Gina Consing McAdam

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - It's the Fully BookedMid-Year Sale, which is a happy and exciting time to snag all those books you've been dreaming of. But suddenly, in the middle of the bookshop, faced with endless rows of shelves and a growing number of customers, intense feelings of panic and overwhelm bubble up inside. With so many great reads, deciding which ones should make it to the book haul can be tricky.

Until I went abroad for graduate school in the mid-1980s, summer vacations meant decamping en masse with my siblings and fellow Manila-based first cousins in Negros Occidental. There, for almost two months of the year, we would meld into our larger Visayan clan: a joyful assortment of more cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents and extended family based in and around Bacolod, Silay, and Talisay. All of us trace our ancestral roots back to Iloilo.