Benedicta Takes Wing and Other Stories

Veronica Montes's debut book, Benedicta Takes Wing and Other Stories, includes fourteen short stories set in the United States as well as in the Philippines. The writer is a Philippine American writer who was raised and who continues to live in the Bay Area of Northern California, and her stories are inspired by the Filipino and Mainstream American cultures that she grew up in.  Her women characters are generally beautiful and strong, the men are more quiet and subdued. Her stories are of a people caught between two worlds, a people in diaspora, who have to negotiate the demands of the two cultures that dominate their lives. With a sharp eye for telling detail and the right dash of humor, Montes can tell the story of spunky girls who find the verve to tell off a chauvanist ex-Marine uncle. She can revisit an unforgettable nightout of a teenage girl in a Manila bar run by midgets. A fresh Asian American voice, Montes depicts the grief and everyday joy handed down as inheritance, the affections and denials that bind Filipino families together.