Exploring the role of the artist in troubled times, The Balikbayan Artist follows Vance Igorta who returns to the Philippines as a ‘balikbayan’ after nearly fifty years in the United States. He is a member of the Manong generation, the largest diaspora of Filipinos who worked physically demanding jobs, mostly in California’s agricultural fields. After coming home to a country on the brink of becoming a dictatorship, the farm-laborer-turned-artist shifts his paintings from abstractions to didactic political art to better reflect the rebellion that he eventually joins. Didacticism also facilitates his meditations on the impact of leaving his birthland to become a powerless Manong and then impoverished artist of color in New York. The Balikbayan Artist takes readers from the early 20th century to the present day where Vance Igorta’s art is being discovered anew. His legacy is validated for allowing his art to address the tensions of his time instead of keeping it solely entrenched within aesthetic concerns. The artist’s choice reflects what Vance Igorta learned as a voraciously self-educated that in circumstances where power corrupts, what makes anyone and everyone dangerous is love. This novel is inspired by and dedicated to Venancio C. Igarta (1912-2000), the real-life leading artist of the Manong generation.
Author
Eileen Tabios (born 1960) is an award-winning Filipino-American poet, fiction writer, conceptual/visual artist, editor, anthologist, critic, and publisher. Born in Ilocos Sur, Philippines, Tabios moved to the United States at the age of ten. She holds a B.A. in political science from Barnard College and an M.B.A. in economics and international business from New York University Graduate School of Business. Her last corporate career was involved with international project finance. She began to write poetry in 1995. Tabios has released eighteen print, four electronic, one CD poetry collections, an art essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, a novel, and a short story book. Tabios has created a body of work melding transcolonialism with ekphrasis. Inventor of the poetic form called "hay(na)ku," she has had her poems translated into Spanish, Tagalog, Japanese, Italian, Paintings, Video, Drawings, Visual Poetry, Mixed Media Collages, Kali Martial Arts, Modern Dance and Sculpture. Tabios has edited or co-edited five books of poetry, fiction and essays released in the United States. She also founded and edits the poetry review journal, "GALATEA RESURRECTS, a Poetry Engagement". She is the founder of Meritage Press, a multidisciplinary literary and arts press based in St. Helena, California. In addition to recipient of the Philippines’ National Book Award for Poetry, her poetry and editing projects have also received numerous awards including the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, The Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize, the Gustavus Meyers Outstanding Book Award in the Advancement of Human Rights, Foreword Magazine Anthology of the Year Award, Poet Magazine's Iva Mary Williams Poetry Award, Judds Hill's Annual Poetry Prize and the Philippine American Writers & Artists’ Catalagan Award; recognition from the Academy of American Poets, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association and the PEN/Open Book Committee; as well as grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, the New York State Council on the Humanities, the California Council for the Humanities, and the New York City Downtown Cultural Council.
