librography
works in translation
with Alton melvar m dapanas
'like molotov our love/ shatters, burns, erupts/ crushes the skulls and ribs/ but our chests will not be razed/ on the ground we will hold/ shout the words we kept, marked/ on the placards we held...'
'He kept on harassing me. I went inside a Filipino restaurant. He no longer dogged after me but remained standing outside by the alley. I knew he was waiting for me to come out...'
“Alvarez queers a century-old prose tradition in Filipino while braving through the obscured fringes of her own vulnerability, offering both revelation and rumination. She immerses us with the far-off and the familiar. This is a galvanising contribution to the discourse surrounding form and the imperative rebellion against it.”
"Alvarez's most singular and timely contribution lies, it seems to me, in reconstructing the hidden universe of the LGBTQ+ community within the global Filipino diaspora. By my lights, no other writer, in Filipino or English, has consistently and powerfully illuminated the condition of queer migrant workers from the Philippines. Even more stunning to me is how she has managed to thrive in Saudi Arabia despite the glaring lack of protection and systemic homophobia in that part of the world."
