A Drop of Sun
A Drop of Sun
Angeline Meitzler’s debut collection, A Drop of Sun, explores the twentieth century expanded adaptations and malleability of whiteness that become embodied forms of dysmorphia. While the Philippines is formally independent, the legacy of colonialism continues to inscribe white supremacist hierarchies into the Filipino identity through a protoreligious devotion to the United States and Americanism. A Drop of Sun is a lyrical collection of prose, centering on the relationship between a migrant Filipino parent and a daughter born in the US grappling with the psychological and physical complexities of a proximity to whiteness.
Praise for A Drop of Sun
“A Drop of Sun is an intriguing hybrid chapbook sure to appeal to anyone interested in mixed-race experience and the long legacy of colonization in the Philippines. Through vignettes that interweave scene and social analysis, Meitzler deftly explores connections among colonial mentality, white supremacy, internalized violence, and body dysmorphia while drawing on theorists from Frantz Fanon to Aimé Cesaire, and from EJR David to Dylan Rodriguez. Meitzler’s rendering of a loving and complex mother-daughter relationship is an especially poignant thread that binds the collection. A clever, visceral, and thought-provoking mix of milk, blood, and the Philippine sun.”
-Jen Soriano, author of Nervous and co-editor of Closer to Liberation: Pin[a/x]y Activism in Theory and Practice
"Angeline Marie Michael Meitzler’s phenomenal collection of poetry and fiction invites readers to ask complex questions about Filipinx identity. The work resists monolith representations, fostering instead a variety of entry points to call attention to topics disfavored by the mainstream.
We encounter colonized minds/bodies intrinsically linked to a larger scheme that is white proximity and its resulting web of injury that rely on unjust systems that use religion, societal body expectations, weaponized cultural values, and beyond to further compound its effects. Letters and words reconfigure an unnamed speaker’s unrelenting memories, unceremoniously cracking them open to facilitate an oppositional voice, a layered witnessing and counterclaiming, opposing everything that this upside-down world represents.
Angeline’s writing is powerful and daring, revealing a subversive truthfulness that illuminates the existence of intersectional artists who are intentional in their choices to carry out acts of resistance and rebellion."
-Irene Soriano, author of Primates from an Archipelago