Three stories from Gina Apostol, Eric Gamalinda, and Lara Stapleton.

The Thirdest World: 3 Stories by Filipino Writers

Apostol, Gina

Stapleton, Lara

Gamalinda, Eric

Literature & Fiction

Factory School

Fiction. Literary Nonfiction. Asian American Studies. THE THIRDEST WORLD includes the work of Gina Apostol, Eric Gamalinda, and Lara Stapleton, winners of the Philippine National Book Award, the Philippine Centennial Literary Prize, and the Pen Open book award, respectively. The three writers, from three greatly varied perspectives, take a look at the histories of struggle, travel and loss inherent to the colonial experience. Two works of fiction are included by each author, along with an essay that discusses the relationship between identity and narrative in each writer's work. All three writers see a profound relationship between postmodern structures and the disjointed history of a twice-colonized country: the Philippines changed hands from Spain to the United States in 1898. Passionate, intricate, witty, subtle, wise and wildly fresh and new, THE THIRDEST WORLD will give readers fascinating trips over the Pacific and into novel worlds of creativity. "These stories chart the strained divide between loyalty and identity: the tough blossoms that flower in the shadow of the American tree. THE THIRDEST WORLD is an important book, not only for its prescient chronicling of postcolonial Filipinos, but also for its hic et nunc observations of Filipino identities. Apostol, Gamalinda, and Stapleton are three writers who deserve an international audience." —Sabina Murray

The Thirdest World: Stories and Essays by Three Filipino Writers

Contemporary

The Ruin of Everything tells tales of abandoned children living in adult bodies. Bastards, bi-racial half-siblings, and orphans raised by aunts, they lose their last best love through brokenness like "the impossible loop in a stress dream." Racial ambiguity abounds and confounds US color lines. Tones stretch from lugubrious sorrow to wicked dramedy. Obstinately fluid in architecture and identity, stories range from slick Hollywood glam to essayistic musings, from traditional immigrant realism, to rehearsals of autofiction that grow more metatextual as the book goes along. Just as we think we've learned how to read Stapleton's stories, they shapeshift. And yet, the pieces reflect each other, a sad-clown funhouse hall of mirrors. Through wanton experiments with character, The Ruin of Everything asks us what is important to a tale and what it means to be American in country and continents. Lovers of Clarice Lispector and Luisa Valenzuela will find much to admire here. "An Anaïs Nin of late capitalism's bohemia, Lara Stapleton writes like an oracle of an underworld-of miscegenated loves and translocated broken souls-of characters unaware or ruinously conscious-and she inscribes that world in us with lust and wit and always that deep joy that encompasses sorrows bred in the bone, the race, the colors of one's skin, the heart, and of course the tongue: the word." -Gina Apostol, author of Insurrecto "With a keen eye for human ambitions and human frailties, Stapleton brings us the comic turmoil of characters steeped in the sorrows and absurdities of modern life; reaching for connection and erring, reaching for home and missing. Brimming with hard-edged loneliness, these stories reach into the underbellies of our deepest hopes and fears." -Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, author of My Heart Underwater

The Ruin of Everything

United States

Paloma Press

Fiction. Lara Stapleton takes us to a world in which everyone is intensely human and vulnerable, whether they are roaming the climate-controlled megamalls of Manila or the desolate streets of a Midwest town... With the precision of a microsurgeon, Stapleton dissects the subtle frustrations of the heart, picking out details and tell-tale cracks that make life seem so fragile, and therefore dear (Eric Gamalinda, editor, FLIPPIN': FILIPINOS ON AMERICA). Streetwise, Funky, irreverent--Lara Stapleton's twelve short stories unerringly map that place in the human heart where exaltation and humiliation, hope and fear, merge.

The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing

Aunt Lute Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stapleton, Lara. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stapleton, Lara

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stapleton, Lara. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Thirdest World: 3 Stories by Filipino Writers

The Thirdest World: Stories and Essays by Three Filipino Writers

The Ruin of Everything

The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing