Release Date: Spring 2021
ISBN: 978-1-93901-19-4
Pages: 319
Price: $20.00
After swiftly selling through its first & several inventory supplies of DOVELION, Small Press Distribution or SPD has now restocked my first novel! Feeling grateful, I’ve decided to offer a “Memorial Day Special”—anyone who purchases DOVELION can get a free copy of my Selected Tercets poetry book, The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku! Just share your receipt (unless we know each other) by Facebook messenger or email to galateaten@gmail.com This "2-Book Offer" is good through Memorial Day weekend until Midnight (PST), Monday, May 31, 2021.
Small Print: In(ter)vention can only be mailed to U.S. shipping addresses.
Here are some links about DOVELION: A Fairy Tale for Our Times since it was officially released less than 2 months ago in April:
A Review.
Here’s an excerpt:
True to most fairy tales, the novel opens with the traditional phrase “once upon a time” but there is nothing traditional about this novel which is at once inventive and experimental. How many times, for example, can a writer get away with describing a young woman approaching a threshold and pressing a button on an intercom to gain entry to Apartment 3J? The answer is again and again and again. Each time the reader is given a little bit more information and each time the reader is kept in suspense. There is something portentous, if not symbolic, about crossing a threshold. Tabios takes this to new heights by exploring the threshold of pain: how much a human being can withstand pain through living with actions that can have long-lasting repercussions.
—Neil Leadbeater
A List:
“What To Read When You Want To Celebrate APIA Heritage Month,” The Editors of RUMPUS, May 14, 2021
A Feature Article: “From Poet to Novelist”
Here’s an excerpt from Positively Filipino:
Eileen says that autofiction was not what she had in mind in creating DOVELION. Instead, she says she was trying to manifest [the indigenous cultural trait of] “kapwa” in terms of the notion of the interconnection of all things. As a result, she says, she wanted to eliminate the barrier between the life inside the book versus outside of the book. “Like in some theater when the actors walk off the stage and continue the play’s actions amidst the audience members,” she explains. “I wanted to acknowledge the connection—by eliminating a division—between author and story and, later, story, and readers.”
Autofiction, in any event, would simplify what Eileen’s novel actually achieves. DOVELION is not just a work of fiction, but also the creation of a new myth. DOVELION creates the world of an indigenous tribe known as the Itonguk who live in Pacifica.
An Interview
Here’s an excerpt:
Strobel: A reader who has no knowledge whatsoever about American colonialism in the Philippines can still find their entry into the novel through poetry and art. How do you want the novel to disrupt the dominant narratives about empire and authoritarianism? Or how do you envision it doing so?
Tabios: Poetry and art often reflects their time. So whether one is a poet/artist or an audience member, the poetry/art can provide doorways into engaging with the larger world. One should always be learning—never stop being a student of the world. You may not even recognize what’s a “dominant narrative” if you’ve not educated yourself.
As for the novel’s effect in this area, well it’s disruptive in so many ways. I can think of it subverting the narratives for gender roles, eros, history (as defined solely by “winners,” as the saying goes), and U.S. foreign policy, among others.
A Visual Engagement
Here's an excerpt (more can be seen HERE):
A Few Readers
Eileen’s book is very Gebserian… The book creatively irrupts time the way Jean Gebser spoke about, bringing past, present and future together in an originary presence.
—Glenn Aparicio Barry, author of Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again
Some books change you. Others haunt you. This one did both—and more—in a time when words have been difficult.
—Reine Marie Bonnie Melvin, novelist & editor
Encyclopedic masterpiece!
—E. San Juan, Jr., poet & civic intellectual
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We are also celebrating the 2021 paperback edition of The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku: Selected Tercets 1995-2019 which originally came out as a hardcover in 2019. For information about it, go to the Title's Link, and here are some images about the book:
