There is a phrase that many Filipino women know by heart, even if they have never said it out loud: "It's not that big of a deal." It shows up after a bad experience at work, after a comment from a relative that stings more than it should, after something happens that leaves a mark but gets brushed off in the next breath. It is a reflex, a kind of armor. And according to editors Katya Lichauco and Yanna Garcia, that reflex is exactly what needed to be challenged.
Their anthology, Big Deal: An Anthology of Filipino Women's Stories and Art (Volume I), takes that throwaway phrase and turns it on its head. The collection gathers essays, poems, short fiction, photography, and visual art from Filipino women, each piece offering a window into experiences that are too often minimized, silenced, or filed away under "things we don't talk about." The result is a book that feels both deeply personal and startlingly universal.
A Culture of Silence, Broken Open
The Philippines is known for warmth, hospitality, and tight-knit communities. But as the editors point out in their preface, these same values can create a powerful pressure to keep quiet. Taboo topics like sexual assault, mental health, contraception, and the expectations placed on women within the family often go unspoken, not because they do not matter, but because speaking up carries risk. The risk of shame, of being labeled arte (attention-seeking), of being told you are making a scene.
Big Deal pushes back against that silence. The anthology does not shout. It does not lecture. Instead, it simply makes room. It opens a door and says: here, sit down, and say what you need to say.
What makes this collection stand out is the sheer variety of ways these stories are told. There are analytical essays that dissect systemic problems with precision. There are poems that ache with restraint. There are pieces of visual art that manage to say in a single image what paragraphs struggle to articulate. And there is fiction that unsettles you in the best possible way, the kind that stays under your skin for days.
Voices That Refuse to Be Small
One of the anthology's most striking essays comes from Mikaela Roxas Romulo, who writes about growing up as a female athlete in the Philippines. Her piece, structured around a repeated refrain of "I grew up playing sports, BUT," methodically catalogs the barriers that Filipina athletes face: the lack of women's sports equipment, the disbanding of school teams deemed "too manly," the beauty standards that punish dark skin from training outdoors, and a media landscape that values a female athlete's looks over her skill. It is a piece that builds momentum with each section, stacking frustration upon frustration until you realize the full weight of what has been normalized.
Then there is the essay from the anonymous contributor known only as B, who writes about the cost of being the eldest daughter in a Filipino household. "The Cost of Caring" traces how a lifetime of being maalaga (caring, nurturing) became so deeply woven into her identity that it left her vulnerable to emotional abuse in her first serious relationship. The essay is unflinching and honest, moving from the cultural expectations placed on eldest daughters to the devastating reality of having that instinct to care exploited by someone she trusted. It is the kind of essay that will resonate far beyond a Filipino audience, because the pressure to be the one who holds everything together is something women everywhere understand.
Keziah Acharon's "The Woman's Body Is Not Her Own" uses poetic prose to unravel the many ways women's bodies are treated as public property, particularly when it comes to motherhood. The piece captures the absurdity and the cruelty of a society that labels a woman selfish for not wanting children, broken for being unable to have them, and suspect for daring to prioritize anything else. Acharon weaves in Tagalog phrases from mothers and grandmothers, grounding the piece in the specific texture of Filipino family life while making a point that transcends borders.
The Art Between the Words
Big Deal is not only a literary anthology. The visual art woven throughout the collection adds texture and emotional depth that words alone cannot always reach. Kate Jayme's digital piece "Becoming Her" celebrates the diversity of modern women and the bonds that connect them across race, age, and experience. Celline Mercado's mixed-media work "Stitch, Flesh" reclaims embroidery, a craft historically tied to women's domesticity, as a tool for introspection and empowerment. Gianne Encarnacion's "Game of Life" visualizes the mental calculations women make every time they step out their front door: what to wear, which routes to avoid, who to text their location to.
These artworks are not decorative. They carry the same weight as the written pieces, and in many cases, they say what the essays cannot. They sit alongside the text as equals, not illustrations.
Fiction That Cuts Close
Among the anthology's most memorable entries is Maia Puyat's "I Wrote You a Letter," a short story that blends magical realism with a harrowing portrayal of intimate partner violence. The story follows a woman who is labeled an aswang, a creature from Filipino folklore, after she refuses a marriage proposal. What begins as a love story curdles into something terrifying as the label sticks, her community turns against her, and the violence escalates to its awful conclusion. The story is beautifully constructed, using the aswang mythology as a metaphor for how women who defy expectations are demonized and cast out.
Sophia Bonoan's "Intruder" takes a quieter but equally unsettling approach. It follows Ana, a young woman moving into her first apartment, and the slow creep of discomfort she feels around her landlord. Nothing overtly terrible happens, and that is precisely the point. The story captures the specific dread that many women know: the gut feeling that something is wrong, paired with the chorus of voices telling her she is overreacting. Bonoan captures how easily women's instincts are dismissed, and how that dismissal itself becomes a kind of danger.
Why This Book Matters Now
Senator Risa Hontiveros, who wrote the foreword, frames Big Deal as an act of preservation. Recording women's stories, she argues, is a way of remembering, and remembering is a form of resistance. In a country where political leaders have openly embodied sexism and misogyny, where women's pain is routinely turned into propaganda or dismissed as fabrication, the simple act of documenting the truth carries real power.
But you do not need to be Filipino to feel the pull of this anthology. The experiences within its pages, the pressure to be smaller, the fear of walking alone at night, the exhaustion of proving yourself in spaces that were not designed for you, will be familiar to women everywhere. What makes Big Deal special is the specificity of its voice. These stories are rooted in Philippine culture, in the weight of utang na loob (a debt of gratitude to one's parents), in the expectations of Catholic schooling, in the particular heat of a tropical country where girls are told to cover up. That specificity is what makes the book feel alive rather than abstract.
The anthology closes with a call to action, gentle but firm: "Be you. Be free. Be Filipina." And tucked within that closing is an invitation to all readers. These stories exist because someone was brave enough to tell them. The least we can do is listen.