I’m so thrilled to welcome Cinelle Barnes to the Debutante Ball this week! Cinelle Barnes is an essayist, memoirist, and educator from Manila, Philippines, a recipient of fellowships and scholarships from Kundiman and Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA), and is the writer-in-residence at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. She received an MFA from Converse College.
Her 
work has appeared in Catapult, Buzzfeed, Literary Hub, Hyphen, The Margins, and TAYO, among others. Her debut memoir, MONSOON MANSION (May 2018, Little A), received an American Library Association Booklist Starred Review, and she is currently at work on the essay collection, MALAYA: IN PURSUIT OF FREEDOM (October 2019, Little A).
Cinelle and I are both alumnae of VONA, and I am so delighted to be able to host her on the Debutante Ball! You can contact her through Instagram: @cinellebarnesbooks and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CinelleBarnesBooks/and her website: cinellebarnes.com
Monsoon Mansion: Cinelle Barnes was barely three years old when her family moved into Mansion Royale, a stately ten-bedroom home in the Philippines. Filled with her mother’s opulent social aspirations and the gloriously excessive evidence of her father’s self-made success, it was a girl’s storybook playland. But when a monsoon hits, her father leaves, and her mother’s terrible lover takes the reins, Cinelle’s fantastical childhood turns toward tyranny she could never have imagined. Formerly a home worthy of magazines and lavish parties, Mansion Royale becomes a dangerous shell of the splendid palace it had once been.In this remarkable ode to survival, Cinelle creates something magical out of her truth—underscored by her complicated relationship with her mother. Through a tangle of tragedy and betrayal emerges a revelatory journey of perseverance and strength, of grit and beauty, and of coming to terms with the price of family—and what it takes to grow up.
Cinelle is giving away a signed copy of MONSOON MANSION to one reader who shares this interview on FB or Twitter (details at the end of the post and button below to share)! Thank you so much for being here, Cinelle!
https://t.co/HL8KZ37b5f RT and follow for a chance to win a copy of #MonsoonMansion @DebutanteBall @devislaskar @estefsays @LayneFargo @MFournierWatson @KA_Doore #WritingCommunity #memoir
— The Debutante Ball (@DebutanteBall) November 24, 2018
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Devi: Talk about one book that made an impact on you:
into journalism school. I signed up for literary journalism courses because of THE WHITE ALBUM and SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM. As a young mother isolated from literary circles and family, coming across THE GLASS CASTLE by Jeanette Walls at the book and entertainment aisle at Target nudged me toward writing my own memoir–memories of a childhood with crazy intelligent yet negligent and frivolous parents, and a coming-of-age set against the backdrop of extreme poverty and danger. Halfway through writing MONSOON MANSION, I read Aimee Suzara’s poetry book, SOUVENIR, and it taught me how to look at Philippine culture at large and at how our politics affected my family’s journey through and out of the Philippines.
I wrote about it in depth for Buzzfeed.
their childhood or their parents or the village they grew up in. I had a woman told me once that she thought she was crazy, that maybe she had made up the anomalous images of childhood she had in her mind. But she said that reading MONSOON MANSION affirmed in her that life in many parts of Southeast Asia are, indeed, a setting for a kind of real-life film-noir-meets-magical-realism. She described our parallel childhoods as “hibiscus flowers one day, gunshots the next.” I’m honored to be able to tell these stories that many people are likely dying to tell, stories that have been imprisoned in them or have held them in some kind of mental prison. What an honor, really, to be able to share in this kind of freedom with someone, simply because I’ve decided to write my truth.
Told with a lyrical, almost-dreamlike voice as intoxicating as the moonflowers and orchids that inhabit this world, Monsoon Mansion is a harrowing yet triumphant coming-of-age memoir exploring the dark, troubled waters of a family’s rise and fall from grace in the Philippines. It would take a young warrior to survive it.
BOOKLIST, STARRED REVIEW
“Barnes’ memoir chronicles her years spent growing up in a mansion in Manila. Her mother, a doctor, came from a well-known upper-class family, and her father was an entrepreneur who made his money sending Filipino workers to Saudi Arabia. Then the monsoon comes. Between water damage to the mansion and her father’s crusade to bring all his Filipino workers back during the Gulf War, her parents’ marriage rapidly deteriorates. When Barnes’ father leaves, he’s replaced by a walking nightmare; her mother’s new boyfriend sells deeds to nonexistent property and hosts cock fights at night, filling the mansion with bird feces, drunken men, and women rented by the hour. Barnes soon struggles to survive the madness while holding tightly to the hope that someday she will escape this life. Reminiscent of both Jeanette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle (2005), and Sandra Cisneros’ seminal novel, The House on Mango Street (1984), this is a story of a tragic childhood told in a remarkably uplifting voice. Barnes imbues scenes from her interrupted childhood with an artistic touch that reads like literary fiction. Luminescent and shattering, Barnes’ first book is a triumph: a conquering of the past through the power of the written word.”
Thanks for the chance!