A diwata brings a grieving slave's brother back to life as a mango tree. Two writers write their ideal lovers into existence with ink from a mangkukulam. A kapre and a farmgirl play out a tale as old as time in Spanish colonial Philippines. A girl with a magical heritage must rescue a bumbling cartographer from the hidden city of Biringan. Maria Makiling opens a pop-up cafe with human heartbreak on the menu. In Song of the Mango and Other New Myths, Vida Cruz-Borja brings stories woven from elements of classical myths and folklore from the Philippines and other parts of the world, as well as from visions of the modern and of the future. In words richly reimagined and reinvented, these "new myths" explore hidden depths from flawed characters who strive to search for a just and equal world, whether that may be in the realm of ordinary humans or the terrain of magical creatures.
Author
Vida Cruz-Borja is a Filipina fantasy and science fiction writer, editor, artist, tarot reader, and conrunner. Her short fiction and essays have been published in F&SF, Fantasy, Strange Horizons, PodCastle, Expanded Horizons, and various anthologies. She won the 2022 IGNYTE Award for Best Creative Nonfiction for “We are the Mountain: A Look at the Inactive Protagonist,” which will be republished in Letters to a Writer of Color in Spring 2023. She is the author of two illustrated fantasy short story collections: Beyond the Line of Trees (2019) and Song of the Mango and Other New Myths (2022). Her work in her different fields has been nominated, longlisted, and recommended for the Hugo Award, the British Science Fiction Award, and the James Tiptree Jr. (now Otherwise) Award. She was a 2018 Tiptree Fellow. Currently, she’s a freelance book editor with Tessera Editorial and The Darling Axe and is co-director of FiyahCon Fringe BonFiyah under the larger umbrella of FIYAHCON, a BIPOC-centered convention for science fiction and fantasy readers and writers.
