Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality, a collection of essays by Barbara Jane Reyes, published by Paloma Press in 2022, has been awarded the prestigious Best Book Award by the Filipino Studies Section in the Association for Asian American Studies!
In a letter dated April 4, 2025, the Book Awards Committee writes:
“Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality builds upon the strongest and most meaningful traditions and practices of Filipina/o/x American literary and cultural studies wherein there remains a fruitful tension and dialogue in the liminal space between criticism and literary and cultural production… Making deft use of the various spaces and platforms from which our political and aesthetic and dialectical imaginations emerge, Reyes expands upon a Third World Women of Color poetics seeking social, cultural, and political critique within the beauty and language of the everyday. These critical and creative essays theorize the immense possibilities of what it means to live and write the spaces in-between, the rigors of arrival, the promise of a radical Filipina/o/x diasporic literary imaginary. Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality will continue to be a deeply inspiring and inspired resource for current and future literary and cultural critics and practitioners in Filipina/o/x Diasporic Studies, Asian American Studies, Literary Studies, Poetics, and Creative Writing.”
Congratulations, Barbara Jane Reyes, and our thanks to the Association for Asian American Studies and the Book Awards Committee – Filipino Studies Section for this much-deserved award!
