A Professional Lola

“So what brings you to the peens?”
Before I even begin, I never imagined reading this book and finding Bigfoot in it, nevermind a book in which Bigfoot referred to the Philippines as the “peens.” That sure made me laugh at how absurd it was.
I am so grateful to have received this collection of short stories as my first ARC to review. As a Filipino, I love to see an author with the same ethnic background as me share stories that feel like home. Although there were some places mentioned that I have never visited, some caricatures of types of people I have never met, and some events that I never imagined to be possible or happen to me, the overall collection felt so nostalgic. The absurdities of some events, the humor and the descriptions felt so human, but in the mundane of humanity, there were also sprinklings of magic.
Some themes such as being LGBTIA+ in a very traditional Filipino culture, making sacrifices for the ones you love, grief, internalized racism, and familial love were explored throughout the collection and I truly enjoyed reading these themes through a lens that I find so familiar to the way I was raised. Tuazon’s exploration of some of these topics pushed me to reflect on my own life and how I have conformed or broke away from the traditional culture. Have my actions been to my detriment, or am I breaking boundaries that need to be broken? These are some questions I found myself asking.
Inherent to most short story collections, there are stories that will resonate to some, and others that will fall a bit flat. Because of this, I’m rating this a 4 stars, however I think that is just something that I find with most, if not all short story collections. My favorite short stories were “Carabao," “Far From Home,” “Tiny Dancer,” and of course, the titular story, “Professional Lola.” Throughout all of the stories, the beautiful prose and descriptions provided by Tuazon were evident and enjoyable, even if some of the plots did not land for me.
Overall, I truly recommend this short story collection, especially if you are looking to read more stories with Filipino representation.

I absolutely love Filipino representation in literature. Filipino culture, traditions, superstitions, mannerisms, humor and love is so different from any other cultural group. In some way, you can categorize these stories as magical realism, but if you know Filipinos, you know that magic is part of their reality. We believe in the magical, otherworldly and supernatural and it is part of our everyday lives. These stories really manage to highlight that with a great sense of humor and a lot of heart.
At the same time, these stories live in between the Filipino and the American culture somewhere, it has the foreigners eye on the curiosities and explains it with the knowledge of the natives which makes them suitable and accessible to anyone.
The stories stay so lighthearted and tender even through heavy topics. Like in the last story “Carabao”, where a young child is trying to understand his grandfather's transitioning to a woman. And then the parallels that are drawn between his understanding of this and the Discovery rocket launch.The journey that needs to be made before it can land, just like the journey the relationship needs to take before there can be acceptance. It’s absolutely beautiful and it’s so well done.
Several stories pick up parallels like that so you get to see things from different angles and the message really comes across, but leaves us open ended still and doesn’t force anything on us. I loved spending time with professional lola, and I savored every last bite, every story.

Wow. This book was so nostalgic for me and kept me entertained the whole time. I am a Filipino myself and everything that was written in these short stories are so accurate. From the salt, lemon and vinegar to clean your chicken or any meat, Filipino witches and mythological creatures, lapu-lapu, blue crab, bilo-bilo it made me miss home so much whereas some parts made me emotional. And the love Filipinos have for each other and the connection we make for one another. THIS BOOK WAS EVERYTHING. I would definitely buy this for friends and family.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC. This took me a few hours to read!

I wasn't entirely sure what I was getting myself into when I started this book, but once I started reading I couldn't stop. As a Filipina-American with a love for magical realism, these short stories were very much aligned with my interests, and it was so refreshing to see myself represented in a simultaneously contemporary and surreal setting.

Beyond the fact of representation, I really liked the topics covered in the short stories, as well. There is a beautiful exploration of grief, family, and navigating queerness in the titular Professional Lola tale; working through the complicated nature of half-sibling relationships in After Bigfoot, and understanding a loved one's transition in Carabao. My personal favorite was probably Handog, which was centered on the strained relationship between a father and son & the ways they're able to connect (& not.)

The only thing that I didn't enjoy about some of the stories was the way some of them felt like they came to a bit more of an abrupt ending while reading them. However, I think that's more a fault of my constant desire to get more out of a short story than is in the nature of the genre, rather than a fault of this particular book itself. Reflecting on these stories a couple days after reading them (as well as revisiting them again after the first pass) allows them to settle much more satisfactorily to my mind.

Overall, I definitely recommend this for folks who are a fan of magical realism & even more so to those who are looking to read some emotional/exploratory stories, largely about family, that are deeply rooted in the Filipino-American experience. It was so delightful to see my own family/relationships reflected in these texts & I'm very grateful to E.P. Tuazon for sharing these with the world!

Absolutely loved this book. I didn't know I needed to read something like this, but I'm so glad I did. Would definitely recommend this to people!

A beautiful collection. Many of these stories spoke to me, as a person of the Filipinx diaspora. We need books like this. We all deserve books like this. I'm a big fan!

If you’re going to read one story, it has to be the titled story “Professional Lola”! I would love to read an entire book about it!!!! It had me sobbing and missing my grandma so so much. It was every bit funny and heartfelt and ughhh just so good!!

All up — what a wonderful collection of stories set in the Phillipines to America. I felt the start of the collection was very strong with some unique and very different stories and towards the end they were okay!

Would definitely recommend.

I love how much representation seeps from every page and how full of honesty and love for the culture is within these short stories.

4.25/5 stars

A Professional Lola by EP Tuazon is a short story anthology featuring stories from folks in the Filipinx-American diaspora. This book adds a touch of the surreal as it explores the themes of family, love, identity, queerness, and grief.

I’ve spent so much of my avid reader life looking for myself and my friends and family written and reflected in the pages of the books I read. Due to publishing (slowly) expanding and diversifying from the straight white cis-hetero norm, I have only recently had the chance to be finding and reading more Filipinx American literature written by Filipinx American authors. In this anthology, I found the names and variations of my uncles, my friends, cousins of friends, my own family name, as well as the exact man my very own dad was named for (who was not in fact Filipino, but that’s besides the point lol).

As an American-born daughter to Filipinx immigrants, growing up I was not taught to speak fluent Filipino. Having said that, I have a pretty decent grasp of Filipino when spoken in casual conversation. My relationship to reading the language in this book had its own journey; I felt myself taking extra care in mentally reading aloud the written text and found that I understood most of it. However, it was a clunky experience— I did not realize *how much* I understood until it felt like it *was* spoken out loud. (Honestly, really helpful that Filipino is phonetic.) As a heritage speaker, reading written Filipino language felt like some sort of simultaneous mix of redemption and homecoming. I could taste the accents that speak of home and family and family from the homeland.

Another thing I found throughout these stories was the incorporation of Filipino food. I recognize the home found in the relationship between the characters and the food found on page. Speaking for myself and the FilAm social circles with whose company I keep, a core experience for being a part of the Filipinx diaspora involves connecting and reconnecting with our culture and motherland through food— it is also oftentimes (most times? every time?) a cultural means of saying, “I love you.” In the short story, “Bellow Below,” one of the characters decides to make bilo-bilo for dessert. This was a food that my family traditionally made and ate together specifically for New Year’s because part of family and cultural traditions includes surrounding ourselves with round things for good luck in the near year (hence the literal translation of bilo-bilo to balls balls). Additionally some other Filipino food mentions from the short stories, “A Professional Lola” and “The Second Panaderya Attack” that were specific to my own life include silog (the perfect breakfast, honestly), sisig (the go-to fundraiser food sold on campus by my university’s Filipinx organization), Filipino spaghetti (my personal favorite often eaten on birthdays for long noodles, long life), and pandesal (especially when eaten warm with butter or dipped in coffee, *chef’s kiss!!!!!* — when I was a child, almost similar to the main character of “The Second Panaderya Attack,” my parents often made a point of buying fresh pandesal first thing in the morning from the bakery next to Green Hills before it closed; rip).

At times, I found myself wondering if this anthology is categorized under the genre of magical realism. I’m honestly not sure where this book lies as it relates to the contemporary to surreal to magical realism where category classifications demand certain definitions. Genuine question: is there a spectrum between surreal and magical realism? I don’t know, but I was certainly left feeling some type of way from the surreal aspects woven into these stories. I was specifically taught that magical realism is a post-colonial genre of fiction that has roots born from resisting and opposing oppression, originating from Latin American authors (lol hello @ all the Latin American countries with whom the Philippines shares a colonizer). Because of what I learned in class, I’ve been dancing along the lines of how this anthology fits within that definition. But perhaps I am overthinking it and, in the case of this book, should allow surreal to encapsulate and settle where any definitions and boundaries lie. This questioning didn’t necessarily take me out of the book— instead the surreal built up the stories in ways that somehow made them feel like they actually made more sense than if that element had been absent.

Additionally, while my own family is not from Eagle Rock, a lot of my FilAm friends have called and still call Eagle Rock home, and the inclusion and acknowledgment of the Filipinx community in Eagle Rock as well as San Diego (where some of my relatives live) is so right and true to our diaspora in Southern California. It’s just so comforting to see this representation reflected in literature.

Furthermore, in my journey in connecting with the Filipino culture, I’ve taken part in my fair share of Filipino Cultural Nights/Celebrations within the Catholic church I grew up going to as well as the Filipinx organization at my university. It was surprising? Amazing? Heartwarming. Validating. Cathartic, perhaps, to see itik-itik on the pages of the story story, “Tiny Dancer,” when that was a dance that I, myself, performed when I was in the third grade. (I even still remember the exact basic dance step described in the short story and could probably quack my way alongside that character.)

Finally, I want to acknowledge that there is no one singular experience or story that epitomizes the entirety of being one part of a whole diaspora, so I fully understand that every individual experience will be different; there is no one story that is more valid than another. I will, however, say that reading this book felt like I could’ve been stepping into the thoughts and lives of many people in my own life and community. I say this with the upmost affection—reading this book felt like putting on my black knee-high socks that are part of my signature outfits (when the weather permits) after they’ve gone missing for years, or maybe rather, it felt like finally finding my perfect pair of black, knee-high socks that I’ve been looking for my entire life with a touch of that Cinderella magic and that Goldilocks (see what I did there 👀) feeling of just right.

Thank you, Netgalley and Red Hen Press, for the ARC!

This was a great collection of short stories. I liked the different type of family dynamics while reading different shot stories. It was a quick read.

I got an e-arc of this book on NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.