Cypher [How An Anthology Helped a Mixed-Race Filipino American Writer Draft a Novel]

In this work of creative nonfiction, Brian Ascalon Roley, the author of American Son (W.W. Norton, 2001) recounts the cultural landscape of the late 20thc. America for Filipino American and mixed-race writers as he recounts some of the events that influenced his novel’s conception and explains how stumbling upon an anthology helped him to revise the draft. It was one of the first novels to feature mixed-race Filipino American characters, and would go on to receive the Association of Asian American Studies Award