Avril Shakira Villar

Avril Shakira Villar is a writer from the Philippines. She is the author of 'I Live Because I Almost Died' and an alumna of WriteGirl LA.

'Wherever the Bomb Falls'

Filipina writer Avril Shakira Villar traces a line from James Baldwin's statement on the Vietnam War—'every bombed village is my hometown'—to the Tagalog word 'damay,' which 'gestures toward ... the willingness to be present in someone else's pain rather than at a comfortable remove from it.'

By Avril Shakira Villar

/ 28 May 2026