Professional Lola

Professional Lola is a collection of short stories that blend literary fiction with the surreal to present the contemporary Filipino American experience and its universal themes of love, family, and identity. A family hires an actress to play their beloved grandmother at a party; a couple craving Filipino food rob a panaderya; a coven of Filipino witches cast a spell on their husbands; a Lolo transforms into a Lola. These are just a few of the stories in the collection that represent its roster of stories beautifully grounded in culture and vividly and meticulously painted to make the absurd seem mundane and the commonplace, sinister. Professional Lola embodies the joy, mystery, humor, sadness, hunger, and family that inhabit modern-day Filipino American virtues.

ADVANCE PRAISE

 “The stories in Professional Lola are hilarious, heartbreaking, and true. Like members of one big Filipino family, these characters love hard and squabble often, lose themselves in the nostalgia of suburban malls and VHS movies, and grapple with a reality mired in COVID and Duterte. These stories are simultaneously classic and urgently contemporary, and they’ll stay with you long after the final word. E.P. Tuazon is a writer to watch.”

—Lysley Tenorio, author of The Son of Good Fortune

“Tuazon has a talent for merging the strangeness of the world with the emotional impact of human connectivity.”

—Rebecca Rubenstein, Senior Editor for The Rumpus

“E.P. Tuazon’s unique voice captures the essence of the Filipino diaspora—the ambivalence and aches, the hopes and aspirations, but also the humor and delights.”

—Cindy Fazzi, Author of My MacArthur and Multo