The Age of Carcamonia 
and other stories

A note from the editor

Karen Berthelsen Cardenas
July 2024

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Some of these stories were written for mom’s masters thesis for the State University of Iowa. The Money-Makers was published when she returned to Manila, and  was awarded third place in the Philippines Free Press Short Story Awards in 1949. That year, Nick Joaquin won first prize for “Guardia de Honor” and Gonzalo A. Villa won second for “Death of Illusion.”

The Age of Carcamonia and Other Stories was published in print form in 1992, after consultation with my mother. And although I had significant experience in editing and publishing, it was my first production and editorial venture in book form. It was a habit-forming experience, and I will always be grateful to Ramón Sunico for first guiding me into the world of book production. 

A few years later, a second edition was published in London by my sister. The title had been changed to Emma and included illustrations and excluded the foreword I had written. 

In 2000, Mom had a stroke which changed her. Immediately after, and throughout the next couple of years, I put in a lot of resources into gathering as much of her writings as could be found. There might still be a lot I do not have because she wrote regularly – fiction, columns, and features for numerous magazines and newspapers and 

under various pen names, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and then again in the 80s from Copenhagen. 

As the years passed, she slowly declined into a world of vascular dementia, and she asked me to begin or continue production of what she could not manage herself. 

I began with The Tayabas Chronicles: The Early Years, refining and expanding what she had started. It won the National Book Award for Translation in 2002. 

While alert and generally of clear mind until she died in 2014, sadly, and ironically she had earlier begun to suffer from aphasia – the loss of language and speech, a result of subsequent mini strokes. She would grasp for words, annoyed with herself when they would not come, until finally she retreated into never speaking at all. 

Mom was born in January 1923. I made a promise that starting on her centennial year,

I would try to bring back her words.