“From where I sit, in a pub in downtown Iowa City, amid a loud cheering crowd, there’s no mistaking.... Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th president of the United States of America,” writer and filmmaker Gutierrez “Teng” Mangansakan II, a Mindanawon on scholarship in the US, emailed his friends in the Philippines..."History is unfolding right before my very eyes."

In this Mindanao Times article, IWP Participant Gutierrez “Teng” Mangansakan II comments on his election night experience in Iowa City. During his stay in Iowa City, Mangansakan wrote about his observations of American life in short blog entries as well as articles. He has written for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila Times, Philippine Star, Manila Standard, Manila Bulletin, and Malaya. He provides the column "This Blessed House," for a Mindanao-based news service. His first film, House under the Crescent Moon, won Best Documentary at the 15th Cultural Center of the Philippines Prize for Independent Film and Video in 2001; his other films have been screened at international film festivals to wide acclaim.

Read the interview with Mangansakan about the recent US election here: Making History