Welcome to Meredith Ralston’s web site where you’ll find information on her films, books and speaking engagements. Enjoy your visit!
Hope in Heaven
Mila works at Heaven, a little bar on “blowjob alley” in Angeles city, the Philippines. Once the site of the United States Clark Air Force Base, the city is now one of the busiest and sleaziest sex tourist destinations in Southeast Asia. Mila lives in tremendous hope that someday a customer will rescue her from Heaven and take her to America. In the Philippines, prostitution is not just lucrative business–it's an industry. Hope in Heaven examines the country's sex trade and the young women it traps. Seen through the eyes of two idealistic female students and a male university professor, the film depicts two years of Mila's life and the people who befriend her. The poverty and squalor she lives in and her hope that one day a foreigner will rescue her are both poignant and heartbreaking.
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Buy the DVD here.
Reluctant Bedfellows
This book outlines key facets of our five year development project on sex tourism and prostitution in the Philippines, and is a powerful reflection on the raging debates taking place among feminists about the Third World. Making a strong call for action, we take on the sometimes paralysing post-colonialist positions about Westerners doing work in the Third World as we discuss our particular case study in the Philippines. We call on critical left scholars to provide solutions to the many global problems in the world and not be so hesitant to “do something.” We argue that we have responsibilities to others beyond our own national borders and that it is a huge failure of imagination to think we cannot “do something” when it is done with critical self-reflection and care.
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Buy the book here.
Latest News and Updates
Received the 2009 MSVU Award for Research Excellence
Just awarded a SSHRC creation grant for Selling Sex Globally which will start this summer and will last for three years.
Book launch for Reluctant Bedfellows was held March 3rd at Luxx in Halifax and was a great success. Almost 100 people came and celebrated with Meredith and Edna.
Media interest has been great – here’s a sampling of interviews:
Sound Bites Interview with Meredith Ralston (Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009)