I’m one of three children of immigrants from the Philippines. My mother and father came to the United States with their respective families in the ’60s and ’70s and met in Southern California shortly after. Growing up, we lived a bit further away from my grandparents and aunties and uncles, but my parents would take me and my brothers on long drives to attend family parties for any and all occasions—birthdays, baptisms, graduations, weddings. 

Reading E.P. Tuazon’s new short story collection, A Professional Lola, felt like being welcomed into the same family party I’ve attended hundreds of times. I know the trays of lumpia and the spoonfuls of halo-halo, the strings of Tagalog of which I can only understand a few words. I know the wacky uncle, the gentle lola, that friend of lolo’s who isn’t related but is always there, the cousin who feels more like a sibling than your own—these characters shine especially brightly in each of Tuazon’s stories. In combination with speculative elements that delighted and shocked me, I found the stories in Professional Lola to be a poignant reflection on the playful highs and somber lows of modern Filipino American culture.

One very clear theme woven throughout the stories in A Professional Lola is loss. The collection is bookended with two stories that include the loss of a grandparent. In “Professional Lola,” the narrator’s mother hires an actress to impersonate a beloved, deceased lola at a party, and in “Carabao,” the narrator has to come to terms with their lolo’s transition to a lola. As someone who is lucky enough to know my lolos and lolas, the different types of “transformation” in both stories—the magic of a near-perfect lola impersonator knowing the exact right thing to say in contrast with the comforting similarities between a now-dead lolo and a new lola—were especially impactful.

There are also other kinds of “deaths” woven through some stories—the death of a marriage, of a dream, of a connection to home. There is grief and bitterness in these losses, but Tuazon infuses a certain type of wonder into these particularly melancholy episodes by introducing  elements of surrealism. A Filipina wife brews a magic spell in order for her husband to fall back in love with her in “Blood Magic;” estranged siblings bond over their deceased father’s obsession with what we come to learn is a real-life Bigfoot in “After Bigfoot;” the child of a disappeared arcade owner visits their ancestral village in the Philippines to discover fish people in “Far From Home.” I wouldn’t call the collection “optimistic” by any means, but there is something optimistic and also humorous about the strange occurrences in the stories—rather than falling into despair, characters are free to dream, play, and hope within the frame of the surreal. 

There are few things more classically Freudian than autobiographical poems about a poet’s relationship with their mother, and this new collection by prolific former West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Kim Dower takes up the challenge deftly: will she become her mother? Is she already her? What continues after death? (Mail, memories, junk). What is broken by death? (Rituals, memories — junk).

The poems in I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom are casual and conversational in tone, laugh-out-loud funny or tearjerking at their best. A mix of new pieces and motherhood poems from Dower’s former collections, they paint a portrait of urban motherhood rarely seen in verse, a Southern California freeway pastoral blended with a 5th Avenue childhood in New York.

Check out the extensive list of The Best Southern Books of April 2024 by Southern Review of Books at the link below!

A coming-of-age tale combined with a pastoral horror story.

Annika Rose Rogers graduates from high school with no real prospects for the future other than working alongside her father on their tiny plot of land in northern Minnesota. Though Annika was once content with the quiet, parsimonious existence she found living in the family trailer in the wake of her mother’s death, her life is upended when a young couple moves into the once-abandoned house down the road.

Cursebreakers is a powerful debut novel by fantasy writer Madeleine Nakamura. Set in a magic-filled world adjacent to our own, we follow professor of magic Adrien Desfourneaux as he works to uncover a conspiracy that is splitting factions in their fragile society. There is no shortage of enemies who want Adrien to use his powers for their own gain, and even Adrien’s own allies are not always on his side. To prevent a disaster from occurring, Adrien must navigate his relationships with his closest friends, the nature of his own magic, and his struggling mental health that underpins it all.

The book’s biggest strength is in its character’s voice. Adrien is one of the most compelling book protagonists I’ve ever read. The narrative reads from his point of view as he tries to explain just how he got into this situation, and there is much brutal honesty about the events. Adrien suffers from what is cleverly referred to in the worldbuilding as “akrasia,” akin to bipolar disorder, in which he seasonally toggles between extreme states of mania and depression. The story does not shy away from displaying the struggles of mental health issues, as Adrien is aware of his own weaknesses and self-destructive habits. But the narrative doesn’t romanticize mental illness, either, as we see how it negatively takes a toll on Adrien and those around him.

Built around Adrien is a cast of equally compelling and flawed friends. Gennady is a young, troubled soldier who becomes Adrien’s begrudging accomplice in spying on a corrupted faction of magic professors and power-hungry soldiers. Malise is Adrien’s best friend and therapeutic magic healer who sometimes has difficulty toeing the line between physician and confidant. Most interesting is Casmir, a stoic man Adrien is desperately in love with, but who is also tasked with the responsibility of being Adrien’s “keeper” as Adrien swings between manic and depressive states to make sure Adrien is practicing good judgment.

The nine linked stories in Rajbanshi’s sterling debut collection blend snapshots of immigrants from Africa, Asia, and South America in New York and California, as well as flashing back to experiences in their home countries.

I didn’t really get on to Dead Can Dance until “Into the Labyrinth,” their most popular LP that made the audiophile rounds here in the States. 4AD, their label, wasn’t well distributed in the US when the band was first developing, it wasn’t exactly mainstream stuff here, even in the audiophile community. Yet the band had a following, starting in Australia, where Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry had a band and moved to a council flat in London where the two met our narrator, a soon to be jobless publicist for a theatrical/live show venue.

Ulrich had the time, interest, musical background, and chops as a drummer to become part of their band. So we get the story of DCD from the outset of their adventures in England, playing local venues and developing a following. The scene was a sort of post-punk, art-rock experiment in how to juxtapose disparate elements- power pop meets Celtic vocals with exotic African beats.

Benedict’s true-to-life novel resonates, particularly in the characters’ moments of fortitude in the face of brutal experiences of heartbreak and loss.