Beyond the Galleons

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Beyond the Galleons</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> by Isabel Cristina Legarda is a meditation on Filipino experiences of colonization ancestral connection alienation and the ghosts that haunt people living in geographic or psychological diasporas. Isabel juxtaposes historic moments from the days of Spanish and American colonial rule with threads of real women's lived experiences to raise awareness of multicultural histories that might be less known or talked about. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Isabel was born in the Philippines and spent her childhood there before moving to Bethesda Maryland. She holds degrees in literature and bioethics and is currently a practicing physician in Boston Massachusetts. </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Beyond the Galleons</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> first looks at the complicated interactions between Filipino natives and their colonial subjugators shifting from Spanish to American imperialism and culminating in imagined individual voices descended from those who lived through these histories. Tagalog baybayin Spanish and English weave together to help tell a sometimes forgotten sometimes ignored history. Isabel's poems contemplate longing resilience and the need to hold on to memory while moving forward beyond pain.</span></p>