Book Reviews
The best story in the collection is Nanking store, not Skyrose. Skyrose is dated, not to say incomplete, and so eighties in theme and sensibility. It is also so eighties in its shameless worship of the epic hero of the decade: The NPA cadre, the guerilla. Not so eighties is the barely concealed body worship and the vague sex of the hero – he comes off as a beautiful boy who grew a muscle or two, and the description is so palatable you could almost see him heaving – alone, alas – across the cover of a Harlequin paperback. So, of course, he is loved by everybody, and even Comrade Betty, the only female in the revolutionary cast visible enough to be close to him, could only love him aseptically, maternally. The story speaks of its time, for its time, and to its time, when romance primarily consisted of loving one’s country, and when the worst mistake that a revolution could commit was not mayhem in broad daylight but a misencounter in the dark.
An early work (first published in 1979), the story is way apart from Macario D. Tiu’s later template writing in that it is open ended: You want to see more of the landscape he has brought you to as you go along. There are some unseen which you feel the author owes you: Rolly’s character is elusive, he died without anybody knowing him (both in the metaphorical and biblical sense), only that he grew a revolution, or that a revolution made a man out of him; it has changed him. Betty thought how she has changed, too. And that Joey and Tonyo, the two other also-ran characters, must have changed, too. But you see so little of this, and so little of them. You wish it is only an introductory part, a character sketch, the first part of a complete book.
Nanking store plays a cruel joke on traditional Chinese society, and if it wasn’t canonized as a feminist text the way Aida Rivera-Ford’s The chieftest mourner had been, it is only because by the time the story had come up (published in 1999), we had had enough of Amy Tan and co. to last us a lifetime and that a male author writing feminist is suspect and liable to be indicted as an appropriator and a thief. I am not one of those who would claim as a sister and fellow confederate those who think of themselves as above strife and above feminism (to tell you the truth, I wish them dead rather than multiplying), but I think anyone may steal anything they like, feminism included, and had better be good at it. I wouldn’t argue that feminism is not the story’s strongest point, but Nanking store is sure a good take at Chinese chauvinism. I would not make a mountain out of Linda’s rebellion, though, and call her a liberated woman; she just had a damning chance to get back. Her and her husband’s failure to produce sons drove the latter to the trough (“to the night spots”), and it was in the trough (a Bisaya woman, and a prostitute at that, come to think of it) that Chinese aristocracy got the sons that it wanted so much to carry the line. And as though that wasn’t enough, those sons were not fathered by their son Peter but by those or whosoever that that Bisayan woman must have been sleeping around with while plying her trade. So to escape that shame, poor amah had to evacuate, leaving everything – house and property in Davao - and move to Manila, bringing along the two little boys who they will have to raise as their own.
I am one with the mountain people is a bummer. Six years in the schoolyard (that savage place) and nothing happens that one still wants his G-string back? Tell it to the Lumads. I withhold my praise for Cynthia; it is a funny, engaging story, and the character Cynthia is lovable, as all superwomen are, but I am not one to reward a dude with sex and a tear. That only happens in Woody Allen movies and the really adorable one in a Woody Allen movie is himself, not Diane Keaton.
The real bummer is The girl who wouldn’t sleep. The author by this time must have fallen in love with the template and just had to work another time off his favorite reversal-of-fortune technique. The piece reeks of middleclass parenting stories and subtly warns against the trauma of being raised by ignorant househelps (on top of the trauma of a separation which every couple, if they are decent enough, should spare their hapless children from). The author seems to not understand why women get battered and does not want to render harsh judgment (lest he would be perceived as a Gabriela confederate), so he mystifies the violence and let Tinang, the battered wife, ask, “What was it that drove Berto to beat her up whenever he was drunk? What was this anger that boiled up inside him?” What a cop out. Anyone who got near enough a woman with a bruise or a black eye understands that she got that for bitching and fighting and that that does not always have to come in the form of physically hitting back. It can come cold and lethal with a smile or a shut mouth, while standing ironing or serving dinner. The most ridiculous part is the last two pages when Tinang was supposed to, like Bingbing when frightened by a mumu, role-reversal style, have jumped out of bed and crawled under it. And the frightened little girl rising and fighting Daddy and driving him away, too, then going back to the room to comfort Tinang like little girl knew all along Tinang’s secret and understood all along that Tinang was the one being beaten by Daddy in the sala and not Mommy? Oh please.
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...
