Maiana Minahal's new book: legend sondayo

I was Blessed to have had the opportunity to write a blurb for Maiana Minahal's new book. Here is what I said. "Cover to cover this book is magic. The poetry lifts from the page and shapeshifts into a thougsand moving pictures that dance and sing and move seamlessly through time, place and gender. Maiana Minahal has taken a little-known Filipino folktale, spun it on it's queer ear and made a most beautiful retelling."---Sharon BridgforthTo purchase or for more go to:http://www.akpress.org/2009/items/legendsondayo http://www.maianaminahal.comHere is a little from the introduction by Leny Mendoza Strobel:"History is written in the Body. But how does the Body know this, if the History that is learned is a denial or refusal of the truths that the Body remembers? The Legend of Sondayo is a remembered Filipino story that is told today in fragments. We will never know fully the richness and complexity, the meaning of layers, the beauty and sensuousness of the oral culture from where it emerged and once kept the village alive. The village of our indigenous memory was ravaged and pillaged by History's imperial narrative. But the Body doesn't forget. The past insists on being remembered. The Body that longs to be remembered calls upon this same History (of violence) in order to find its other face—of healing, beauty, creativity." —Leny Mendoza Strobel, from the introduction