Quezon City. She obtained a Masters degree in Education Counseling and Psychology in 1998. For a few years, she was an MBA recruiter at Pepperdine University and is now a government employee in Orange County.

Nietes-Little is a trailblazer with a background on the New York Stock market, a cultural activist, a yoga enthusiast and a vegetarian for over thirty years. When martial law was declared in the Philippines in 1972, she left the stock and bond business and opened Casalinda, her first bookshop in Forbes Park, Metro Manila. In support of Filipino writers, she opened a home for Filipino writings despite government censorship. In 1984, she felt that Filipino and Filipino American writings needed a home in the US; she moved her operation to Los Angeles and opened Philippine Expressions Bookshop which is dedicated to Filipino Americans in search of their roots. It is the first Filipiniana bookshop in American soil. When Mama Mary Called from Fatima, an essay she contributed to Magnificat is her first try at formal writing.

Two new authors will also sign their books at the Festival: Leslie V. Ryan and Eliseo Art Silva. Ryan is a children’s book author of I am Flippish! which is a story about a Filipino-Irish boy who discovers his dual heritage and overcomes adversity. She will also read at the Youth Pavillion of the Festival. A Filipino American, she lives in Laguna Niguel with her Irish-American husband and their two children: Sean,10 and Linley,7. Born in Tokyo, Japan and raised in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, she graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in Legal Studies and Japanese Language. Her love for books began when she first started reading at the age of four, and that passion for reading books has now turned into a newfound love of writing them. With her first published work of “I am Flippish!” Leslie taps into her personal life to help children explore diversity, family and where we really came from – celebrating just how wonderful it is to be different!

Silva is the author of Filipinos in Greater Philadelphia which is part of the Filipino series of Images of America. This title is the fifteenth book on the Filipino Series. Other titles in the series cover Filipinos in various areas in the US, such as Carson and the South Bay, Chicago, Hawaii, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Puget Sound (WA), San Diego, San Francisco, Stockton, East Bay (SF), Willamette Valley (OR), Vallejo, Ventura County, and Washington, DC. Silva was born in the Philippines in 1972, studied at the Philippine High School for the Arts at Mount Makiling. He received his BFA at Otis College of Art and Design, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received his MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art. With more than twenty murals in Seattle, California, Philadelphia, Maine and the Philippines, he is the recipient of many art awards and his work was included in the landmark exhibition “Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900s-2000s” organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Silva is nationally recognized for painting the nation’s largest Filipino American mural: Gintong Kasaysayan, Gintong Pamana (145′ x 25′) in Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles, California.

Other authors who will sign their books at the Festival are Carina Monica Montoya, AKA Carina Forsythe, author of Let’s Cook Adobo! which she will read at the Youth Pavillion of the Festival; Filipinos in Hollywood; Los Angeles’s Historic Filipinotown and Santa Maria Valley. Albert J. Mortiz, author of Discover the Philippines Cookbook. Lorenzo Paran III, author of Pinoy in America: The stateside life in the times of Barack Obama, Facebook and Pacquiao-mania. Jay Wertz, author of The Pacific: War Stories WWll Firsthand. Volume 1. Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal (with a wide coverage on the Philippines).

The books of authors can be purchased via email: orders@philippineexpressionsbookshop.com or call (310) 514-9139. The Bookshop’s address is PO Box 4201, Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA 90274. For additional details, visit the bookshop’s blog called Literally Yours. https://philippineexpressionsbookshop.wordpress.com or drop by the bookshop’s booth at the Festival.