The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic by Nick Joaquin (Book)

The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic is a book containing 10 short stories and a play by Nick Joaquin. It was published in 2017 by Penguin Books. In the year 2017, Joaquin would've been 100 years old. He was born in 1917. He died in 2004. Penguin Classics describes the collection as "a centennial edition of Philippine writer Nick Joaquin's seminal works." The book contains a Foreword by Gina Apostol and an Introduction by Vicente L. Rafael. The stories in the collection were previously published in various magazines and other publications.

1. "Three Generations," Graphic, September 5, 1940
2. "The Legend of the Dying Wanton," Evening News Saturday Magazine, October 5, 1946
3. "The Mass of St. Sylvestre," Manila Post, December 29, 1946
4. "The Summer Solstice," Saturday Evening News, June 21, 1947
5. "May Day Eve," Philippine Free Press, December 13, 1947
6. "The Woman Who Had Two Navels," This Week, July 19, 1949
7. "Guardia de Honor," Philippine Free Press, October 1, 1949
8. "Portrait of the Artist as Filipino: An Elegy in Three Acts," Weekly Women's Magazine, September 28 - November 23, 1951
9. "Dona Jeronima," Philippine Free Press, May 1, 1965
10. "Candido's Apocalypse," Philippine Free Press, December 11, 1965
11. "The Order of Melkizedek," Philippine Free Press, December 10, 1966

Blurb:
"Nick Joaquin is widely considered one of the greatest Filipino writers, but he has remained little-known outside his home country despite writing in English. Set amid the ruins of Manila devastated by World War II, his stories are steeped in the post-colonial anguish and hopes of his era and meditate on the challenges of the Filipino individual's new freedom after a long history of colonialism. This collection includes his best-known stories and his celebrated play, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino."

Reviews:

1. The Pine-Scented Chronicles - "In ten stories and a play, Joaquin deftly depicted what defines the Philippines as a nation. He wrote about the struggles of the Filipinos whilst capturing seminal and pivotal moments that epitomize the indomitable Filipino spirit. With acuity, he painted a montage that comes alive with a plethora of languages, and identities but what echoes through the din are 7,641 islands becoming one. Underneath the surface, these stories were about the Filipinos, written by a Filipino, for the Filipinos."

2. National Public Radio (NPR) - "Though Joaquin is ubiquitous in the Philippines, this is his first collection of stories in the United States, and the perfect starting point to get to know his particular brand of melancholy. The Woman Who Had Two Navels is a transporting read, and a fierce elegy for a past that never was.