Chicas is available on Spotify and other podcast platforms
29/06/2025
Maligayang Kaarawan, Joi Barrios! 💐🍷🖊️
BAWAT MANGINGIBIG AY MAKATA
Bawat mangingibig ay makatang nananalinghaga,
Nanunungkit ng ningning sa kalahating buwan,
Nililipad ng halimuyak ng mahiyaing sampaga.
Sa pagitan ng mga pahina’y nagkukubli,
Ang pagsintang sa pagkapipi’y sumisidhi.
Ang makata ay naghihintay,
Sinasalansan sa isip ang mga hugis at salita,
At kinukulayan ang mga kataga,
Tinatapon sa hangin at sinasalong muli,
Hanggang sa huling sandaling humulagpos ang mga taludtod,
Sa pagwawakas at pagsisimula ng mga kabanata.
Kung ang paglingap ay tinutugunan ng paglingap
Talinghagang alay ay hubad,
At ang bawat pagtula’y pagtatapat.
29/06/2025
Contributed to this important book published by on a general situationer of the country under Marcos Jr!
20/06/2025
Ten years of Creating, Fighting, Liberating! Today, Gantala Press celebrates its tenth anniversary. Thank you to all of the writers, artists, designers, editors, printers, messengers, donors, funders, readers, followers, buyers, organizers, volunteers, interns, friends, allies, and comrades, old and new, who have helped us through our first decade! Long live small press publishing! Free Palestine! 💖🇵🇸🔟
18/06/2025
Yesterday we made our final delivery for our mini libraries for women deprived of liberty project. We have made four deliveries so far, including the books donated by BAA BAA Booksheep.
Nelson Mandela's call for the protection of prisoners' human rights was adopted by UN as the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. This includes Rule 64, "Every prison shall have a library for the use of all categories of prisoners, adequately stocked with both recreational and instructional books, and prisoners shall be encouraged to make full use of it. "
Reading books in these libraries also serves as a mechanism for females serving time to earn time allowances. In 2023, UNODC and BJMP launched the Read Your Way Out project to promote the rights of people in prison to access education, including the use of prison library services. BJMP started to incorporate reading activities as an option to earn good conduct time allowance (GCTA) for reducing sentences (https://www.unodc.org/roseap/philippines/2023/04/read-your-way-out/story.html). But the pilot project only targeted men's dormitories.
Our project will be implemented in female dormitories. The first three mini libraries in women's dorms will be set up in selected highly congested jails, one each in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
14/06/2025
New blog post! Our presentation at the Boycott Frankfurt Book Fair Forum at UP Diliman yesterday (June 13), with sources and additional resources. Check out the video recording of the forum on Likhaan Institute of Creative Writing’s Facebook and YouTube pages for the eye-opening accounts by friends abroad on German and Israeli fascism, colonialism and imperialism, & discussions of the boycott as solidarity-building! 🇵🇸
From the river to the sea!
Boycott Frankfurt Book Fair!
Imperyalismo, Ibagsak!
🇵🇸
10/06/2025
The Likhaan: UP Institute of Creative Writing presents
On the Palestinian-led Campaign to Boycott the Frankfurt Book Fair:
A Hybrid Forum on its Origins, Rationale and Objectives
Join us on June 13, 2025, 3:00 pm (PST), for a necessary conversation on literature, political action, and solidarity. The event will also be livestreamed via the Likhaan: UP Institute of Creative Writing page.
Our Speakers:
Hebh Jamal, Palestinian-American journalist based in Germany
Khalil Pierre, Palestine Library
Róisín Davis, Publishers for Palestine
Faye Cura, Gantala Press (Philippine Affiliate of Publishers for Palestine)
Neferti Xina M. Tadiar, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University
Adam David , Better Living Through Xeroxography (BLTX)
Moderator:
Rex Sandro Nepomuceno
03/06/2025
Thank you, Nash Tysmans & friends in Brussels for the space to share on Gantala’s publishing work in the Philippines! Land to the Tillers! Down with Imperialism! Free Palestine!
02/06/2025
Reposting because this suddenly disappeared from Instagram
"Frankfurt Book Fair boycotters are right to boycott the Frankfurt Book Fair. The fair is not “the world capital of ideas” that just happens to accommodate Zionists by chance; its programming and actions have demonstrated that it is, in fact, a platform for propagating Zionism, deodorizing genocide, and normalizing the US-backed colonization of Palestine by Israel. Moreover, the Frankfurt Book Fair boycott aligns with the Boycott-Divest-Sanction movement, itself prompted and shaped by the demands of Palestinians for solidarity themselves."
Frankfurt Book Fair boycotters are right to boycott the Frankfurt Book Fair. The fair is not “the world capital of ideas” that just happens to accommodate Zionists by chance; its programming and actions have demonstrated that it is, in fact, a platform for propagating Zionism, deodorizing genoci...
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Gantala Press is an independent, all-women, feminist collective that seeks to enrich and promote Philippine women's writing by publishing works for, of, and by women. Since its establishment in 2015, it has published varied materials such as anthologies, komix, a recipe book, zines, etc. that discuss the status of women in different patriarchal contexts. We also collaborate closely with women from other marginalized sectors, such as peasants.
Feminism is a critical analysis of the socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-cultural aspects of a context / environment to understand how they shape the concept of gender, especially of women. We believe that the fight to destroy oppressive class relations, which is the root of all oppression, is intertwined with the fight to destroy patriarchy. You cannot have one without the other. It is essential to point out that feminism does not and must not detach itself from its economic and political roots: that upholding feminism must also mean upholding better living and working conditions not only for the women and their family but for the nation entirely.
That it is "anti-male," or "extreme," or "exclusionary;" that it is rabid and hysterical. Some so-called nationalists also maintain that the struggle for gender equality is not a priority and must take the back seat, and that all efforts should go towards class struggle; that feminism must wait until after class liberation. Some people also think that feminism is nothing but a western, bourgeois construct and that Filipinos have no use for it. We have also heard of Filipina feminists who dread to be thought of as "anti-Duterte" and who think that feminism should accommodate anyone, whatever her political beliefs are. We think that, especially in these times, a feminist cannot help but be anti-Duterte. We really find it hard to imagine a pro-Duterte feminist. A feminist is against oppression, first and foremost, and Duterte is the embodiment of the kind of oppression that Filipinas have always been trying to overcome. We have heard liberal feminists call feminism a "fun" thing to do, which is very silly. All over the world, throughout history, feminists have been castigated, harassed, or killed for their beliefs and actions. Actually, women in general are still being castigated, harassed, or killed for simply being women. The president constantly puts down women and tries to pass this off as just “having fun.” We cannot afford to "have fun," or in this case at least, to use the language of the oppressor in fighting oppression.
By publishing feminist, class-conscious, progressive materials; organizing events where women are central; and attending rallies. One of our founders is actively working with peasant women, and this deeply informs her literary works, whether poetry or zines. We also try to join as many conversations as possible about feminism in the Philippines, for example by delivering lectures and workshops in schools, and by answering thesis questions like these.
Our main accomplishments are really the books we have produced. We are very proud of each of them. Our first book is an anthology of women's writings which we think includes a good representation not of "women's writings" per se, but of women's experiences in the country (and even abroad). That book includes poems, essays, and stories about le****ns, mothers, biracials, daughters, workers, political prisoners, Muslims, lumad, women in the Cordillera region, artists, writers, and others, written in various Philippine languages. Our second publication is a collection of essays by women on the Marawi siege, followed by a Mranao cookbook which, although written by a man, is a good documentation of a woman-shaped culture that is severely threatened by militarization. We're publishing a second volume on the siege, which will include essays and poems written mostly by women from Marawi / Mindanao. The Marawi project was done in the context of an entire information and fundraising campaign which also opened much-needed conversations about women and war, and connected us to a lot of people who eventually became partners and collaborators. We have just published an anthology of le***an komix created by q***r women, one of the first of its kind in the country. Part of the proceeds of all our books go to various causes: for IDPs, peasant women and children, and student organizations, for example.
More publications, especially those that document women’s lives and histories, and a physical space where women can gather and have meaningful feminist conversations and be creative and productive.
Class oppression and class inequality.
Our women have always been strong, powerful, and revolutionary; many Filipinas in history prove that. However, the so-called gender equality does not manifest itself in everyday life. Our women still suffer from sexual harassment and r**e, domestic abuse and violence, and mockery or denigration by everything and everyone from the president to the media to our fellow women. We have had two woman presidents and a number of women in government but they turned out to be loyal to their class, not to their sisters. Some of Duterte's most rabid defenders are women who insult or blame his victims! Likewise, a great majority of Filipinos still live in poverty. If you're a woman farmer, for example, your suffering is twice your husband's because, as head of the family, it is only the husband who gets paid (almost next to nothing) for farm work even if his wife or children has labored along with him. And after a day's work in the farm, the wife has to take care of the children and other household chores simply because she is expected to. So, as long as many women still live in abject poverty like this, there is no true gender equality.
Feminism is necessary as long as class struggle is necessary. Though the Philippines might appear gender equal on the surface, there will always be women exploitation and abuse unless we call for a national system overhaul. Because Gantala Press envisions not only a gender equal community but a community free from all forms of exploitation, we continue with our publication endeavors that take strength from progressive roots.
