I love ebooks as much as the next person. Last year, some of my most impactful reads— Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas, and Sundress’s own Transmasculine Poetics edited by Remi Recchia (which you can download for free!)—took a digital form. Still, the physical sensation of turning a page and weighing it in my hands comforts me. So, even though I live in a tiny unit that can’t accommodate all the books I own (the rest remain in boxes), I continue to acquire more paperbacks.
Looking at the stack of books next to my desk fills me with pride because most of them are written by Filipino authors and published by local presses. It feels like an accomplishment, since I can’t help but consider that, until I was eighteen, I could probably count on my fingers the number of books I read that were set in the Philippines. I wish I had read more Philippine literature in my childhood, but it doesn’t escape me that foreign titles still dominate the shelves of major bookstores in Metro Manila, where I live and grew up. Now, I just do my best to stay updated on independent booksellers and the titles they carry.
A sidenote on books I read as a kid
Some Filipino stories that were formative to me: Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo by Jose Rizal, The Woman Who Had Two Navels… and Tropical Baroque by Nick Joaquin, my high school favorite Dear Distance by Luis Katigbak, and Smaller and Smaller Circles by F. H. Batacan (I also love her short story “Accidents Happen”). I also read the poems of José García Villa, Conchitina Cruz, Isabela Banzon, and Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta repeatedly as a teenager.
This list could be longer, but I still feel like my childhood was full. I’m glad I inherited my mom’s love for books like Earthsea and Letters to a Young Poet (the Stephen Mitchell translation is very important). I poured over her Jeanette Winterson essays, her collections of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges stories. Even my interest in plays and graphic novels was sparked by her. As for my dad, well, he owned every volume of Gary Larson’s The Far Side comics and I laughed a lot reading those.
My mini collection has many fond memories attached to it, since I came by these books during my time in university and in the past six months post-grad. I can still recount where and how I got each one because tracing those circumstances matters to me. It helps me form a map of my local literary community, which was once just a nebulous concept to my freshman self. By going out to read, and by seeing what I read as a way to widen my world rather than shrink from it, I hope to run against the perception of readers as quiet, inward creatures who live in bubbles and armchairs. (Please, we can be cooler than that!)
To me, reading is most thrilling when I feel like I’m occupying two spaces at once. Like the time I finished Conchitina Cruz’s Dark Hours while stuck at home during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Manila—the jarring effect of having her poems place me in traffic or on familiar streets, being re-immersed in the cities I was removed from. Or the time I observed Assembling Alice, a novel that takes place in Baguio during the Japanese occupation, come alive when author Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta shared her family history to a rapt audience at Mt. Cloud, a bookshop located in and named after the mountain city.
In those ways, I love entering a book with its context in mind, and it’s a gift to read in the context of my present, no matter (or perhaps because) that present is so harrowing. It puts me in closer touch with my surroundings. Seeing my life mirrored in a story, or noticing when a narrative tries to test its own reflection (say, by warping the facts of a historical event or imagining alternate versions of our lives), both excites and alerts me. There’s something both magical and grotesque about it that keeps me on my toes.
Some of the books that I can’t help but link to my own life, though they aren’t pictured because I lent them to a friend, include Narcissus by Mark Anthony Cayanan, a poet and mentor who has influenced me more than I can express in a sentence; Dream of the Divided Field by Yanyi, a transmasculine Asian poet (like me!) among the first I’ve encountered; and will you tell me what I look like? by Raphael Atienza Coronel, a poet who combines text with collage art, and whose ekphrastic practice inspires me.
Other books in my collection include: a heavily tabbed copy of The Material Kinship Reader, edited by Kris Dittel and Clementine Edwards, which I leaf through every now and then despite having read it cover to cover; a dog-eared copy of The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, which fully electrified me; poetry collections by Fine Arts and English professors from my alma mater; the senior folio of the student publication I was previously an editor at; and a stack of chapbooks by my lovely Creative Writing batchmates and alumni.
I’d like to highlight two titles which resonate strongly with me now. Testo Junkie by Paul B. Preciado is my current read. I bought the last copy from Everything’s Fine bookshop in Makati last November. I view this book of autotheory as part of my education—a follow-up in my mental list of self-assigned LGBTQ readings (which also lists Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, both vital to my trans coming-to-terms). Although I’m making slow progress, it feels invigorating to read about BP’s life on T, as well as the conditions that shaped and inform those moments, as I sit on the cusp of my own transition.
My Eyes on Palestine by Momoe Narazaki is an autobiographical comic I return to often. I discovered it while visiting Tokyo. After googling “queer spots” and “bookstores with English,” I landed in an infoshop called Irregular Rhythm Asylum, where I spent two hours reading comics, magazines, and other printed matter. In My Eyes, Momoe cares for her newborn while witnessing the ongoing genocide in Gaza through her phone. She wrestles with privilege, heartbreak, and injustice, which erupts in organized action. I cry upon every read, knowing it is necessary to feel this affected, and that I can’t afford to distance myself from this unprecedented atrocity.
Lastly, I want to share a picture of some prints, comics, zines, and chapbooks I got from recent art and small press expos, such as the Manila Illustration Fair and BLTX or Better Living Through Xerography (though, a few are from other publishing events and at least two are from Japan). It makes me so happy to have these on my “bookshelf.” These are such gorgeous forms of art and literature, and we’re seriously missing out if we keep overlooking them or viewing them as illegitimate. I celebrate how vibrant and diverse my local scene is, and I’m confident that I’ll always find joy in reading works that are rooted in, and created by, my community.
Aylli Cortez (he/they) is a transmasc Filipino poet and creative writing graduate of Ateneo de Manila University, where he received a DALISAYAN Award in the Arts for Poetry in 2024. His work has appeared in VERDANT Journal, en*gendered lit, Bullshit Lit, HAD, and like a field, among others. Based in Metro Manila, he is currently a poetry reader for ANMLY. Find him on Bluesky and Instagram @1159cowboy or visit his website.
