Showing posts with label Philippines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philippines. Show all posts

Friday 6 May 2022

Moro Warrior, guest post from Thomas McKenna


Thomas McKenna is a social anthropologist based in San Francisco.  He has been conducting ethnographic research in the southern Philippines since 1985. 

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese invaded the Philippines. On May 6, 1942, U.S. Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright surrendered U.S. troops in the Philippines to the Japanese. Published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of that event, Moro Warrior combines indigenous and military history, anthropology and biography, to tell the remarkable but forgotten story of the Philippine Muslim (Moro) resistance fighters of World War II. Bridging continents and cultures, it is a story of sadness and loss, but also one filled with humor, camaraderie, romance, and adventure. It is not aimed at academics, but at general readers, in particular history and military history buffs. 

So, over to Thomas…

Monday 23 November 2020

Of Suitcases and Superheroes: Poems between Singapore and the Philippines

As nations grow closer, so do their literary communities. In this month’s poetry column, we look at the cultural, economic, and literary ties between Singapore and the Philippines, and hear from two poets, Eric Tinsay Valles (whom we last interviewed in 2016!) and Rolinda Onates Espanola, about what it means to write between these two cities.

Thursday 15 October 2020

Popular Filipino author/columnist & podcaster, Jessica Zafra's first novel, The Age Of Umbrage

That Jessica Zafra is a great writer goes without saying; but her wit and acerbity, her idea (only somewhat facetious) of world domination via yaya and domestic helper make the notion of a novel from her irresistible. Only consider the volumes of Twisted columns she’s sold over two decades, apart from three short story collections, and it's understandable that The Age of Umbrage (Bughaw, an imprint of Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2020) could not have come soon enough.
A slim book with easy-on-the-eye-catching cover art by Bianca Alexandra Ortigas in bright Crayola red violet, its slightness in my hands is disconcerting. Flipping through, I note the book’s entire six chapters ending at a petite 126 pages. That's thirty pages fewer than one of my all-time-favorite novels: Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (which a few critics have called a novella). And then there is her very first sentence, a wistful, heartrending line with hardly a pause for a breath through a substantial paragraph that recalls Nick Joaquin. 

From the outset, we sense a master in command of language, smooth as milk, and so all-knowingly authoritative, we relax, confident we won’t be jolted out of the reverie by awkward diction, an inorganic sentence or an overwrought adverb. We turn ourselves over, the way we might turn over in a dream. It’s hard not to hear Zafra’s voice in our head. The buy-in is immediate. 

We enter the familiar yet strange world of the unfortunate Siony, her wayward Hernani, and their extraordinary daughter, Guada, the life they live, the class differences they negotiate, their struggle, their pathos, their lunacy in the every day, and the all too surreal hilarity of living in the mansion of Don Paquito Almagro, close friend to the President, in the wealthy, high-walled subdivision of Almagro. Zafra takes such palpable pleasure in the selection of details for this world—quoting dialogue from movies, pop and classic, making references to books, from Thomas Hardy to Frank Herbert, the music of Madonna and Prince, and the 55-volume The Philippine Islands by Blair and Robertson, included for texture and the nifty little inside joke. 

We feel for Siony, grim-faced and resigned, as she accepts the only chance she has for herself and her child. We sympathize with Guada and understand her ambivalence, her reluctant acceptance of the way things are, that she is her mother’s one and only reason for living. And through it all, in the background, the events of recent Philippine history unfurl in like swathes of indigenous fabric, its designs always apparent. We delight too in the large, motley cast of vividly named characters—each so real, they might be someone we once encountered in our life. Don Paquito, who loves pork stewed in coconut milk, Dona Consuelo, distant but not unkind, Guillermo, the forlorn and flailing Almagro son, Lennon, the driver (named for his father’s favorite musician), Ding-Dong, the village security guard who runs marathons and is sleeping with the maid, Teresita, and so many more. 

 “Ding Dong was a common name in the Philippines, where people were routinely named after doorbells, TingTing, BongBong, JengJeng and so on.” 

 Zafra sifts funny lines throughout the book like pinipig—crunchy sweet toasted rice—on suman—steamed glutinous rice cake. 

 “It is a truth acknowledged in the Philippines that a single man in possession of good looks and no fortune must be in want of a benefactor, an older person of the female or homosexual persuasion. In the case of the latter, it did not follow that the party of the first part was himself homosexual or even bisexual, merely in need and pragmatic.” 

 “Rich girls could wear whatever they wanted… they could parade themselves like hookers and people would call them fashionable. If a girl from the middle class went around in shorts so tiny they were more wedgie than pants, she would be called a slut. If a girl from her barrio appeared in public undressed like that, she was a hooker.” 

 “Eventually, she came to the conclusion that only the sane worry about going crazy. The truly insane have no minds left to lose.” 

 “Pedestrians are a lower life form in Manila, destined to become roadkill, deprived even of sidewalks, which are appropriated by vendors of radioactive-looking fried snacks.” 

Her deadpan humor is the essential layer that cushions us against the stark and massive disappointments in Guada’s sad life. It is self-deprecation as self-defense, and it resonates, matter-of-fact, quintessentially Filipino. For where would we all be if we could not laugh through our tears and our rage, if we could not make fun of and mock our own mindless folly, our own contrary, superstitious, religious culture, and our now almost unsurprising, pathetic outcomes? 

Whatever it might be for Guada, the book ends bleakly…and well, with umbrage. However, it is an open end. The cruelty of The Age of Umbrage is its brevity; “age” is a misnomer. That’s it. No more. Finished. Zafra leaves us like Guada, bereft upon a precipice. To be sure, she has created a heroine to love. We root for Guada, we wish her the happiness she deserves, but we do want another six chapters to find out what happens next. Instead, we can only turn the book over and read it again. 

It is a flaw, but a bearable one and bittersweet. I will wait for Zafra’s second novel and her third and her fourth, and hope that one of them will take up the rest of Guada’s tale, which after all, has only just begun.

Friday 13 December 2019

500 words from Noelle Q De Jesus

Noelle Q De Jesus is a Filipino American short story writer who explores issues of identity, belonging, and attachment. Her stories are intimately shaped around individuals, yet simultaneously address broader questions relevant to worldwide communities. Today we hear from her about her latest collection, Cursed and Other Stories.

The truth is, initially, Cursed and Other Stories became a book because I had too many short stories for one volume. Its genesis took place in late 2014, when I looked up from my messy life of being wife, mother and freelance writer, and realised I was not another writer that had written nothing. I was a woman of 48 who had written over 30 stories, a number of them published, and I could put together a book if I wanted to. That process meant, sorting stories and grouping them. My second realisation was I had actually written enough to make one and a half books. I did not even know it.

Thursday 16 November 2017

Backlist books: Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal

Backlist books is a column by Lucy Day Werts that focuses on enduring, important works from or about Asia.

This post is about Noli Me Tangere (aka The Social Cancer), an idealistic novel written to expose the injustices suffered by Filipinos at the hands of the theoretically poor, chaste and obedient Spanish friars during the colonial period.

Written in Spanish, published in Berlin in 1887 and banned in the Philippines, it nevertheless reached its target audience. Although the author seems to have preferred reform to armed revolution, violent radicals made him their figurehead, and at the age of 35 he was martyred for the Filipino nationalist cause.

See below to find out what you need to know to decide whether you should read Noli Me Tangere, or what you should know about it even if you never do!

Friday 26 February 2016

The Frankfurt Book Fair / the Philippines is a focus county for 2016 / call for papers



For the second year, the Frankfurt Book Fair (19-23 October) and the trade magazine, Publishing Perspectives will host the markets: global publishing summit to help publishers around the world better understand and build relationships. It will feature seven important current and future markets, including the Philippines. the full list is:

Tuesday 3 November 2015

APWT Manila Conference / Jane Camens

This has been a busy few weeks in the Asian literary calendar, with a variety of events on offer. See, for example, recent posts on the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, and the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, as well as the on-going series from the Singapore Writers Festival. Furthermore, the region’s literary network, Asia Pacific Writers and Translators, which is currently based in Hong Kong, but which is soon to move its headquarters to Brisbane, held its eighth annual conference in Manila, from 22 – 25 October.  Here Jane Camens, co-founder and Executive Director, Asia Pacific Writers and Translators, gives an account of proceedings.

Wednesday 25 March 2015

Indie Spotlight: Juan Rader Bas

For this month’s Indie Spotlight, Raelee Chapman chats with Juan Rader Bas, who describes himself as a Fil-Am Kicking Scribe (Filipino-American, martial arts devotee & writer). Juan Rader Bas’s debut novel, Back Kicks and Broken Promises, was self-published with Abbott Press.  It is a coming of age novel about an adopted 17-year-old Filipino who finds self-expression and fulfilment through martial arts after moving from Singapore to New Jersey. Juan took time out from his busy schedule as a public school teacher, parent, martial artist and writer to discuss the indie process and his new writing projects.