Filipina-owned bookstore Bel Canto Books and the Long Beach Public Library will hold an event recognizing Filipino authors on Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library.
“The Filipino community is very vibrant in Long Beach,” said Jhoanna Belfer, owner of Bel Canto Books. “We’re one of the largest immigrant communities in the city and yet we often are kind of overlooked, or just not as visible.”
The first-ever Liwanag Lit Fest will feature 11 adult and young adult authors as well as seven children’s authors, all of Filipino descent.
According to 2015 US Census Data, in Long Beach there are 21,373 people who identify as Filipino only.
In 2019 over 80% of people who worked as writers or authors in the U.S. were white, according to Data USA by the MIT Media Lab.
“This is a fantastic way to be able to showcase the strength of this community and its creativity, and to really show younger people, children, that reading and having a creative life are possible,” Belfer said. “[…] It’s important to showcase that people who look like us can be successful.”
Among the children’s authors attending the Liwanag Lit Fest is Long Beach’s own Jennifer Estacio, writer of “Buko,” which teaches children about the different uses for the Filipino coconut. “Buko” comes with reusable stickers and an erasable marker used for activities inside the book.
“I’m passionate about food and teaching my kids more about their Filipino culture. As a mom, I want to enrich my kids through different types of activities so they can get hands-on experience and be able to explore and be creative,” Estacio wrote on Instagram. “I collect many kids books […] but I have found that there aren’t many Filipino children’s books that are easy to follow and [they’re] sometimes hard to read and the Tagalog is hard to translate. So I wanted to change that and give other FilAm (Filipino American) families access to this.”
Estacio will also be running the kid’s lit corner at the festival, organizing arts and craft activities for children who attend the event. She did the same for Bel Canto and the library’s Festival of Asian American + Pacific Islander (AAPI) Books in May.
“The library has been so fantastic and so generous with helping us,” Belfer said in regards to the library partnering with Bel Canto Books.
The festival will begin with a demonstration of Indigenous Filipino martial arts by the Torrance-based school Pamana Kali, and end with a musical performance by Filipino band Rocksteady Rondalla.
Book lovers will also be able to shop from a variety of Filipino-owned small businesses in between meeting authors and flipping through books.
“We really wanted to highlight the strength and diversity of all the different authors and makers and entrepreneurs that are in Long Beach as well as the Greater California area,” Belfer said.
