From Cinelle Barnes, author of the memoir Monsoon Mansion , comes a moving and reflective essay collection about finding freedom in America. Out of a harrowing childhood in the Philippines, Cinelle Barnes emerged triumphant. But as an undocumented teenager living in New York, her journey of self-discovery was just beginning. Because she couldn’t get a driver’s license or file taxes, Cinelle worked as a cleaning lady and a nanny and took other odd jobs―and learned to look over her shoulder, hoping she wouldn’t get caught. When she falls in love and marries a white man from the South, Cinelle finds herself trying to adjust to the thorny underbelly of “southern hospitality” while dealing with being a new mother, an immigrant affected by PTSD, and a woman with a brown body in a profoundly white world. From her immigration to the United States, to navigating a broken legal system, to balancing assimilation and a sense of self, Cinelle comes to rely on her resilience and her faith in the human spirit to survive and come of age all over again. Lyrical, emotionally driven, and told through stories both lived and overheard, Cinelle’s intensely personal, yet universal, exploration of race, class, and identity redefines what it means to be a woman―and an American―in a divided country. “A collection of essays extends and expands on the themes introduced in the author’s highly regarded memoir, Monsoon Mansion (2018). Barnes’s first book introduced a gifted writer with a compelling story about her life in the Philippines…A sturdy transitional volume that finds Barnes reflecting on her first and anticipating her next.” ― Kirkus Reviews “Barnes’s stirring follow-up to her memoir, Monsoon Mansion …continues her life story by sharing her life in America while undocumented…Barnes’s story is unforgettable, and highly relevant to 2019 America.” ― Publishers Weekly “ Malaya , is a book on the uncompromising, unrelenting pursuit of a better life―to be free of fear and worries. These desires are universal. We are all immigrants in constant quest for freedom. Cinelle Barnes, Filipino American author, inspires with her endurance. But, like all stories, freedom is merely the beginning. For Barnes, life continues. This time, Barnes is ready. Her freedom empowers her.” ― Positively Filipino “ Malaya is Barnes’s literary path forward, and for the reader, it is literary delight. The essays reflect interwoven threads but each sings with a unique, and effective, style―there’s a playfulness of form and chronology that keeps the reader engaged. We are with Barnes when she’s scrubbing toilets and working in a laundromat; when she’s nannying for a Wall Street family; when she’s dodging INS at a hipster cafe in Harlem; when she’s navigating white privilege and racism with her in-laws in the Upstate. And in each setting, each essay, through each beautifully crafted line and deftly chosen image, we not only begin to understand her experience better, but our own.” ― Charleston City Paper “Cinelle Barnes considers how the chaos and discipline of dance kept the disparate parts of her being stitched together.” ― Longreads “The most effective pieces of Barnes’s collection render the ‘personal as political’ via sharp details and wide lens, such as the essay, ‘Genealogy,’ which opens with the family history (of white settlers and sons and daughters of the Confederacy) of Barnes’s husband and develops into Barnes’s interrogation of that history via her own personal history of first meeting, eventually marrying into, and forever changing this family. ‘Genealogy’ is demonstrative of the collection’s finest qualities and the power of the personal essay to refract the intersections of complex histories, our present moments, and our agency (or lack thereof) therein…” ― International Examiner “Cinelle Barnes steps into the full power of her voice with Malaya . In this collection of deftly woven and deeply resonant essays, Barnes intertwines past and present as she reflects on the daily realities of those who are undocumented, the healing powers of dance and memoir, and the fears and joys of raising a brown daughter in a country in denial about the depths of its own racism. Told in sharp, luminous prose, Malaya reminds us of how vital this (re)birthing process we call writing truly is. With compassion and conviction, Barnes bears witness to stories that so often go untold―and asserts the possibility of a world where those we love have the freedom to tell their own.” ―Zeyn Joukhadar, author of The Map of Salt and Stars “In Malaya , Cinelle Barnes asks the essential question: How do we free ourselves? Her essays explore what it means to live authentically as a woman, a person of color, an immigrant, a human being, not in the hands or eyes of others but in her own heart. Barnes tells her story with clarity and honesty and, in doing so, clears a path for the rest of us to follow.” ―Victoria Loustalot, author of Future Perfect: A Ske