The Collected Stories of Jessica Zafra

Jessica is a natural short story writer, and I don’t know anyone else in the Philippines writing in English who does it as well as she does. The fact that she’s a Filipina couldn’t matter less. She would be recognised anywhere on earth that good English is read. But of course in this fatuous world the unmerited hegemony of “English” literature (including of course American, Canadian, Australian, etc. etc.) reminds us that it still fancies itself as the arbiter of the Real Thing. But plenty of us round-eyes know that’s baloney, and JZ provides us with ammunition to stand up in public and say so.

- James Hamilton-Paterson

Published in 2019.