Brazal's A Theology of Southeast Asia is a gift to the interdisciplinary studies of theology, ecology, gender, communication, politics, anthropology, and sociology. First, it is a gift, not in the Derridean sense of the cancellation of a gift (at the identification of one), but a gift to the community of theologians, both locally in the Philippines and globally. Next, and quite importantly, it is a gift to the marginalized communities whose narratives so richly inform her theologizing, for example, women, indigenous peoples, migrant workers, survivors of cyberbullying (“slut-shaming,” etc.), and those affected by the populism of President Rodrigo Duterte. Additionally, it is a methodological gift to the reader as Brazal, in demonstrating a proficient grasp of thinkers such as Stuart Hall, Marcel Mauss, and Gayatri C. Spivak, carefully applies key theoretical concepts such as “representation,” “the gift,” and “subaltern” and systematically builds a liberation-postcolonial theological ethics that moves beyond the colonizer/colonized binary and roots itself in the indigenous cultures and plural spiritualities of the Filipinas who inhabit local, regional, and global spaces. And finally, but not least of all, it is also a gift to policy-makers and grassroots, religious, and lay communities that points out ways in which these communities can further integrate their Christian praxis into everyday living by engendering solidarity with other humans, the Earth, and planetary systems.

The book is the fruition of lectures delivered at Boston College in 2017 as part of the Duffy Lectures in Global Christianity and its scholarship, in turn, facilitated by previous fellowships received by Brazal. A Theology of Southeast Asia is composed of two parts: The first covers post–Vatican II contextual methodologies, and part 2 reflects Brazal's impressive range of research expertise with chapters titled “Feminism in the Catholic Church” (chapter 3), “Ecological Cultural Struggles of Indigenous Peoples: Toward Sustainability as Flourishing” (chapter 4), “Migrant Remittances as Utang na Loob: Virtues and Vices” (chapter 4), and “Facebook and Populism: Reflections on Cyberethics” (chapter 5). Brazal offers her own distinctive contributions in each of these chapters.

In drawing on the heritage of postcolonial biblical and theological-ethical contributors (e.g., Asian postcolonial theologians such as R. S. Sugirtharajah and C. S. Song), she uses chapter 3 to foreground Bai theology, which is doing theology from the standpoint of women's struggles against authoritarianism, neoliberal capitalism, and oppressive church hierarchs who dismissed and supressed reports of clergy sexual misconduct. In chapter 4, she expands the rhetoric and practice of “sustainability” with regard to indigenous peoples’ rights to include “caring,” which in turn leads to “flourishing” that goes beyond the central tenets of environmental, social, and economic sustainability as a counter-discourse and praxis to the Mining Act of 1995. Her theologizing on migrants’ remittances in chapter 5 finds expression in the Philippine gift economy, utang la loob (a debt of reciprocity as an inverse of shamelessness or one who does not feel indebtedness to kin, country, or God), which recognizes the human person as a gift (and creation as God's gift to humankind) in a web of relationality among humans and all of creation. She further consolidates the sense of contemporary relevance in chapter 6 with her courageous critiques of the populism expounded by the Philippines’ president, Duterte, and the complicity of social media platforms, in particular Facebook, in his violence because these platforms serve as conduits of fake news, identity theft, and cyberstalking. She insists on a cyberethics founded on recovering hiya (shame) as a virtue drawing on apt parallels with Confucian ethics.