Emergeance: Stories by Filipino and Filipino-American Authors it's published, it's published! yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!


Malcolm Peck skipped ahead in the book to the chapters that held his interest the best.

"I skipped ahead - even though I wasn't supposed to do that - to the chapters where when she was living in Washington several years after the War, and she astonishingly meets the man who orders her torture, who is a Japanese citizen visiting the U.S. He visits her at her home, but does not recognize her. At dinner, he asked her what she did during the War, and she looked at him straight in the eye and said, 'I was a prisoner and you tortured me,'" recalled Peck.

He is reading "The Price of Freedom: The Story of a Courageous Manila Journalist" (Trinity Rivers Publications, 2003), by Mamerta de Los Reyes Block, a former World War 2 courier smuggling information between American and Filipino soldiers fighting the Japanese in the Philippines.

"The man abased himself in front of her and asked for her forgiveness, and she said something along the lines of 'If you want to be forgiven, you should be a Christian,' or that he should dedicate himself to good things. I read that part hastily, but I think he converted to Christianity and they've been friends from then on," Peck continued.

Block, 92, wrote she was pregnant when she was tortured. After the abuse, she was left for dead in a wagon and found by a nurse carefully looking through the dead bodies. Several decades later, with some assistance, she proudly climbed the stairs to the stage where CNN's "Crossfire" is filmed, and pointed to her son. "Here he is now," she said.

After the war, Block was instrumental in rallying votes for women and providing a center for people of color in then-segregated Washington D.C.

Hers is one of the stories told during "Heritage 2: Salute to Filipino and Filipino-American Authors," a gathering of emerging writers held Oct. 15 and 16 at the Philippine Embassy in Washington D.C. and George Washington University. [ more ]



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Participating authors and their latest works

Gina Apostol, author, "Bibliolepsy"
Nick Carbo, editor, "Pinoy Poetics"
Mamerta de Los Reyes Block, author, "The Price of Freedom: The Story of a Courageous Manila Journalist"
Marilyn Donato, cookbook, "Philippine Cooking in America"
Rod Garcia, author, "The Right Place and Other Stories"
Almira Astudillo Gilles, author, "Willie Wins"
Reme-Antonia Grefalda, editor, "Our Own Voice: Filipinos in the Diaspora"
Luisa Igloria, editor, "Not Home, But Here"
Paolo Javier, author, "The Time at the End of this Writing"
Gad S. Lim, contributor, "Intsik: An anthology of Chinese Filipino Writing"
Glenn Sevilla Mas, playwright, "In the Dark"
Linda Nietes, bookseller, Philippine Expressions
Wilfrido Nolledo, author, "But for the Lovers," "Cadena de Amor and Other Stories"
Melissa Nolledo Christoffels for Wilfrido Nolledo, "But for the Lovers," "Cadena de Amor and Other Stories"
Jon Pineda, poet, "Birthmark"
Bino Realuyo, author, "The Umbrella Country," "The NuyorAsian Anthology"
Timoteo Saguinsin, author, "Buhay sa Angono" ("Life in Angono")
Lara Saguisag, author, "Tonyo's Wishes," "There's a Duwende in my Brother's Soup!"
Quirico Samonte, author, "At the Table with the Family"
Marcie Santos-Taylor, author, "Missing Mangoes"
Ricco Siasoco, contributor, "Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images"
Kalifa Sobrino Bonnivier, author, "Autobiography of a Stranger"
Lara Stapleton, author, "The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing"
Natasha Vizcarra, author, "Ang Itim na Kuting" ("The Black Kitten")   ¶ 11/07/2004 07:44:00 PM