Isabel Cristina Legarda

Beyond the Galleons

Beyond the Galleons is a meditation on Filipino experiences of colonization, immigration, family, cultural agility, and the ghosts that haunt people living in geographic or psychological diasporas. Whether giving voice to inhabitants of a human zoo at the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis, imagining the day-to-day lives of ancestral women, or reflecting on the courage needed to endure migration and nurture connection, the poems here weave threads of individuals' lived experience through enormous historic moments, contemplate longing and resilience, and explore the need to hold fast to memory even while moving forward beyond pain.