Book Reviews

On page 22 of her engrossing collection of essays, Ateneo de Davao professor and pundit Gail Ilagan reminisces about those annual, obligatory retreats people in Catholic institutions have to go through. Then she inserts these lines: “Did God see an image of Herself when she spied an ant? Because I did.”

 Bam! Vintage GI – enthralling readers with her everyday life encounters, and just as you begin to settle down and enjoy her absorbing prose, she whacks you with a surprise to remind you why she is, probably (in deference to critics) Mindanao’s best essayist to date. In these two lines, the question is not whether God spies on ants, but that it is a “She-God” (not Goddess, note how Gail dispenses with this sexist label) who does the spying. And to top it all, GI asserts it with certain definitiveness (“Because I did!”).

Surely, when GI wrote this she knew that among her many readers were her Jesuit bosses, members of a religious congregation whose long history includes some of the best intellectual defense of Catholicism. Was GI trying to provoke them into a debate on its institutional chauvinism? And did they take GI to task for this heresy? We do not know.

These asides against established (and unfair) norms permeate Fly on the wall 2.  The nationally-famous Manolo Quezon is taken to task for inadvertently turning her into an anti-communist, when she is not. She does not hesitate to go after the thugs who killed and sought to make excuses for the killing of nine-year old Grecil S. Buya (Death of a nine-year old just shreds your emotional equilibrium to pieces). And if they threatened to brand her a “communist sympathizer,” her response is to “bring it on.”  This Ilongga cannot be run over easily. She will fight.

GI is angriest when it comes to the exploitation of women and children. The essays under the heading Rape in Subic hit back at those who declare that “Nicole” had it coming when the “maniac” Daniel Smith raped her. Her comparison of kids who kill and rape (the Marines) and the kids who die or get raped (in Subic, in Iraq, and elsewhere where the US military is stationed) brings to fore how much of our young are already dehumanized at such tender ages. Why do countries and states do this to their youth?

GI loves to complicate issues and relations, be they mother-daughters relations (Conversations with my daughters – the best of them all), tensions between the hubby-critic-protector and GI the writer-the participant observer-the adventurist (Invisible), complicated military men (the section The rebel yell and Bounty hunting), as well as the usual thugs. There are essays on idols and mentors treated with awe (When heroes die and Big Mac) and wonderful snippets of academics and public intellectuals at their most serious and most hilarious (Academe in Mindanao).

The span of some of her essays can take you on a roller-coaster ride. Disaster denied takes on EVAT and Gloria Arroyo then leaps to George W. Bush and the Katrina disaster via Kyoto, before landing you back to her own environmental demon – cigarettes.  She takes you around Mindanao (Take to the highway) and also all over the body politic (The Clark proposition, Baguio in a day, and In by midnight). She did not land back to Mindanao in the last page, but that’s alright. She’s still there.

Where GI is not as exciting actually is when she writes like a psychologist. I shudder at the idea of dozing off in the early parts of Prejudged and found wanting. But thank the stars that such essays are rare. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you find yourself completely immersed in GI’s take on life.  And you come out of the last pages happy to know that there are people like Gail Ilagan who really, really write well…her hubby’s criticisms notwithstanding.

Respect.

NB: This review first appeared on http://www.mindanews.com on 16 June 2008 and on the Philippines Free Press on 28 June 2008.

Senator Nene Pimentel. 2008. Federalizing the Philippines: A primer. Manila: Philippine Normal University Press. xviii. 494 pages.

by Albert E. Alejo, SJ, PhD

Like the proverbial cat that has nine lives, federalism is in the air again, perhaps stronger this time, because of the failure of the central government to dissociate itself from high level corruption, or perhaps weaker, and for the same reason that the settlers in Malacañang simply want to survive by whatever means, including adopting federalism as a reason for charter change. Senate Minority Leader Senator Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel, Jr. is aware of this argument...

Grace Nono, with Mendung Sabal, Henio Estakio, Baryus Gawid, Salvador Placido, Sarah Mandegan, Gadu Ugal, Florencia Havana, Sindao Banisil and Elena-Rivera-Mirano. 2008. The shared voice: Chanted and spoken narratives from the Philippines. Ed. Carolina Malay. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing and Fundacion Santiago. 248 pages.

by Albert E. Alejo, SJ, PhD

“My name is Grace Nono. I am a singer and a creator of songs.” That is how the author of this magical book introduces herself. That is also how she immediately connects her identity with the rest of the million “singing Filipinos” whose voices she celebrates in print. By voice Grace Nono means much more than a physiological function. “It is the summation of spiritual and sociocultural experience, of vision, and of creative imagination.” In the first few chapters...