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A Reading of Contemporary Fiction By Filipinos In America By: Carmen Miraflor Folks: A friend just called to ask how last Friday's literary reading went. On my way home that evening, the voices of the readers (stage actors in their own right, If I may add) lingered in me all the way to Fremont, through late dinner with family (who had no choice but to listen to my babble about the event) and until I went to bed, when I called sleep in by reading more lines from the books I bought that night. There is nothing like success especially for an event that is so unlike the usual get togethers that we Filipinos take to with enthusiasm. I had my apprehensions about the attendance and was therefore totally bowled over when about fifty of us showed up to listen and be regaled by the stories our five writers (led by Cecilia Manguerra-Brainard) read before us. It's an experience none of us could easily forget. We were a mix of staff, students and guests that included special friends of the authors and kindred spirits from La Raza. Needless to say, we were all enthralled. We ran the whole gamut of emotions as we sat spellbound listening to an anthology of stories spun by five Filipino expats we are blessed to have among us and now know. We sat shaking our heads, laughing our guts out then finding our eyes misting as we felt the sadness that killed us softly. As Lu Yujuico put it, each story took her breath away, one still raging within her soul only to be pushed and fastforwarded by another tale. Yes, Lu, I understand what you are saying. At the outset of this literary reading, Cecilia opened with her story, Flip Gothic, an epistolary tale about Arminda, a 15-year-old, American born and raised youngster who had to be sent to Lola in the Philippines to be rebuilt! I think Cecilia succeeded in expressing anger and sadness with humor through Arminda's grandmother's compassionate but firm hold and fearless acceptance of her unusual granddaughter. She knew she had a monstrous task cut out for her: to reconstruct her spirited granddaughter from the utter confusion and lack of identity that resulted from an upbringng of having too much and too little. There was none in the audience who was left unfeeling about the plight of Arminda and her poor befuddled grandmother. If I may plug for the anthology that Cecilia edited, buy the book and read about how Arminda rediscovers herself among her grandma's goats and chickens in the backyard. We listened to Oscar Penaranda's tale of the birthing of a child while its family is hiding from Japanese soldiers (who were audibly marching just outside their house looking for prisoners). They were hushed in silence lest they be heard, but what if the baby wailed? Should the "bayot" midwife cut the umbilical cord that was wound around the baby's neck and risk capture? For the WWII babies among us, I am sure the old, now suppressed fears of capture in those times welled up. Then Eileen Tabios followed suit with her story of a young Filipino American's vacation in the Ilocos where the heroine found an ally in her newly found lovelight, the source of the "stirring in her loins", Niki their driver, and conspired with him to sabotage the refrigeration of the Marcos mausoleum causing the wax preservative to melt and for the corpse to decompose. Eileen, who confesses to be firstly a poet, proved her mastery of the prose just as beautifully. Hers was a tale of tender love and adventure through which readers and victims of the Marcos regime may vicariously experience the vindication they are still seeking. Coming home from America to a family wake in the Philippines was the story read by Marianne Villanueva who promised to make her presentation short, feeling perhaps that the time was getting late. The audience would not have minded at all if she'd gone on to tell us more about the family dynamics during a wake but she made good on her word to be brief. Nevertheless she left us with so much suspense about her family's discovery of their "sutil", during a wake at that, so that we all ended up buying her book. Then, lovely Jay Dayrit made our hearts heavy and our eyes misty when he read his story about a gay hero reconciling with his father and meeting his new bride for the first time. Angry that his father was hasty in remarrying a year too soon after his mother's death, Jay's hero still sought to fathom his father's ambivalence toward him, contain his anger and still managed to show his respect and love for a parent, raised Filipino as he was. That the son took the role of the parent in understanding his father's needs, ambivalence and seeming denial of his homosexuality, is a twist in the story that leaves you reaching for Jay's hero to cheer for him. Carry on, Jay. Ador Escoto, president of the Filipino Amercian Community at Stanford, Trudy Vizmanos, Sonia Reyes and others who worked to make this literary event a reality, are to be commended for bringing this rarity about. This was an all-Filipino production that left us all coming away with PRIDE. Let's do a repeat. To Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Wallace Stegner, and Harper Lee: Move over and make room for Cecilia and her gang. To Cecilia, Oscar, Eileen, Marianne and Jay: WE THANK YOU FOR ENRICHING OUR LIVES AND RAISING PHILIPPINE PRIDE SEVERAL NOTCHES HIGHER! Carmen Carmen
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Volume 1 |
Alex Maskara |
