Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance, University of Minnesota Press 2021 Dear Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done. You did not write this book for me. You wrote it for your Nishnaabeg people. Yet there is something here that stirs me…

Atang: an altar for listening to the beginning of the world Quili-Quili Power Press. 2021. Self Published Book Improvisation An Engagement by Leny Mendoza Strobel (January 2023) I begin with a confession: I haven’t been reading Filipino/a/x American literature lately. I told a friend that I am looking for themes beyond the linear immigrant narrative, the colonial trauma narrative, the American…

(Expanded version of the Talk given at: 500 Years of Christianity and the Global Filipin@: Postcolonial Perspectives” organized by the Berkley Centre for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University, USA, the Australian Institute of Theological Education, and the Theology and Religious Education Department of the De la Salle University). …

(Keynote address at the October 21, 2022 Bantula Conference of the Philippine Culture-Based Education Program of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts: “Re-Thinking and Re-Imagining Philippine Culture-based Education: Critical Engagement, Affective Investment, Decolonial Practice”). Magandang araw po sa inyong lahat. Mayap a aldo pu kekayu ngan! Aku pu…

Leny Mendoza Strobel Abstract: For this Filipina in the diaspora, decolonization leads to a recognition of modernity/coloniality and settler colonialism and thus re-frames experience and identity as a settler rather than as an immigrant. If colonialism is all about dispossession of the Land, as many indigenous scholars assert, how does…

Freud and Yoga (by Kruschke and Desikachar): I appreciate the intention of this book to bridge Eastern (yoga) and Western (psychoanalysis) healing modalities. Although I haven’t undergone psychoanalysis formally, I’ve read a lot of materials from Freud and Freud-informed authors that have taught me a lot about the psychology of…

By Leny Mendoza Strobel with Professors Elizabeth de Castro and Violeta Bautista (University of the Philippines) Introduction I have been wanting to articulate or expand on the concept of wellness and wellbeing in Filipino culture called GINHAWA. But where to begin? In the Filipino language this word is related to our…

It’s all prakriti, yes. War is a product of impure thoughts that turns into Violence. Hatred. War is imagined before it is real. War is languaged before guns and ovens are fired. War is made reasonable and justified by a moral absolute. Whose? ** It’s avidya, yes. The hunger for…

Atchara is pickled green papaya relish that my Ima made for special occasions like…at Christmas! It is paired with chicharon/fried pork rind, barbeque pork or chicken, adobo or with any dish, really. Atchara is to Filipinos like kimchi is to Koreans and chutney is to Indians. I think atchara originated…