Abakada

‘Every few years, since legal adulthood, I’d moved cities or countries. I wondered if this was an adaptive response to colonialism and diaspora, encoded in my miscegenated, globally interwoven DNA. Or maybe I had cultural ADHD. Or maybe, you know, commitment issues.’

Lara Day remembers the exact moment she stopped speaking Tagalog, her Filipino mother tongue, because her English father couldn’t understand her. From this moment of loss, Abakada takes a spiralling journey across decades and continents, as Lara grows up in colonial Hong Kong to endure chronic fatigue in the UK, a coup in Thailand, a pandemic in Australia – and terrible boyfriends in more than one country.

Told alphabetically, Abakada sifts through the pieces of life with humour and insight, weaving together themes of family, voice and lineage, to find a language all of its own.

Lara Day is a reformed journalist and coach, and has written for publications across the globe. Born and raised in Hong Kong to a Filipina mother and an English father, Lara now lives on Kaurna Country in the Adelaide Hills with her husband, two children and two Hong Kong street cats. She really, really loves crying.

If you enjoyed Abakada, we suggest:

• Keeping it in the alphabet with Alphabetical Diaries‍ by Sheila Heti

• Immersing yourself in other meditations on language and third-culture kids, like A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez or Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong

• Exploring Filipino political culture with Yñiga by Glenn Diaz

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