The Eye of the Fish

EYE OF THE FISH is a deft, luminously intelligent examination of the Philippines that crosscuts between Francia's recollections of the Philippines of his youth and accounts of his travels though the archipelago over the past two decades. The Philippines that Francia explores is a country indelibly marked by both Spanish and Amrican colonialism, a collection of over 7,000 islands where cultural alliances and political ideology have pushed aside identity politics, and where traditional beliefs both mimic and subvert conventional Christian piety. Painters and priests, island shamans and small-town politicians, cultists, feminists, and infamous first ladies all make an appearance in this imaginative and idiosyncratic exploration of home. Through their stories, and through his own memories of life in the Philippines and the United States, Francia reflects on the hybridity that is simultaneouly the burden and the benediction of the Philippines -- and of his own mestizo self.