 |
CONTEMPORARY FICTION
|
CECILIA MANGUERRA BRAINARD: PHILIPPINE AMERICAN WRITER CALIFORNIA CEBU
|
| "...those of us who read fiction...will
enjoy this marvelous anthology of contemporary stories exploring the experience
of being not only Filipino, not only American, not only Filipino American,
but a truly global human being living in an unmistakably global community." Isagani R. Cruz, Critic-at-Large |
BOOK REVIEW
CONTEMPORARY FICTION BY FILIPINOS IN AMERICA
Edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
Anvil Publishing, 1997, 254 pages
MANOA, Vol. 13, No., 1, Silence to Light: Japan and the Shadows of War (Summer,
2001) pp. 201-203
by Harold Augenbraum
Contemporary F iction by Filipinos in America.Edited by Cecilia
Manguerra Brainard. Pasig City, Philippines: Anvil Publishing, 1997.
254 pages, paper $22.95.
A couple of years ago, I asked a colleague of mine who was preparing a comprehensive
anthology of world literature which Filipino writers he was going to
include.He wasn't aware of any, he replied, adding that they probably hadn't
been
translated yet.
I explained that many of the best Filipino writers in the Philippines wrote
in
English, a legacy of American colonialism from 1898 to 1946. With great enthusiasm
and some hope, I mentioned a half dozen that he might want to consider,
including N .V. M. Gonzalez, L inda Ty-Casper, and F.Sionil Jose. I wasn't
surprised,
however, when the anthology appeared without a one.
In the United States, the Philippines has always been esteemed for its strategic
importance while Filipino culture has been almost invisible.The truth is that
the
Philippines has a rich literary heritage, extending from the archipelago to
the various
other countries in which Filipinos have settled, including former colonial
masters Spain and the United States.The writers who have made a name for themselves
in the States-Carlos Bulosan, Bienvenido Santos, Linda Ty-Casper,
Ninotchka Rosca, perhaps N ick Carbo, and certainly JessicaH agedorn - are
few,
though their writing is powerful and consistently good. Hagedorn is the most
honored: her nomination for the National Book Award for Dogeaters brought
some attention to lesser-known F ilipino writers toiling in the vineyards of
the literary
lord, such as Cecilia Manguerra Brainard. The University of Washington
Press has loyally kept Santos and Bulosan in print, as well as brought Gonzalez
to
the attention of the American public - about as much as a small university
house
can do for these writers.
The anthologies of Filipino and Filipino American writing published in the
States have also appeared infrequently. In 1966, Leonard Casper, a prominent
critic and the husband of LindaT y-Casper, compiled an extraordinary collection
called New Writing from the Philippines. A few Filipino American pieces were
included in the seminal 1974 Asian American anthology Aiieee! though the vastly
different experiences of Filipinos in the States, and a wholly different literary
tradition,
resulted in two separate introductions to the book: one for Chinese and
Japanese Americans; the other for Filipino Americans.
In 1992, Luis Francia edited the marvelous Brown River,White Ocean, which
thrived despite the publisher's barely useable design. F rancia's next contribution
was 1996's Flippin' Filipinos on America, which he and Eric Gamalinda edited
for
the Asian American Writers' Workshop, based in New York. A writer's book,
composed half of poetry and half of prose, it is filled with the sheer pleasure
of literary
achievement and remains the best Filipino American anthology available
today.
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's 1993 anthology, F iction by Filipinos in America,
was a low-budget collection published by New Day Publishers in Quezon City,
Philippines. For it she collected a good cross-section of Filipino writers,
from the
little known to the more accomplished, producing a good introduction to Filipino
writing in America.Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, also published
in the Philippines, covers some of the same grounds even of the twenty-five
contributors
were included in the earlier collection, though it is comforting to see
Gonzalez and Ty-Casper again.
Since the late nineteenth century, the Philippines has been wracked by political
difficulties: its revolt against Spain in 1898, American domination, a Japanese
invasion,and the Marcos plutocracy. Yet except for the hints of this situation
in
Gonzalez's story "Confessions of a Dawn P erson," and the migrant
background in
Alma Jill Dizon's promising "Bride," the stories in Contemporary
Fiction by Filipinos
in America focus little, if at all, on the history of the Filipino experience
in
the Philippines. This is a favorite theme of at least one U.S..-resident writer
who is
not included here, Ninotchka Rosca, who weaves that history into the fabric
of her
work.
With its political legacy omitted, the Philippines is neither idealized nor
demonized.
As an ancestral home, the place of one's consciousness before coming to
America, it becomes another "worldly" place: subtly powerful, vivid,
and distant.
Within the Filipino a nd Filipino American world, trials and tribulations focus
the
self within a social context, but not on the context. Even in Brainard'cs ontribution,
"
Flip Gothic," in which an uncontrollable young woman on the verge of
adulthood is sent by her family in the States to live with her grandmother
in
Manila, the national culture of the Philippines is subjugated to the household
culture,
and the homeland is affective, but amorphous.
By pulling these personal, fictional quests together, the reader indeed comes
away with a varied portrait of Filipinos in America, not the expression of
dark
causality present in the earlier generations of writers, such as Bulosan and
Santos-
those fantastic conjurors of Filipino America n literature - but of people
cautiously
settling into what they hope will be a comfortable position.
In Veronica Montes's "Of M idgets and Beautiful Cousins," a Filipino
American
teenager and her sister, visiting their cousins in Manila, are taken to a dance
club
called "Small World," where the entire staf is made up of midgets.The
girl is nervous
and edgy. Against a backdrop of raucous eroticism - American soldiers hoot
at the torch singer onstage - her cousin introduces her to a friend of his
who is a
waiter there and who shows an obvious interest in her. This makes her feel
even
more anxious, and she panics. They leave, and as they walk through the rain
to
their car, the waiter comes running up with an umbrella to shelter her - a
sad ending
to a sad evening of Filipinos, Americans, and Filipino Americans.
So many of these stories convey loneliness, disconnectedness, and an inability
to form lasting attachments. They are stories rooted in rootlessness. Dizon's
"
Bride" harkens back to the days before World War II, when Pinoys made
up a
good part of the migrant workers on the plantations of Hawai'i, California,
and
Oregon. Cut off from the women of their homeland, they would troll the streets
for hours, seeking companionship, drifting in and out of Chinese bordellos
and
dance bars - pictures that Bulosan drew with pathos and lyricism. Dizon's Candido
has left a family behind in the Philippines; his wife has died and his children
moved away. Decades pass. H awai'ii s now a state, the gateway to America.
An old
man, Candido receives a letter from a cousin. She knows a young woman who
might want to marry, w hich Candido recognizesa s an obvious immigration ploy.
Despite this, he agrees and they wed. She quickly becomes pregnant, an unexpected
event since Candido is in his early seventies. Two months after the birth of
their child, she commits suicide.
The well-worn ground of the woman in a sanitarium is LindaT y-Casper's
cenario in "Dark Star/Altered Seeds."F rom a lesser writer, the story
might be stale,
but Ty-Casper is so deft with language - a fact known to readers of literary
magazines
and the slim novels she has published with Readers International, Inc. - it
seems fresh. The narrator's husband has left her for another woman, but his
return does not cure the ills that abandonment has caused:
Is she pretty? Was t hat the question that woke her up? Then why did he leave?
Every nameless, faceless woman; every young and jubilant face she meets
becomes that woman. She. When he holds her now she becomes her, too.
The narrator's own identity has been usurped by her husband's thoughtless
exchange of women, and even the reader becomes somewhat confused by the
manner in which Ty-Casper has placed her pronouns. This collection abounds
with such tension.
Though Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America could benefit from the
addition of a bit more humor and a few East Coast writers - such as Rosca,
Gamalinda,
Hagedorn, and Regie Cabico - these are quibbles. Brainard has done a fine
job of bringing many ittle-known writers - and the edginess of Filipinosi n
America -
to the fore.
HAROLD AUGENBRAUM
~~~
A Collection of Stories by:
P. Delor Angeles
Melissa Aranzamendez
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
Luis Cabalquinto
Linda Ty-Casper
Lee Respicio Colomby
Jay Ruben Dayrit
Alma Jill Dizon
Ligaya Victorio Fruto
N.V.M. Gonzalez
Vince Gotera
Mila Faraon Heubeck
Eulalio Yerro Ibarra
Paulino Lim, Jr.
Veronica Montes
Oscar Peñaranda
Edgar Poma
Mar Puatu
Nadine Sarreal
Greg Sarris
John Silva
Eileen Tabios
Lilia Villanueva
Marianne Villanueva
Fatima Lim-Wilson
E-mail questions/comments
to cbrainard@aol.com
Copyright © 2008 Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
