ABOUT THE BOOK

The Brute Choir confronts the trauma of Duterte’s drug war and its lingering echoes. At its heart is a haunting metaphor: a choir symbolizing the digital mob that enabled populist power, normalized violence, and blurred the boundaries between truth and propaganda. This “brute choir” becomes a chorus of complicity—voices harmonizing terror into reason.
Yet amid the darkness, the collection insists on tenderness. It transforms grief into reclamation, exploring joy, desire, and the body as sites of resistance. Erotic and queer lives emerge as defiant acts of survival, where intimacy becomes protest and pleasure, a form of healing.
Through dreamscapes, drag, and quiet domestic scenes, The Brute Choir finds light in laughter and love that persist despite brutality. Written in equal parts fury and lyric grace, it becomes a counter-document to barbarism—an insistence that after the violence fades, we must still sing of life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Balili is the author of Kaiju. He teaches literature & creative writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman.