Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor

Publishing under the pen name Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor, Rebecca A. Saxton received her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University in 2012. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in print and online publications since 1998. Her short story “Yellow is for Luck” appears in the anthology Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults, edited by Cecilia Brainard. Her poetry chapbook Pause Mid-Flight was released in 2010. She has been performing as a storyteller with the Bellingham Storyteller’s Guild for six years and specializes in stories based on Filipino folktales and Filipino-American history.

Artist’s Statement:

As a Filipino American writer and performance storyteller, my art is based on the impact of heritage on shaping and informing personal experience and the importance of self-expression as a method of healing. I view my writing and performing as subversive acts against invisibility and silence in a society where women of color are often viewed through an objectifying, exoticizing lens. Raised in a family focused on assimilation, I grew up sheltered from the Vietnam War and the Marcos dictatorship by a shield of language. Becoming a socially aware cultural activist has been a process of understanding the impact of the American Dream trope on my family and upbringing. As a result, I have connected with diverse ethnic groups who also value art as a method of self-expression and an act of compassion. A desire for wholeness drives my art which seeks to weave past and present, folktale with fact, subjectivity with objectivity into works which entertain and enliven others.