In the Company of Strangers
“Sixteen deceptively simple stories comprise Michelle Cruz Skinner’s much-anticipated follow-up to Balikbayan and Mango Seasons, many of them about Filipinos tongue-tied and alienated in the motherland, or scattered across the map of heartaches and homesickness in the company of strangers called countrymen, family, lovers. A book of quiet gems definitely worth the wait.” --R. Zamora Linmark, author of Prime Time Apparitions and The Evolution of a Sigh
“The essential subject of these captivating stories is memory, but memory filtered by what cannot--or even should not--be said. The corrosive effects of a secret history, the burdens of understanding, are limned through stories both spare and lyrical. In a way, these stories tell a kind of love story: the love of a daughter for a heritage that, even while suppressed or denied, can never be erased.” --Marianne Villanueva, author of Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila and Mayor of the Roses: Stories
“Michelle Cruz Skinner shows us again that exile sometimes captures the body and sometime the heart; she writes closely about love and life in a family and we see that distance, longing, and desire all can contribute to the things misplaced in translation.” --Ron Carlson, author of Five Skies and The Signal
“Evocatively written. Deftly offers how life can unfold as a series of uncertain transitions. But redemption can surface when one realizes through these stories how much we share with each other.” --Eileen Tabios, author of Novel Chatelaine
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