Yanan Melo (he/him) is a writer, poet, and independent musician from the city of Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. He is currently pursuing a BA in Theology from Moody Bible Institute with an emphasis on postcolonial theology and the Filipino context. Follow him on Twitter: @yananmelo

The White Lady
Ghost Stories and the Power of Colonial Storytelling
By Yanan Melo

Spanish and American colonizers brought whiteness upon our lands. Today, whiteness lingers as a ghost, and many Filipinos struggle to see beyond it, cursed with an inferiority complex that strives for the white ideal — an ideal that can never truly be achieved.

Coming Home to the River
On Baptism, Displacement, and the Filipina/o Migrant Experience
By Yanan Melo

Today, we are living in the postcolonial moment when sisters and brothers in the Majority World are rediscovering what it means to be baptized into Christ’s body. The lands of the earth are now crying out to God for healing after centuries of colonialism, and God has given the church a new possibility to garden their lands well and cultivate indigenous cultures in a way that worships God liturgically and eschatologically through tribe and tongue.