Echoes is an unusual collection of six pairs of essays and short stories, each set focused on a single topic. And what a range of topics former Philippine columnist Arlene Babst-Vokey invites us to consider in this volume:

Filipino culture (which she calls “diseased”)

Filipinos working or transplanted abroad (as many as the entire population of Greece)

Sex (or the lack of it)

Journalism under the Marcos regime (or the lack of it!)

The twin failures of Presidents Cory Aquino and George W. Bush (and how they magnified the enormous problems, including terrorism, that besiege the Philippines and its former colonizer, the United States of America)

The role of a religion in the life of all who care about peace (in the world and within the individual).

With the sense of irony and the absurd, the caustic humour and the clear-eyed toughness that characterized her popular columns in the final half-dozen years of the Marcos regime and the first four years of Aquino administration, Arlene Babst-Vokey returns from long years of apparently fruitful silence to once again add her unique voice to the national conversation.

This time she combines the acerbic opinion-writing that animated her wide readership in the 1980s, with crisp fiction. Here are six of the spiciest, funniest and most tragic short stories written about life in Manila and among Filipino expats across the Pacific. It will be impossible to suppress a chuckle while reading about: Imelda Marcos warbling love songs to a reputedly gay newspaper magnate; National Artist Nick Joaquin drunkenly climbing a flagpole while dismayed nuns look on; virginal colegialas running to Jackie Kennedy for rescue in their convent schools. It will be a joy to meet the generous nanny, so typical of Filipinos working abroad, who supports practically an entire village back home and becomes the inspiration for a privileged intellectual. It will be difficult to forget the scenes of ugly terror that transform an ordinary September day into a life-altering nightmare.

In this forays into the chasm between the dazzlingly rich and the desperately poor, between faithless men and brittle women, between the search for God and the quest for awareness, Arlene Babst-Vokey asks her readers to examine some intriguing perspectives on the Filipino in the 21st century.

Academic Publishing, Corp.

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