Una and Miguel

Oh my god Lille Bose agreed to an intereview! I'm soooo excited. I was looking through my notes nad my materials for the dissertation. I have feedback from publishers and wirters both published and unpublished. But I realised that practically all my info is on the Cacho House Publications. Though Adarna's attempts at young adult literature didn't take off and had to be put on a moratorium, I thought that the books they came up with met my expectations of young adult literature better than the Cacho books did. Not all were great. I thought that the Pilar Perez Books were good but that they didn't have enough space to develop the stories-- most probably because of word limits set by the contest. (Sup? by Maria Fres Felix; Mga Ako by Amalia Salamat; Jacobo's Ghost by Annette Flores-Garcia and Anina ng mga Alon by Eugene Evasco) You could see that the voice they were going for was young adult.

What I liked even better were the SLAM books. Tara FT Sering wrote a really interesting choose-your-own-romance book called "All the Right Moves." And Lille Bose wrote Una and Miguel (A Long Shot at Love). I loved Una and Miguel. It was the first Philippine YA novel that really felt like YA. But more than that it was the first Philippine YA novel that I enjoyed on its own. (And not just because, "hey! it's Philippine Y.A. i'm so happy it even exists!) I think that it achieved what a lot of Philippine YA writers are aiming for: the chance to write a good story about Filipino teenagers, using experiences that Filipino readers can relate to. The family conflict, the ins and outs of life in a village, the MU set up... Now as I write this I can already anticipate the reactions-- not all Filipino teenagers are middle-class alterna-girls. The girl in this story is a minority in a minority since-- as Neni Sta Romana Cruz pointed out-- 1.5 million kids are upper class, 24 MILLION KIDS ARE NOT. I know that I can relate to this story because Una's life was more similar to my own. But hello, before this book I was reading about American kids, British kids, hell, Japanese kids. I loved those books. But the kick you get from recognizing something of yourself in a book, that's something else. This book came too late for my teen years-- I read it in my 20's. But it brought back a lot of things I'd forgotten.

And it's not a simple book. That's another reason why I love it. In Most Filipino storylines there's usually no room for gray. Contrabida is contrabida-- there are no redeeming qualities. In Una and Miguel, each character is so well-done that you find yourself liking the other woman and rolling your eyes at "Prince Charming." It manages to be honest about peer pressure, parental expectations and all the other phooey we had to go through at that age. And guess what? It managed to be funny as well.

So I'm excited. Sometime next week I'll be chatting with Lille.