Book Review: Wayang Alimagnum

 

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The Lighthouse Diary #67: Expanding Our World: Reflections on World Languages and Literature Week 2025

Joel Donato Ching Jacob aka Cup

During this year’s World Languages and Literature Week, we, at the BA Library had the privilege of hosting three remarkable authors namely, Joel Donato Ching Jacob, Robin Sebilono and Artie Cabezas who shared not only their books but also their writing journeys and the literary works that have shaped their thinking. Each talk, spanning 30 to 40 minutes, became more than just a discussion of craft and the writing life —it was an invitation to step beyond the familiar borders of language and thought.

Thinking of a way to introduce the Book Talk and Author Visit activity, I was reminded of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s words: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” It’s a striking idea—that our ability to understand, to imagine, even to dream, is shaped by the words we have at our disposal. And so, I used this idea to bring in our students' consciousness into the sessions. Our students, through these author talks, experienced a challenge and opportunity to expand the limits of their worlds.

Joel Donato Ching Jacob, whose middle-grade novels, Wing of the Locust and Orphan Price,  are set in an imagined pre-colonial city in Laguna province, spoke about the importance of learning sight words. He emphasized how reading books of all kinds—especially those that genuinely interest us—contributes to vocabulary growth and comprehension.

Robin visits BA!

Robin Sebolino, author of Vassals of the Valley, delved into his purpose for writing. A passionate historian at heart, Robin finds both comfort and contemplation in writing fiction. His talk underscored how storytelling becomes a way of making sense of history, giving voice to the past while engaging with the present.

Lastly, Artie Cabezas presented his portfolio of sequential art, leading us to explore the power of visual narratives in non-literary texts and other media. His talk became even more resonant when he shared works that reflect his advocacies—gender identity, representation of people with disabilities, and creating spaces for the marginalized.

What worlds opened up! Language is not just about communication; it is the foundation of how we interpret and engage with the world. And when we encounter writers who challenge and inspire us to see differently, who introduce us to narratives outside our own, we grow. Our students didn’t just listen to authors—they widened their own worlds.

We will always be proud of our Griffin and Virtus et Ars Awardee!

I hope these conversations linger in their minds, urging them to read more, to write more, and to embrace the vast possibilities that language—and literature—offer.

Reading Now: Orphan Price

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Author of the Month: Joel Donato Jacob (2 of 2)

Here is part two of the blog interview with Mr. Joel Donato Jacob. He is the author of the 2018 Scholastic Asian Book Award winning novel Wing of the Locust and the Best Asian Short Stories 2019 Editor’s Choice, Artifacts from the Parent. He lives in Bay, Laguna with his mother and dogs. He enjoys the outdoors, cooking, and fitness.

3. What was the most challenging experience (doubts, blocks, dead ends) you had when writing Wing of the Locust?

I need space to write, the home space and the workplace is distracting. So I needed to quit work and spend 6 weeks in a resort to finish the manuscript. Quite a few people think that researching about the setting must have been hard work, but that was fun and exciting! Poring through books to rebuild an image of a Tagalog civilization was fun. But life gets in the way, having the financial liberty to walk away from life to create art is not a privilege I have now, I had it once but with a lot of support from institutions, family and friends. I am looking for grants and residencies so I can focus on writing again.

4.   Name five books that gave you hope or healing.

Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn; what it means to be kind/a hero. 

Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life; what it means to love. 

Haruki Murakami’s Wild Sheep Chase; what it means to be a self-absorbed jerk. 

J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye; what it means to be a pretentious fake. 

Doreen Gamboa Fernandez’ Tikim; and what it means to be a post-colonial cultural re-/creator.

5. I look forward to your future works and projects. What have you been busy with since the launch of Wing of the Locust? Please share about them and the advocacies you are a part of.

I am writing the sequel to Wing of the Locust; It’s only been a few months since it came out last December 202 but quite a few people read the first book and were asking for the second. Please look forward to that. But you can read a prequel here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-A_Qk7U8g32xZRl43YsG_Rqq2wAf4SoS/view?usp=sharing it is an anthology of LGBTQIA+ SFF stories from South East Asia produced/funded by the ASEAN SOGIE Caucus https://aseansogiecaucus.org.

BookBed https://bookbed.org is a reading and writing community that has helped me in the past with writing exercises and a safe space to be read and receive feedback.

I volunteer as a Community Based HIV Screening Motivator and Counselor for LoveYourself https://loveyourself.ph

I will be mentoring for the GlobalGrace Artists in Residence program (https://www.facebook.com/YMCARINALIORG/posts/493475065363722)

I will try to sit in with the Palihang LIRA more often this year. Everyone is encouraged to apply, Filipino Literature educators and poets. (https://www.facebook.com/PalihangLIRA/posts/4166298836722621)

I will be part of the ClarionWest workshop this year, so please send prayers (or money/groceries hahaha) (https://www.clarionwest.org/2021/02/24/announcing-the-clarion-west-class-of-2021/) I will be both exhausted and poor hahaha, but I wanted this.

Please buy my book Wing of the Locust:

https://dearbooks.ph/

https://www.fullybookedonline.com/

I contributed to these anthologies:

Buy Best Asian Short Stories 2019 https://singapore.kinokuniya.com/bw/9789811435393

Ombak is free to download: http://www.ombak.org/

    Outsiders Within: https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Within-Dave-Higgins/dp/1912674122/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=outsiders+within&qid=1616552557&sr=8-2

     All Worlds Wayfarer: Through Other Eyes:
https://www.amazon.com/Through-Other-Eyes-experience-Anthologies-ebook/dp/B08Q5YT2XB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=all+worlds+wayfarer+through&qid=1616552581&sr=8-1

     

     Fantasy!:  https://press.up.edu.ph/store/books/view_item/693

   Let us continue supporting our Filipino authors, dear parents, teachers and librarians! 

   This list of resources, projects and advocacy, and stories by Mr. Joel Donato Jacob is worth 

    your time. 

Author of the Month: Joel Donato Jacob (1 of 2)

The blog's featured author for the month of April is Mr. Joel Donato Jacob. He is the author of the 2018 Scholastic Asian Book Award winning novel Wing of the Locust and the Best Asian Short Stories 2019 Editor’s Choice, Artifacts from the Parent. He lives in Bay, Laguna with his mother and dogs. He enjoys the outdoors, cooking, and fitness.

In this interview, he shares titles of books he wished he had written, what gaps the Philippine book industry have and the challenges he experienced writing Wing of the Locust. If you have not read his award winning work yet and would need to read up in reviews, go to the Blog Tour: Wing of the Locust that we had last year. You can buy or reserve a copy from Dear Books. 

1.  What is the book or novel you wish you had written? 

I was reading two books at the same time and they were serendipitously linked: Haruki Murakami’s Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World; and Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams. They both talked about a concept of moving perpendicular to time. 

In Hardboiled, Murakami describes a grain of rice where you assign one tip as 0 and the other tip as 1. You then assign a number for each letter and punctuation mark and space using numbers. You can now draw a point on the grain of rice corresponding to everything that could possibly be written in the universe. From your name to the Holy Bible… and so on. Then the analogy continues to time, from say, point of birth to point if death, our mind moves perpendicular to the progress of time, we might explore past memories or future aspirations but when our mind does, it cannot affect either directly. And this is a fantasy suspense book! The protagonists escape their pursuers using this concept. Then in Einstein’s Dreams, Lightman describes how a town behaves in response to various time anomalies. Say what if life begins in one spot and ends in another and we can move freely from point A to point B?

I will have to mention Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5! Each chapter of Einstein’s Dreams talks of a different way to perceive time. So sorry three books. But the reason is the same, it’s when an author can use a complex concept and put it in fiction in a way that inspires the reader and evokes imagination and wonder. That was exactly what I wanted to do for the civilization if Ma’I in Wing of the Locust.

2.   What are the gaps and spaces in the Philippine book industry that must be filled or bridged?

Book production and food security have very similar challenges in making their products and getting those products to the consumer. First, both industries are rely profit, otherwise you have individuals who have to rely on passion projects, meaning they are expected to produce at a loss, breakeven is a vague aspiration. We can aspire for a time when writers (all artists, actually) and farmers (and most laborers too, like carpenters, masons) can be given universal basic pay so they can have subsistence that does not rely on the sale of the production. At the moment, writers in write as a side hustle. Many writers are academics or creatives in other fields, like advertising or web development, because writing does not pay a livable wage. Our farmers have it worse of course. Then we have access, are these products getting to the consumers?  Food is seasonal and we have both seasons of immense food waste and lean months because post-harvest practices do not support our farmers in distributing their goods. Farm to market roads/railways, preservation (flash-freezing, canning) could bridge those periods where we have too much to times when we have too little.

Wing of the Locust by Joel Donato Jacob, 2020

Similarly, book development and production have both lean and overproducing markets, that fail to meet. The academic book publishers are producing books because they have the funds with little regard to profit. Mainstream book producers prefer the bottom line profit to quality. Neither seem to willing to budge. We call out the academe for gatekeeping, they have access to wealth, and use that wealth to perpetuate established (colonial) writing traditions; not that mainstream book makers are not themselves patterned to global markets of book production (penny horror, erotica/romance)—but there is a resistance there to criticism and even proofreading and editing. One editor for big publisher of romance novels tells me the horrors of authors unwilling to revise their manuscripts! They go into print grammar problems and all! 

Art should be a conversation, the academe should recognize that mainstream literature IS literature; but mainstream literature producers must also be willing to see where criticism is not an attack on their work but a survey of where the foundations and pillars of craft are weaker, in order to build a stronger text.

Visit the blog next week for the second part of Mr. Jacob's interview.

Book Blog Tour: Wing of the Locust Week 3

The Book Blog Tour for Wing of the Locust closes this week on its third roundup. Here is a review of the book bloggers and vloggers who participated in the blog tour. Click on each link to read up on their thoughts and responses on Wing of the Locust.

Book Blog Tour Introduction: Wing of the Locust

Week 1 - Book Blog Roundup

Week 2 - Book Blog Roundup

Wing of the Locust is a masterpiece on its own and as I have said in my review, a sequel is something readers are looking forward to. Also, this coming of age young adult novel has a place in book clubs and in the Language Arts classroom. I have recommended activities for school librarians and teachers who will pick this book up for their class or reading group.

Choose any of the 3 Pre-Reading Activities 

1. Activate readers' prior knowledge by showing a pre-colonial map of the Philippines focusing on the province of Laguna, especially the town of Cabuyao. Compare this to a current map of Laguna. Ask students for their impressions, curiosities and questions about the two documents. Have students write these down in a common board or JamBoard. Make students choose three questions from the list and assign them to find out answers based on sources they find online or in the library. Be sure to require citations or a bibliography. Share findings next meeting.

2. Introduce the hierarchy of pre-colonial Philippines. Discuss the relevance of this social status during the time and how it is still present in modern day Philippines.

3. Build background knowledge on the mambabarang by having students do a close reading of a text about them. 

During Reading - Try a Literary Circle with your readers. It is a collaborative reading response activity that provides agency among and between readers. I have put together useful links for resources and lesson plans on Literary Circle.

What is a Literature Circle?

 Literature Circles: Role Cards

Literature Circles: Lesson Plan

Post Reading Activity 

1. Conduct an Author Visit.

2. Write a book review.

3. Do a book blog tour within the class or the reading group. 

Feel free to try one, any of the recommended activities , or all of it! Have fun reading the Wing of the Locust and have more fun responding and engaging with other readers.

Book Blog Tour: Wing of the Locust Week 1 Roundup

Our Book Blog Tour for Wing of the Locust is on-going. Book bloggers are warming up to the book. The past week, our bloggers' socmed sites have been active about it! These are the initial responses they have on Joel Donato Ching Jacob's masterpiece.

Gerald the Bookworm book talks about Wing of the Locust and looks forward to finishing up the novel by the end of the year. Below is an IG post of Yna the Moodreader on IG.

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Like Xi Zuq, I am currently reading the book and so far, it has been an interesting journey with Tuan who is continuously finding his place in the community. Set against the backdrop of pre-colonial Philippines, this gives color and texture to Tuan's discovery of the self and the world around him.   

I will be posting full reviews and recommended activities in the coming weeks for Donato's engaging novel. It has a place in the classroom and in libraries for virtual book discussions. Exciting! 

Currently Reading: Wing of the Locust

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