In Cursed and Other Stories, readers will encounter the pain, the love, and the hope that reside in every Filipino... all these people all over the globe who are making lives easier for strangers in other countries, for all the people who wear their country with simultaneous pride and shame. Because while they might wish to leave their home to seek greener pastures for those they love, they will never be able to quit it completely. Such desperation may be recognizable to many readers, however if it isn’t, they will come away with a better understanding of it, at least vis-a-vis this archipelago that has more in common with the West than is evident on the surface.