Most of the ancient venuses found share this common silhouette, enlarged breasts, full hips, and sometimes even a prominent vulva. And always a large or pregnant belly. The fascination with pregnancy was very evident in over a dozen specimens that we viewed.

It is not only well-drawn but well-written. It's amazing how gracefully he tackles a very sensitive and contemporary issue.

It's about a Japanese-American couple living in L.A.. She is an advocate for Asian-American causes, being multicultural herself. He thinks it's all rubbish, and that he has never felt any sort of "otherness" growing up as an Asian in America; and yet unconsciously gravitates towards white women because he views them as a sort of "prize" to be won for an Asian man.

That was a very simplistic explanation, and made the novel sound pretty stupid actually, but I can't possibly explain an issue so complex and so subtly handled. The novel has its key moments. The young couple takes time apart from each other. He dates a series of Caucasian women who all show a genuine liking for him, but eventually drop him because they feel treated like a "trophy girlfriend". The fact that he can "snag" a Caucasian woman is a big ego boost for him because it is revealed that he has deep insecurities about his manhood, being Asian and smaller in body type than Caucasian men. But when the Japanese girl starts seeing a Caucasian man, he blows up and calls the whole thing sick and twisted and asks why a "big, white guy" would be attracted to a tiny Asian girl, implying that it has to do with fetishism. The story explores a weird sort of racial double-standard.

I didn't know that the issue it tackled was a valid issue until I read it. Prior to that it was the sort of thing that others had something to say about when it came up. And I've heard some pretty outrageous things.

Someone I actually know once said that white guys who found Asians attractive had a higher potential for becoming a pedeophile since Asian girls tend to look young and child-like. (And this was actually said to a white guy who had an Asian girlfriend, right to his face).

There is also the "mail-order bride" label. I once made an illustration for a Pinoy-Australian magazine, of a Filipina beside a Caucasian man. I was made to modify the artwork before publishing and make the man only half-Asian so that the woman wouldn't look like a mail-order bride. (I was absolutely furious, mind you, but it was a commission).

In my own experience on the other hand, having a blond boyfriend has merited me congratulatory thumbs-up signs from some other Pinays, almost as if I snagged a prize at a fair. And I knew a Chinese family back home whose women are only allowed to date other Chinese... and white guys.


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The month my mother told us she had cancer was the same month my sister announced she was pregnant. An unplanned pregnancy isn't the best of news in most families, but to my mother, it gave her a new reason to live. She was going to have a granddaughter!

While Ananda formed in my sister's womb, my mother dreamed of her and fought to keep the cancer cells away. There they were, two organisms fighting to live so that they could unite.

By the time my ma had done her last chemo and radiation treatment, Ananda was born into the waiting arms of her grandmother who held her like a sweet reward she had won in the battle against a life threatening disease.

And last night, we celebrated my mother being 5 years cancer-free!

It's been a long, hard battle for her, and 5 years in the clear is a milestone in more ways than one. Most recurrences happen within 5 years of treatment, and the fact that there was no recurrence is a major hurdle cleared.

A surprise celebration took place last night. Friends and family came over to celebrate this new chance at life!



We sand "Happy Birthday", because it was sort of like a birthday. Birthdays celebrate life.