Aura: The Gay Theme in Philippine Fiction in English

by J. Neil C. Garcia

This book gathers together in one volume the best gay-themed short stories and novel excerpts from the Philippines’s best fictionists in English. As the critical introduction puts it, ascertaining the presence of the “gay theme—which is to say, the literary imaging of male homosexuality in our country’s anglophone tradition—is strictly a matter of textual interpretation, which needs to be mindful of historical context.

358 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

J. Neil C. Garcia finished his BA Journalism (magna cum laude) in the University of Santo Tomas in 1990. He is currently teaching creative writing and comparative literature at the University of the Philippines , Diliman, where he also serves as an associate for poetry in the Institute of Creative Writing . He is the author of numerous poetry collections and works in literary and cultural criticism, including Our Lady of the Carnival (1996), The Sorrows of Water (2000), Kaluluwa (2001), Philippine Gay Culture: The Last Thirty Years (1996), Slip/pages: Essays in Philippine Gay Criticism (1998), Performing the Self: Occasional Prose (2003), The Garden of Wordlessness (2005), and Misterios and Other Poems ( 2005) His latest critical work , Postcolonialism and Filipino Poetics: Essays and Critiques , is a revised version of his PhD dissertation in English Studies: Creative Writing, which he completed in 2003. He is currently working on a full-length book, a postcolonial survey and analysis of Philippine poetry in English.