Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is a notable Filipina-American author whose works explore themes of identity, culture, and memory, particularly in the context of the Filipino experience. Born shortly after the Philippines gained independence in 1946, she has been deeply influenced by her country's tumultuous history, which includes centuries of colonial rule and the impact of World War II. Her upbringing in Cebu, specifically on a street named after her guerrilla father, instilled in her a strong sense of national pride and a connection to her community's past.
Brainard's literary career began with her first novel, "Song of Yvonne," which draws from family anecdotes related to war and resilience. Throughout her career, she has authored several noteworthy collections of short stories and novels that reflect the dualities faced by Filipino Americans, as seen in her newspaper columns later compiled in "Philippine Woman in America." Committed to cultural preservation, she co-founded Philippine American Women Writers and Artists (PAWWA) to support the publication of works that celebrate Filipino heritage. Her extensive body of work includes titles like "Magdalena," "The Newspaper Widow," and "Angelica's Daughters," with many of her stories emphasizing the importance of memory and cultural identity in navigating the complexities of life between two worlds.
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Subject Terms
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
Writer
- Born: November 21, 1947
- Birthplace: Cebu, Philippines
Author Profile
Writer. Born one year after the Philippines gained its independence, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard was surrounded from the start with a sense of her country’s having been born at almost the same time as herself. After centuries of Spanish colonialism, more than four decades of American control, and four years of Japanese occupation, in 1946, Filipinos were free to determine their own future. The United States helped prepare for this moment through elective models and fought side by side with Filipinos during World War II. America was vital to the difficult postwar reconstruction. Brainard grew up well aware of her fellow Filipinos’ own proud contributions toward establishment of an independent Philippines. The street on which she lived in Cebu was called Guerrillero Street in honor of her father, a guerrilla and then a civil engineer involved in rebuilding shattered Philippine cities. Many of the anecdotes in her first novel, Song of Yvonne (1991; republished in 1994 as When the Rainbow Goddess Wept), came from tales of war remembered by her family.
As a result, even when Brainard left home for graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles in the late 1960s, she brought with her an identity as a Filipina. She married a former member of the Peace Corps, Lauren Brainard, who had served on Leyte, an island close to Cebu. In California, she worked on documentary film scripts and in public relations from 1969 to 1981. Then she began the newspaper columns later collected in Philippine Woman in America (1991), which describe the enrichment and frustration felt by Filipino Americans who are straddling two cultures. Conscious of her own Americanization and anxious to provide her three sons with cultural choices, she co-founded Philippine American Women Writers and Artists (PAWWA), an organization intent on publishing remembered legends and scenes from the contributors’ childhoods. The organization was intended to provide a continuum of presence from varied pasts to a shared future. Such dedication to the “memory of a people” is in the ancient Philippine tradition of the female babaylan, or priestess.
Among Brainard's other works are the short story collections Woman with Horns and Other Stories (1988), Acapulco at Sunset and Other Stories (1995), Vigan and Other Stories (2011), Please, San Antonio! & Melisande in Paris: Two Novellas (2018), Selected Short Stories by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard (2021), as well as the novels Magdalena (2002), The Newspaper Widow (2017), and Angelica’s Daughters: A Dugtungan Novel (2010). The US version of Magdalena was released in 2021.
Bibliography
"About the Author." Cecilia Brainard, ceciliabrainard.com/about. Accessed 17 Apr. 2023.
Campomanes, Oscar V. "Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Scenographer." Introduction. Vigan and Other Stories. By Brainard. Anvil, 2011.
Casper, Leonard. Sunsurfers Seen from Afar: Critical Essays 1991-1996. Anvil, 1996.
Hubler, Dana. "An Interview with Cecilia Manguerra Brainard." Poets and Writers, Mar./Apr. 1997, pp. 96–105.
Ty, Eleanor. "Cecilia Manguerra Brainard (1947– )." Asian American Novelists: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. Greenwood, 2000, pp. 29–33.
Zapanta Manlapaz, Edna. Songs of Ourselves. Anvil, 1994.