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Islands of Forgotten Daughters
  • Published: 24 November 2026
  • ISBN: 9781784745622
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $36.99

Islands of Forgotten Daughters

Meeting the Matriarchs of Filipino Myth

  • Carla Montemayor
Formats & editions
Hardback
24 Nov 2026
EBook
30 July 2026
Audiobook
30 July 2026
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A gorgeous feat of storytelling that fuses myth and memoir to retell the jaw-dropping matriarchal myths of the Philippines to a general readership for the first time; a genuinely new contribution to the highly popular retellings market

Meet the matriarchs of Filipino myth – defiant goddesses, powerful witches, terrifying shapeshifters – and their real-life counterparts, as Carla Montemayor journeys to discover her own ancestry and the stories of her people.

When Carla Montemayor discovers that her great-great grandmother was a binukot – a girl sequestered from her family and community, trained to memorise and sing the myths of her people – this sets her on her own epic journey to uncover her ancestry. Why was she raised on European fairytales and Greek myths when the stories of her own people are so rich? And why did no one in her family speak of their illustrious binukot foremother anymore?

Travelling to the Philippines to trace the lives of her female relatives, Carla discovers that, officially, her people have no history. Like many indigenous groups, their stories have been erased by colonists. It becomes her work to reconstruct and reimagine them.

Weaving together the tales of her family members, who survived war, oppression, violence, displacement and more, with the myths of her people, Carla finds similarities: women with courage, resourcefulness and ambition, who fight and love with equal ferocity.

Islands of Forgotten Daughters celebrates these women and tells their tales, offering a fresh perspective on Filipino history and culture. It is a rallying cry for the power of storytelling: to resist erasure, preserve identity and resonate for generations to come.
  • Published: 24 November 2026
  • ISBN: 9781784745622
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $36.99

Praise for Islands of Forgotten Daughters

Skilfully crafted and beguilingly immersive, Islands of Forgotten Daughters pays tribute to the women and the parables that keep our histories alive in the face of repeated erasures by imperial and patriarchal structures

SANTANU BHATTACHARYA, author of Deviants

Carla Montemayor journeys deep into her family's secret story that demands remembering. Her voice is beautiful, powerful and unforgettable

CANDY GOURLAY, author of Wild Song

Like the delicate pina cloth her foremothers expertly wove, Carla intertwines her own modern story with myth, history and family archive. A beautiful tale of diaspora, love and loss. Reading it felt like a trip to the lands so vividly brought to life by the author

MIRIAM GOLD, author of Elena: A Handmade Life

Lush, magnetic, elegiac and absorbing, Islands of Forgotten Daughters tells the stories of women missing from traditional archives but alive in the pens of brilliant storytellers. Carla Montemayor is a writer of tremendous talent

MEGHA MOHAN, author of Herlands

I loved Carla Montemayor’s fearless uncovering of this powerful family story... Having inherited the family’s storytelling skill, Carla Montemayor’s validation of the central matriarchal role, played throughout succeeding generations of a fading heritage, is a gift not only to those who preceded her but to every reader of this beautiful book

JULIET NICOLSON, author of Frostquake

In Islands of Forgotten Daughters, Carla Montemayor unearths the hidden history of the binukot, transforming a personal search for ancestors into a powerful reclamation of Filipino identity. An important and tender act of recovery

ROMALYN ANTE, author of The Left-Behind Child

I so enjoyed Islands of Forgotten Daughters. It is utterly enthralling -- as vivid and moving in its tracing of a family’s past as it is in its retelling of traditional tales. Montemayer entwines time, place, memory, and myth to enchanting effect, and it left me longing to know the women of my own family all the more

JESSICA J. LEE, author of Two Trees Make A Forest