Bamboo Girls: Stories and Poems from a Forgotten Life is a personal anthology collecting the creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry of Ian Rosales Casocot that are sprung from memories of growing up and coming of age in Dumaguete City, where he lives — which also includes the stories of his family, primarily his mother, the titular figure that begins the book. Fictionist Tim Tomlinson writes of the book: “Alongside the poems are micro-fictions, and alongside the micros, full stories. But are they fictions? Even the titles (‘Autobiography,’ ‘Enough of This is True’) seem to ask. Like the movies of English director Terence Davies, which recreate his hometown of 1950s Liverpool, these stories drift like puffy clouds in a slow, windless sky. The effect is uncanny. It’s like sitting in a favorite café with a book, this book, and watching life … outside … drift by. Despite the drifting, the erasure, and the detachment, the collection, through its author’s eye, ear, and heart, is fiercely connected. Joyce used to say that if Dublin were bombed into oblivion, it could be reconstructed brick for brick by a careful reading of Ulysses. Casocot’s project, it seems, is the same for Dumaguete. Here are its streets, its cafes, its security guards, its families. Here its lore and legend.” The book was a finalist at the 2019 National Book Awards.