Bending without Breaking: Thirteen Women’s Stories of Migration and Resilience earned the Best Book title at the MAM Awards in 2019. Edited by Monette Bichsel, Lenny Kaye Bugayong, and Lily C. Fen, it is a Swiss-Filipino collection of women’s stories of journeying from Asia to Europe.
The Migration Advocacy and Media Awards (MAM Awards) came into being in 2011, a brainchild of the Commission of Filipinos Overseas. The Awards salute members of the media who build awareness about Filipino migration across the globe.
To receive the award in Manila, contributing writers Anny Misa-Hefti (also the book’s project manager), Monette Bichsel (also editor), Esther Windler, Catalina Weber, and Lilian Chu (who represented editor, L.C. Fen) joined the festivities at the Diamond Hotel.
Onstage, Misa-Hefti thanked the MAM Awarding committee for honoring Bending without Breaking. She also acknowledged the CFO for paying tribute to media work that advocates migration. “We show how we migrants working in foreign countries make the world a better place in which to live. On behalf of the editors and writers of Bending without Breaking, I accept this award. In this book, we illustrate how migrants are not only survivors, they are winners.”
Taking two years to build, these women’s stories can be accessed through Zentralbibliothek in Zurich, as well as two libraries at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. Its first 700 copies were quickly sold out. A Philippine release may soon be available and orders placed through catalina_weber@yahoo.com.