Our Debut Author Spotlite features debut books of all genres by authors living in Canada. Our goal is to spotlight their stories and help Canadian and Indigenous authors connect with readers from around the world.
After working in multiple Ontario school boards as a settlement worker, public speaker, and researcher, Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio founded Filipino Talks— a program that builds bridges between educators and Filipino families.
She completed writing programs at the Humber School for Writers and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Her work has been published in literary journals, magazines and anthologies.
As a Toronto-based community worker, youth mentor, Little Manila tour guide, and author, Jennilee spends a lot of time thinking about the Filipino community– and celebrating them, too.
Visit the author’s website to learn more.
From the publisher: When five-year-old Monolith is taken from the Philippines to live with his mother in Canada, he immediately lashes out. Unable or unwilling to speak, he attacks her and destroys his new home.
Everyone wants to know why—and everyone has a theory. But unlike the solid certainty his name suggests, the answer isn’t so simple.
From a cliffside town in the Tagaytay highlands of the Philippines, to the Filipino communities in the desert of Osoyoos, the Arctic world of Iqaluit, the suburbs of southern Ontario, Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, Montréal’s Côte-des-Neiges, and Toronto’s Little Manila, Austria-Bonifacio takes readers into the kaleidoscope of the Filipino diaspora, uncovering the displacement, estrangement, resilience and healing that happen behind closed doors.
As each chapter unfolds, truths are revealed in humorous, joyful, devastating and surprising ways: through an incisive caregiver’s instruction manual, a custody battle over texts and e-mails, a disarmingly direct self-help guide, a series of desperate résumés, a kundiman songbook, and more.
Monolith appears again and again, as a misbehaving boy in a store, the subject of town gossip, a face in a fundraising campaign, a client in questionable care, a dying man’s beacon of hope—and an unlikely new friend.
Compellingly readable, incisive and resonant, Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio’s stunning debut opens a window into the homes and hearts of the Filipino-Canadian community.
Raves
Kim Echlin, author
“A good parent is a good provider, and a good provider is one who leaves. But when a child is abandoned over and over again, his screams are ‘…the only sound the heart wants to make.’ This is the truth Austria-Bonifacio tells in language that is alive, contemporary, vivid. Read this book. You will see the world with fresh compassion.”
Quill & Quire
“A poignant exploration of cultural loss. Reuniting With Strangers is an absorbing portrait of not only multiple generations of the Filipino-Canadian community, but of the simultaneity of grief and joy when building a life in a new country.”
Karen Connelly, author
“People everywhere, and in Canada, too, have benefited from the love, labour and often blatant exploitation of Filipino women (and men) working abroad, separated from their own beloved families. This book is a double testament—to the heartbreaking human cost of such a system and to the tenacity, humour and strength of the people who survive it.”
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