Reading More SEA 2022
Earlier this year I wrote about wanting to read more books by Southeast Asian authors, set in Southeast Asia. This is how that’s been going!
For some years now I’ve also been more intentional about reading more Filipino authors, so this list will include those books too. I’ve included #RomanceClass books that I did not help edit or publish. If someone else reading this would like to include books I helped edit and publish this year, check out Feels Like Home by Angel C. Aquino, the KILIG anthology published by Komiket (available here), and the 14-story NomCom anthology by RomanceClass authors.
As much as possible I’d like to read contemporary romance, but am counting and have been reading other genres as well for now. I can only read in English and Tagalog. For contemporary romance or YA there seem to be more choices on reading apps like Wattpad, and more if I decided to include fic and RPF. Interesting that a search using a country name will lead to lots of romance written as fanfic for various BL series, and royal romance RPF for one country in particular and I haven’t decided yet if I should include those. (But maybe I should. If I do that do I count Pinoy loveteam fic? This is what I think about lol.)
Books/stories that I’ve read and where to read:
These are what I’ve finished, but this isn’t all that I’ve tried to read. One of the consequences of embarking on this reading project is encountering trad-pubbed books that contain terrible treatment of Filipinos, for very unexamined reasons. Editors of these books should flag these micro- (and macro!) aggressions at the manuscript stage and please workshop with the author why punching down at another country in their region is just passed off as their “lived experience.” In a romance or women’s fic! Many of these books I discovered and subsequently dnf-ed are US-published and marketed in my country as “representation.” Can we be better about this, trad pub???
