Birth Language

Aimee Suzara’s second full-length book Birth Language centers on a Filipina-American time traveling through her history, twisted and haunted like the roots of a balete tree. The book fuses English, Spanish, and Tagalog. It employs archival texts from as early as the 1500s when European conquistadors and explorers encountered the pre-colonial Philippine islands. Guided by the babaylan (shaman) and populated by mythical creatures like the mananngangal, kapre, and sireno, the collection celebrates a history of resistance, reclaiming and redefining the self despite colonization, assimilation, and cultural loss.