Worship the Body

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

As four individuals try to conceive an extraordinary family in urban Manila, they rediscover how secrets also have their own joys An owner of a furniture workshop, Jaime drops by a restaurant to cool off with a glass of beer. Working in that restaurant, Jun waits on him in that random visit. Something happens between them as their eyes meet over the glass of beer which Jaime considers an accident and Jun considers luck. Their paths will once again cross when Ria innocently hires Jun as their family driver after Jaime gets into a car accident for drunk driving. Hidden within a network of intimate relationships, Jaime, Jun, Ria, and Maya try to forge an extraordinary family in urban Manila, as they discover that secrets also have their own joys. Ria and Maya establish a unique connection as women confronted with questions about power and emotion even as they uncover a bond between their husbands, Jaime and Jun, themselves confronted with questions about history and myth. Told from different but interlocking points of view, their story becomes a song complete with recurring refrains and a coda, intimating that there are silences to the body that are essential to our understanding of happiness.

Author Bio

Alvin Yapan is both an author and a filmmaker. A fellow at the 2022 Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange (WrICE) of Sing Lit Station (SLS) and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University. His works, both in fiction and film, delve into the uncanny aspects of contemporary encounters with the non- and post-human. His first novel in the vernacular, Ang Sandali ng mga Mata (This Moment of Eyes, 2006), and his collection of short stories, Sangkatauhan Sangkahayupan (Humanity Bestiary, 2017), both received the Philippine National Book Award. His filmography includes Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa (The Dance of Two Left Feet, 2011), and Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe (The Rapture of Fe, 2009), recognized as best digital feature films of the year in the Philippines and at the Cairo International Film Festival, respectively. He finds time to produce and direct films in the middle of his teaching commitments at the Department of Filipino, Ateneo de Manila University. He feels that his writing and filmmaking mutually reinforce each other. Translator bio- Randy M. Bustamante was a writer, book editor and literary translator. He held teaching positions in universities both in Manila and in Boston for 20 years. He was an editorial consultant, creative writing teacher, and mindfulness seminar facilitator before passing away in 2020. Worship the Body was his last collaboration with the author.