Because she grew up in the city, trailblazer Geena Rocero feels like she’s always trying to get back to her roots in a pre-colonial Philippines. Her desire to do so, she says, came to fruition in a tanning salon in San Francisco — you’ll have to read her book to hear the rest of that story. But before 200 years of colonization from Spain, America, and Japan in World War II, the Philippines were “an animus culture,” Geena says. “Everything revolved around the seasons, the animals, the flowers, the harvest.”
In her pageant days, she was anointed with the insult-turned-nickname-turned-memoir-title, “Horse Barbie,” for her tumbling hair and long legs. Now, she explores her ancestral “aminus” in her current work as a storyteller, uncovering parts of her colonial “brainwashing” that denied…
