Must-Read Books by Filipino and Filipino American Authors

The heartfelt memoir of a trans pageant queen from the Philippines who went back into the closet to model in New York City. But as her star rose, her sense of self eroded. She craved acceptance as her authentic self yet had to remain vigilant in order to protect her dream career. Finally, Geena realized that living her truth was the only way to step into her full power. A dazzling testimony from an icon who sits at the center of transgender history and activism, Horse Barbie is a celebratory and universal story of survival, love, and pure joy.

In this hilarious YA rom-com about Chloe, a Chinese-Filipina girl in Manila, who unexpectedly gets into USC and has the opportunity to fulfill her dream and attend college in the States. However, her father starts to set her up on a marathon of arranged dates in hopes of convincing her to stay close to home for college. What happens when she actually starts to fall for one of the guys, only to have to leave at the end of the summer?

It’s Christmastime in Shady Palms, but things are far from jolly for Lila Macapagal. Sure, her new business, the Brew-ha Cafe, is looking to turn a profit in its first year. And yes, she’s taken the first step in a new romance with her good friend Jae Park. But her cousin Ronnie is back in town after ghosting the family fifteen years ago, and Lila knows that wherever Ronnie goes, trouble follows. She’s soon proven right when Ronnie is suspected of murder. Lila has to put away years of resentment and distrust to prove her cousin’s innocence. He may be a jerk, but he’s still family. And there’s no way her flesh and blood could actually be a murderer . . . right?

In her first novel since Insurrecto, Gina Apostol assembles a vision of Philippine history from the 19th century to present day in the fragmented story of the Delgados, a family surviving across generations of colonization, catastrophe, and war.

A Career in Books is a graphic novel for everyone who’s wanted to “work with books” and had NO idea what it entailed. It’s for those who were taken aback by that first paycheck. It’s for those who wanted a literary career even in the face of systemic racism, who dealt with the unique challenges of coming from an immigrant family, and whose group chat is their lifeline.

From teachers to housemaids, from mothers to sons, Mia Alvar’s stories give voice to the women and men of the Philippines and its diaspora. In the Country explores the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and the longing to connect across borders both real and imagined, and speaks to the heart of everyone who has ever searched for a place to call home.

In more than a century since its appearance, José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere has become widely known as the great novel of the Philippines. A passionate love story set against the ugly political backdrop of repression, torture, and murder, “The Noli,” as it is called in the Philippines, was the first major artistic manifestation of Asian resistance to European colonialism, and Rizal became a guiding conscience — and martyr — for the revolution that would subsequently rise up in the Spanish province.

Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds.

Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte’s war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story. Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth — and the part he played in it. A powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the struggle to reconcile faith, family, and immigrant identity.

Welcome to Manila in the turbulent period of Marcos, the Philippines’ late dictator. It is a world in which American pop culture and local Filipino tradition mix flamboyantly, and gossip, storytelling, and extravagant behavior thrive. A wildly disparate group of characters — from movie stars to waiters, from a young junkie to the richest man in the Philippines — becomes caught up in a spiral of events culminating in a beauty pageant, a film festival, and an assassination. In the center of this maelstrom is Rio, a feisty schoolgirl who will grow up to live in America and look back with longing on the land of her youth.

Nick Joaquin is widely considered one of the greatest Filipino writers, but he has remained little-known outside his home country despite writing in English. Set amid the ruins of Manila devastated by World War II, his work meditates on the questions and challenges of the Filipino individual’s new freedom after a long history of colonialism, exploring folklore, centuries-old Catholic rites, the Spanish colonial past, magical realism, and baroque splendor and excess. This collection features his best-known story, “The Woman Who Had Two Navels,” centered on Philippine emigrants living in Hong Kong and later expanded into a novel, the much-anthologized stories “May Day Eve” and “The Summer Solstice” and a canonic play, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino.

A journalist’s powerful and incisive account reframes how we comprehend the immigrant experience. Ambitious, intimate, and incisive, Concepcion explores what it might mean to reckon with the unjust legacy of imperialism, to live with contradiction and hope, to fight for the unrealized ideals of an inherited homeland.

The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents’ ideals, learning to code-switch between her family’s Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. Gharib’s graphic memoir brings to life her teenage antics and illuminates earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised.

Imagine a luxury resort replete with organic meals, personal trainers, and daily massages and you’re paid a huge sum of money to stay there. The catch?  For nine months, you cannot leave the grounds, your movements are monitored, and you are cut off from your former life while you dedicate yourself to the task of producing the perfect baby. For someone else. Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines, is in desperate search of a better future when she commits to being a “Host” at Golden Oaks — or the Farm, as residents call it. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her family, Jane is determined to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she’ll receive on the delivery of her child.

Alia Dunn has finally gotten her big break. After years of working her way up at TV’s top outdoor travel channel, she gets the green light to bring her dream project to life. It’s a touching tribute to her late apong, who sparked Alia’s passion for travel and the outdoors as a kid. Alia is thrilled — until she meets her newest crew member, Drew Irons. The same Drew she had the most amazing first date with two weeks ago — who then ghosted her. It’s not long before the tension between them turns hotter than the Utah desert in the dead of summer, and their steamy encounters lead to major feelings.

Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity.

Tess Uriza Holthe sets her novel in the waning days of World War II, as the Japanese and the Americans engage in a fierce battle for possession of the Philippine Islands. The Karangalan family and their neighbors huddle for survival in the cellar of a house a few miles from Manila. They tell magical stories to one another based on Filipino myth and legend to fuel their courage, pass the time, and teach important lessons. The group is held spellbound by these stories, which feature a dazzling array of ghosts, witches, supernatural creatures, and courageous Filipinos who changed the course of history with their actions. These profoundly moving stories transport the listeners from the chaos of the war around them and give them new resolve to fight on.

Lila Santos is ready for her last winter break of high school. She’s earning extra cash working at the local inn but her perfect holiday plans crash to a halt when her boss’s frustratingly cute nephew, Teddy Rivera, becomes her coworker.  Lila is type A; Teddy is type “Anything but Lila’s Way,” and the two of them can’t stop butting heads over tangled icicle lights and messy gift shop merch. But when they accidentally switch phones one afternoon, they realize they’ve both been hiding things from each other. Will their secrets — and an unexpected snowstorm — bring these rivals together?

Newly minted professional matchmaker Sophie Go has returned to her hometown of Toronto, but when she is revealed as a fraud — she never actually graduated from matchmaking school — her job prospects shrivel up. No one wants to take a chance on an inexperienced matchmaker. In dire search of clients, Sophie stumbles upon the Old Ducks, seven septuagenarian Chinese bachelors who never found love. She convinces them to hire her, but her matchmaking skills are put to the test as she learns the depths of loneliness, heartbreak, and love by attempting to make the hardest matches of her life.