Monica Macansantos is the author of the story collection, Love and Other Rituals (Grattan Street Press, 2022), and the forthcoming memoir-in-essays, Returning to My Father’s Kitchen (Northwestern University Press, 2024).
Born and raised in the Philippines, she holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow, and a PhD in Creative Writing from the Victoria University of Wellington. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, The Hopkins Review, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, and The Pantograph Punch, among other places. She has also been a writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the I-Park Foundation, and the Storyknife Writers Retreat.
4 Responses
1) “A Shared Stillness” (essay in Colorado Review, named Notable in the Best American Essays 2022): https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/features/a-shared-stillness/
2) “The Cup of Knowing” (poem in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, 2009): http://www.qlrs.com/poem.asp?id=691
I’m looking forward to this one!
We also enjoyed reading the short story so thank you for sharing that too.
There were some amazing & heartfelt discussions of how we visit & speak with people who have passed on in our different cultures.
One group member toasts relatives at their graves with their favourite drink!
She said she looks at the sky & speaks to them silently in her thoughts so people don’t think she’s talking to herself!
A child insisted on visiting his grandpas grave with the whole family to sing happy birthday to him!
So many beautiful memories shared 😁
This group loved the ending and were very touched when the daughter spontaneously offers to keep visiting the cemetery with her mother. They felt the surprise & joy of her mother and found it very moving.
So grateful for the aroha and kapwa!