and young adulthood in the Philippines. Her es-
says have been collected and published as Philip-
pine Women in America. Brainard continued to
write short stories and essays and found different
avenues to publish her writings in magazines and
journals, first in the Philippines and later in the
United States. Her writings can be found in such
diverse publications as Focus Philippines, Philip-
pine Graphic, Katipunan, Amerasia Journal, Bam-
boo Ridge Journal, The California Examiner, and
others. Her stories have been included in antholo-
gies, such as Making Waves (1989), Forbidden Fruit
(1992), Songs of Ourselves (1994), and On a Bed of
Rice (1995), bearing testimony to her varied and
vast talent as a writer.
Brainard has won several awards for her writing
such as the California Arts Council Artists Fellow-
ship in Fiction in 1989, the Fortner Prize in 1985
and the Honorable Mention Award of the Phil-
ippine Arts, Letters, and Media Council in 1989.
In 1997 she received the Outstanding Individual
Award from the City of Cebu.
What makes Brainard’s fiction compelling is
her ability to integrate Filipino legends and Philip-
pine history into her writings. In her short stories
and in When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, Brainard
reimagines the oral folktales and native traditions
of her childhood into vivid contemporary charac-
ters, providing her readers with a distinctive style
and voice that is Asian yet American.
In her latest novel, Magdalena (2002), Brain-
ard takes the reader on another journey into the
psyche of her protagonists during the time of the
Japanese occupation of the Philippines. Although
the book visits the traumatic terrain of war, the fe-
male protagonists, like the characters in her other
stories, find love and beauty in this time of horror
and destruction, refusing to capitulate in the face
of insurmountable odds. Perhaps this is Brainard’s
own way of illustrating the timeless strength and
conviction of the Filipino spirit, thus giving the
reader a frame of reference for her own work and
life as a writer and voice of Filipino Americans.
Bibliography
Brainard, Cecilia Manguerra. “An Interview with
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard.” By Dana Huebler.
Poets and Writers Magazine (March/April 1997):
96–105.
Ty, Eleanor. “Cecilia Manguerra Brainard.” In Asian
American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical
Sourcebook, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson, 29–- Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Ray Chandrasekara
Brazil-Maru Karen Tei Yamashita (1992)
Brazil-Maru pieces together a fictionalized history
of Esperança, an isolated Japanese community
that actually existed in the deep jungles of Brazil.
The nascent community of Esperança comes into
being under the leadership of Kantaro Uno, who is
driven by his ideal to create an egalitarian society.
The story spans 50 years, beginning in 1926 with
the arrival of a small group of Japanese settlers
who immigrated to Brazil. The novel traces the es-
tablishment, development, maturity, and eventual
decline of Esperança.
The novel is constructed of five distinct yet in-
terconnected accounts that are Rashomon-like in
style in that they individually reflect each narra-
tor’s unique position in relation to the commune
and especially the narrators’ perceptions of the
community’s leader, Kantaro. The first narrator,
Ichiro Terada, who is also called Émile, narrates the
early history of the community from 1925 to the
late 1930s. He is Kantaro’s loyal disciple, who closes
his narrative by saying that “Kantaro’s dreams were
undeniably my dreams” (78). The narrator follow-
ing Émile is Haru, Kantaro’s wife, who outlines
the period from the late 1930s to the end of World
War II. Her practical voice and stark honesty in de-
scribing the disintegration of the commune expose
Kantaro’s less-than-perfect side in regard to his fi-
nancial investments and careless relationships with
women. The third narrator is Kantaro himself, as
he describes the period from the end of World War
II to the late 1950s. Haru’s earlier description of a
self-absorbed Kantaro is substantiated by his au-
thoritarian stance and arrogant voice as he speaks
of his love for Esperança but justifies his need to
have a double life in São Paulo, where he conducts
his alternative business. The fourth narrator isBrazil-Maru 27