The San Mateo County Library and the Filipino American Association of Foster City team up with the Literacy Initiatives International Foundation to present Inner Voices: Adversity to Diversity, an event that explores cultural, racial, and generational issues. This event will feature world-renowned authors Tess Uriza Holthe, Pati Navalta Poblete, and Janet Stickmon.

Tess Uriza Holthe is the author and excellent storyteller of When Elephants Dance. This novel features on-the-edge life experiences exchanged by neighbors while being concealed in a cellar to escape the heinous torture from the Japanese officials during World War II in the Philippines. When Elephants Dance has won a 2007 National and SF Chronicle’s #1 Bestseller. Holthe’s second book, The Five Forty-Five to Cannes, tells a story that focuses on an exchange of destiny and coincidence in the lives behind the surface of train passengers. The Five Forty-Five to Cannes, also won prizes such as the San Francisco Chronicle and ALA Notable Book of 2007.

In Her Mother’s Image by Cecilia Gaerlan is a novel that is set in World War II in the Philippines. Consuelo and Chiquita, a mother and daughter, are stuck inside a maze of longing and hatred in a world of war. Eight-year-old Chiquita watches the war through her eyes and also witnesses an act of betrayal from her mother. This unforgivable act reappears thirty years later when Chiquita returns to her homeland to face the monster that gave her a lifelong of great pain—her very own mother.

Cecilia Gaerlan is a playwright from Berkeley, California. She has won many awards for her writing, including an Honorable Mention in the Stage Play Script Category of the Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition in 2005 for The Hand of God and in 2010 for Magnus Laurent. She is known for writing her plays about many other topics, including child prostitution, the United Nations, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.