barangay: an offshore poem

by Adrian De Leon

As beautiful and varied as an archipelago, barangay is an elegant new collection of poetry from Adrian De Leon that gathers in and arranges the difficult pieces of a scattered history. While mourning the loss of his grandmother who "lived, loved and grieved in three languages," De Leon skips his barangay, which is both a boat and an administrative unit in the Philippine government, over the history of both his family and a nation. In these poems De Leon considers the deadly impact of colonialism, the far-reaching effects of the diaspora from the Philippines and the personal loss of his ability to speak Ilokano, his grandmother's native tongue. These are spare, haunting poems, which wash over the reader like the waves of the ocean the barangays navigated long ago and then pull the reader into their current like the rivers De Leon left behind.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

Published November 9, 2021

Reviews

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barangay filled me with something tender, that reverberates through my heart long after I finished reading this collection.

This poems made me ache, for things that feel like home but can never be called mine, and for language that feels like memory but to which I am a stranger.

Adrian De Leon, thank you. For waking up dusty corners of my soul.

[Hannah Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt the lines personally in our shared history. Every line is purposeful and punctual.

[Arlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the cover, and also the quality of the paper. (Not the most important, but added to the pleasure in the act of reading it.)