Maria Evelina Galang is an American novelist, short story writer, editor, essayist, educator, and activist of Filipina descent.
Background
Galang, M. Evelina was born on April 20, 1961 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States. Maria Evelina Galang, the eldest of six children, was the first American-born member of her family. Her father Miguel T. Galang and mother Gloria Lopez-Tan Galang.
When Galang was one year old, the family immigrated permanently to the United States to avoid the coming Marcos dictatorship. The family lived in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Baltimore, Saskatchewan, and Peoria before settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when Galang was ten.
Education
Maria attended the University of Wisconsin Madison and received her Bachelor of Arts in 1983. In 1989-90 she attended the State University of New York Brockport, the Brockford Writers' Forum. In 1994, she received a Master of Arts degree in Colorado.
Career
Galang started her career as a member of the ensemble at University Theatre for Children and Young People in 1982, she has held this position till 1986. During the years 1982-1986 also she was a creator and developer at WMTV Channel 15.
Her Wild American Self, written as Galang's MFA thesis, was published to acclaim in 1996.
In 2003 Galang edited Screaming Monkeys: A Critique of Asian American Images, an anthology of essays, poetry, illustrations, advertising, and pictures.
One Tribe, Galang’s first novel, won the AWP Series for the Novel Award in 2004, while still in manuscript. Set in the Filipino-American community of Norfolk, Va., it was published by New Issues Press in 2006.
Galang’s second novel, Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery (2013), marketed to Young Adult readers, was nominated for the 2014 Teen Choice Award, named a Young People Against the World book recommendation by the Northwest Asian Weekly, and it was selected for the American Library Association’s Amelia Bloomer Project Recommended Feminist Literature List `from Birth through 18.
She also serves on the VONA board of directors.
Views
Galang is a leading advocate of Pinayism, a form of feminism rooted in the Filipina-American experience.
Since 1998, Galang has been researching the lives of the women of LILA Pilipina, a group surviving Filipina “comfort women,” forced into sex camps by the Japanese army, who came forward to make their stories public.
Galang also supports the development of emerging minority writers. She teaches in the two-week summer workshop of Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA), a multi-genre workshop taught by established writers of color such as co-founders Junot Diaz and Elmaz Abinader, as well Chris Abani, Stacyann Chin, and others.