Join us for a special event celebrating a new anthology of Filipino myths: Kuwento: Lost Things. We’ll hear from three contributors from the anthology: Anna Alves, PhD student in American Studies at Rutgers University, Newark; Sarah Gambito, cofounder of Kundiman; and Melissa R. Sipin, co-editor of Kuwento). Moderated by acclaimed novelist Jessica Hagedorn, author of Toxicology and a winner of the AAWW Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2011, Melissa R. Sipin and Rachelle Cruz began Kuwento: Lost Things as a search, an obsession, a need to excavate the stories of anitos (deities) and engkantos (spirits) their families once told them. But, when they first indulged in the idea of curating an anthology on Philippine myths, they were struck by how diverse the retellings were. Was the Aswang a bat-like vampire woman? Or was she a shape-shifting beast, or a giant black bird with a long, fetus-eating tongue? They understood that the stories passed on to them from their fathers and mothers were varied, but also culturally inherited. It was as if their bodies knew the stories, and knew them well. This book, a diverse collection of eclectic prose and poetry, seeks to ensure that their “invocation of the past is somehow answered, somehow quelled, somehow excavated, and thus, reborn—reborn in our own terms, in our own myths, in our own kuwentos.”

Co-sponsored by TAYO, Kweli Journal, the AASP at Hunter College, and the Hunter College NEH Summer Seminar for School Teachers: Asian Americans in New York: Film & Literature.

Image titled “Fishers of Men,” by Eliseo Art Silva.

Reserve a seat here!