LOLAS' HOUSE: FILIPINO WOMEN LIVING WITH WAR by M. EVELINA GALANG

EILEEN TABIOS Engages

Lolas’ House: Filipino Women Living With War by M. Evelina Galang

(Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2017)

Here are three reviews of Evelina M. Galang’s Lolas’ House: one by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee (The Miami Rail), one Donna Miscolta (Seattle Review of Books), and another by Melissa Sipin (Hyphen). I begin by pointing you to those reviews as good, reasoned responses to the book. It’s also a way for me not to repeat their points and make my review mostly an addition rather than a repetition to what others have said. Thus, what I have to say revolves around two topics: “Blood Resonance” and “Poetry.”

BLOOD RESONANCE

Just before reading and reviewing Lolas' House ("Lola" is a Filipino (honorific) term meaning "grandmother"), I was in Hawai’i to launch a book; I took the opportunity to visit Plantation Village in Oahu. While at this tourist attraction that reproduced how workers lived on the plantations, I came across Hole-Hole Bushi—songs sang by Japanese immigrant workers in the fields. I found a lot of the lyrics moving and immediately thought an anthology of the lyrics would be a great idea. Had these lyrics been sung by Filipino immigrant workers, I would have engaged in research to see if I, as an editor, could play a role in developing such an anthology. But I merely suggested the idea to others in case it would interest others—I felt that such an anthology would be best edited/curated by someone of Japanese descent.

When asked by someone to explain my decision, I thought of “blood resonance”—a phrase that popped up in my mind for describing what I feel is a link between someone and others (others could be people or objects) because of their shared heritage. This is not to say that a Hole-Hole Bushi anthology could not be edited well by someone who wasn’t of Japanese descent. I just felt that such a project would benefit somehow (in that non-scientific way through which art surfaces) because of the shared (literal and also metaphorical) blood. This notion came to arise in my engagement with Lolas’ House.

Conveniently (for explaining “blood resonance”), I happened to read another book on "comfort women" before I read Lolas’ House. This novel was written about an adopted Korean American who visited South Korea and ended up discovering her birth mother was a "comfort woman." The novel is well-researched and perfectly serviceable, but the writing possesses a seam between the author and the characters—perhaps this particular author’s writing just doesn’t sing, but I certainly would not be surprised if it’d be a challenge for a white male author to fully inhabit the character of various Korean women. Yes, I rush to say this comparison with Lolas' House is just a two-book comparison (and one should never discount the power of writerly imagination), but let us still compare the two books … as Lolas’ House’s structure brims with blood resonance. (Interestingly, blood resonance surfaces in Melissa Sipin’s own review where she’s moved to insert a reference to a grandmother who may have been a "comfort woman"; this lack of objective distance is not typical of “reviews.”)

To my surprise actually, Lolas’ House is not just the stories of the Filipino "comfort women" Galang researched during visits to the Philippines. It’s also the 18-year story of how Galang conducted the research, as well as the effects of the research on her. It is not, therefore, a third-party structure where Galang learned about the various lives of the comfort women and reported them. It is one where Galang’s own personal responses are part of Lolas’ House. (I suspect that there is a hidden and important topic here of why it took a Filipina-American to write a book such as this, but I digress....) The structure, Galang explained to me in person, partly was intended to break-up the horrific tales of the 16 interviewed comfort women. Such as this from Lola Atanacia Cortez:

(Click on all images to enlarge)

How to read the above and other stories like it one after another? Well, it surely would have been a greater bludgeoning of a reading experience if the tales were just presented one after the other without some break. Especially as the Lolas’ sufferings didn’t end just because war ended and with it the rapes. There’s the aftermath—for example Lola Catalina Lorenzo who, after her ordeal (presented in Salon) was not comforted by family but instead faced this from her husband: “My mister took me home, but he did not forgive me.”  

Or, this brutal summation by Galang, a brief essay providing an interruption between one Lola’s story and the next:

Thus, Galang’s decision not to roll out the Lolas’ stories as a series of rapes is understandable. But Galang’s chosen structure also allowed her freedom to articulate her empathy with the stories well as ultimately to write in a more lyrical and evocative style that does more justice to the Lolas’ humanities than mere reportage. The Lolas are alive in Galang’s books—not mere words on a page, not mere subjects of research and reportage or a scholarly treatise (though Galang, too, is a scholar),… not mere figures from history. The Lolas, in Galang’s words, become like family. Here’s an example:

Galang’s structure is extremely difficult to pull off. She can face (and I believe has faced) criticism for inserting herself and her family into others’ stories. Her path can interrupt the flow of the book. The balance is delicate between too much of the author’s presence versus privileging—as it should be privileged—the stories of the 16 former “comfort women” she’d interviewed. In looking back at my first read through the book, there was one moment, perhaps two moments, where I found her presence slightly intrusive. But 1-2 moments (and it’s not like they were so heavy-handed I couldn’t push on with the reading) is pretty good for a literary structure that risked all and, thus, teeters on balance. It teeters, but does not fall—and that bespeaks a humanity that would not have been possible without the author’s personal risk-taking in revealing herself and her strain during this process. It’s an approach that, throughout the book, transcends itself to actually attain poetry: what a magnificent result borne of nothing less than blood. Or, as Galang puts it:

Blood Resonance: when you’re drawn to empathize because the story traveled through blood to become yours and there is no seam between the narrating-you and the story.

POETRY

As she grapples with articulating the stories and moments in Lola’s House, Galang, too, ends up writing poetry. That seems logical: when things are difficult to say—or when things are impossible to say—Poetry can step in.  There’s a reason why Galang went through about 30 translators in transcribing the Lolas’ stories into English. As one of her own nieces begged after receiving the translation task and then reading the Lola’s testimony, “Hindi ko kaya. Hindi na talaga kaya ng body ko, ng utak ko. [I’m not able to translate. My body can’t. My heart can’t.] Please don’t make me do it.”

Galang observes, “Translating these stories, brutal.” So is reading the stories.

So is telling the stories. The Lolas relive the horrors in order to testify. The telling affects the Lolas’ language:

And poetry, too, surfaces. Poetry is multifaceted but I thought of how poetry, too, can be helpful through the elision made possible by minimalism or language’s compression. For example—perhaps an example—Lola Pilar Frias wrote:

By elision through minimalism, I refer partly to how the lines “To suffer quietly this life / At the hands of Japanese soldiers” surely does not capture Lola Frias’ experience.

Galang’s prose, too, would reveal several instances of the words seeming to run away from what they were chosen to describe. One way for the words to escape would be to nestle into language’s possibilities for beauty. Here’s an excerpt from Galang’s engagement with Lola Frias—within this one paragraph, look at how the words rush to linguistic beauty through its last three sentences:

Blood resonance through empathy. Then, Poetry. This could, in fact, be Galang’s ars poetica for this project:

It’s an approach that turns a chapter into a poem; here’s an excerpt from a two-page chapter, "Eight-Limbed Yoga in Manila":

POSTSCRIPT RE. BLOOD RESONANCE

For this “review,” as you see above, I post photos of excerpts instead of typing them out. I do this to avoid typing the excerpted words, to protect my own body from inhaling these stories as much as I can; Galang had felt the Lolas’ words embed themselves into her body (hence, a deliberate self-care involving yoga, family distractions, among others, while researching and writing Lola’s House). My body still knows to shudder from the referenced words, but taking a photo and cutnpasting its jpeg takes less time than retyping the excerpts—I, too, am Filipina.

And yet.

And yet I notice how, though I tried to avoid photographing fingers and other parts of my hand holding the book open, the slippages are unavoidable. Look at some of the photos—in some, you’ll see a part of my finger or hand, a part of my body.  The image entitled “Ginamit Nila Kami [They used us]”, indeed, shows a curled hand—a gesture of protectiveness? Or a gesture, my unconsciously-made gesture at the time, of embracing the embracing and holding the lolas against the surrounding words: “When the lolas tell their story, they do not say, ‘They raped us.’ They say, ‘Ginamit nila kami.’… They used me.”

*

NOT A PARENTHETICAL RE. LANGUAGE

I should say there are three, not two, points I wanted this review to raise. The third relates to the point of this review—why I wanted to write about Lolas' House. It’s to spread the word; in Lola Prescila Bartonico’s words:

Here’s an excerpt from a letter Galang wrote to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe:

I wrote this review for the The Halo-Halo Review, but I also published it in Galatea Resurrects because the journals' audiences are different. I also publish it here because I want to spread the word as much as I can about the injustice still faced today by the Lolas and other "comfort women." It was only several days ago that the Mayor of Osaka could not tolerate San Francisco's memorial to "comfort women," and so ended their "Sister City" relationship that had been in place since 1957.  Towards the end of the book, Galang notes:

And I, too, write… as I believe others will and should continue to write until justice is served. This review is about "comfort women." This review is about language. Poetry pays attention to the smallest details—like punctuations—and this phrase should always be in quotes to underscore the paradoxical horror raised by its words: "comfort women." This review is about what language cannot articulate. This review is about what language does not articulate. This review is a demand for an apology for the Imperial Japanese Army’s war crime—what they inflicted on 400,000 human beings who did not ask to become labeled “comfort women.” This review is about Poetry, and Poetry is a verb. Laban: this review is a demand for an apology. Laban.

*****

Eileen R. Tabios is the editor of Halo-Halo Review. Her 2017 poetry releases include five books, two booklets and eight poetry chaps. Most recently, she released MANHATTAN: An Archaeology (Paloma Press, U.S.A.), Love in a Time of Belligerence (Editions du Cygne/SWAN World, France), and THE OPPOSITE OF CLAUSTROPHOBIA: Prime's Anti-Autobiography (The Knives Forks Spoons Press, U.K.). Her books have been released in nine countries and cyberspace. Her writing and editing works have received recognition through awards, grants and residencies. More info about her work at http://eileenrtabios.com

TATTERED BOAT by LUIS H. FRANCIA

NEIL LEADBEATER Reviews

Tattered Boat by Luis H. Francia

(The University of the Philippines Press, Quezon City, 2014)

BOOK LINK

Luis Francia was born in the Philippines and earned his BA from Ateneo de Manila University. He immigrated to the US after College, moving to New York City. Journalist, editor, poet and teacher, his previous collections of poetry include The Arctic Archipelago (1992), Museum of Absences (2004) and The Beauty of Ghosts (2010). In addition to poetry, he has also published numerous works of non fiction including A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos (2010) and a play. As well as teaching at New York University and Hunter College CUNY, he also teaches creative writing at the City University of Hong Kong.

Tattered Boat presents the reader with a generous collection of 60 poems divided into four more or less equal sections in terms of length. The sections are untitled but it is clear from reading the poems that each section represents a slight shift in emphasis with respect to content.  Most of the poems fit neatly on to one page but the publishing house  has been thoughtful in accommodating a poem with long lines, Double Vision, on a fold-out page so that each line can run its full length as intended. This attention to detail, together with the cover design by Lyra Garcellano and the internal book design by Lara Gotis, where each section is marked off by a series of lines suggestive of wave water, is in keeping with the fine standard of the finished product.  

The title poem, which appears early on, is an image that Francia chooses as a means to express his own feelings now that he is older and wiser than when he was a youth.  It is as if the experience of a lifetime is bottled up inside him. Even the memory of it seems to tire him out – the insistent song of a nearby bird being not so much a thing of beauty as a mere irritation when he finds that he cannot match it:

I sit with my coffee and wish

The bird would fly away, for its

Music is odd, though I am

Older now and odder still, an

Other bent inside himself, the past

In ribbons, morning and myself a

Tattered boat adrift on a

Nonexistent river.

There is melancholy, sadness and a sense of rugged resignation here as, in the words of Patrick A Rosal, when referring to the book as a whole, Francia takes on the ruin of the heart, spiritual wreckage and the failing body.  

Francia is nothing if not honest in everything that he writes about. He is not afraid to confront his subjects head on. Issues that concern us all, such as religion, politics, war and terror, all find a place in this collection.

In the startling poem In Miami Christ Confides to a Café Habitué Christ is described as a Jewish retiree:

That wasn’t me on Golgotha.

That was my double.

This is one of several poems on religious themes where Francia fights his own spiritual battles. Like Christ in the temple of the money changers, his anger is expressed in the way he turns the tables and surprises us with the angle that he takes on things. In Dream of the Ascetic he writes:

Have I been holy too long?

Poisoned by saintliness, I need to

detoxify, and bathe in the world

and the waters of its gaudy ways,

I need to reacquaint myself with

the language of the flesh and its oily alphabets.

In From the Diary of a Suicide Bomber Francia documents some final, searching thoughts. The poem is a haunting one. There is even a hint of pathos here, of compassion. The combination of uncertainty and doubt on the one hand and steadfastness of purpose on the other is delicately handled. The poem is rife with contradiction and this is what makes it so powerful. Other equally powerful poems in this collection focus on the Los Angeles riots and the war in Iraq.

On a lighter note, this collection has much to offer in the way of word play and plain good humour. Thoughts over Lunch at Mango Square and its companion piece After-Dinner Notes explore a love of dining and good food. The second one begins unapologetically with these lines:

I like the language of burps

And hiccups,

The belch from the belly, the

Chant after a meal

Beep, beep in the

Bilge, burgeon and

Bulge…

It is, as we say, very physical.

Another poem, Softshoe, is full of playful expressions such as footloose and fancy free; she may be pulling my leg; didn’t she toe the line and do I look like a heel? It is a good example of Francia’s love of word play and it is present in several other poems in this collection. These poems provide a counterbalance to some of the more serious ones and help to take the heat out of all the burning questions posed in the other sections of the book.

Francia makes frequent use of internal rhyme and of grouping words together that have a similar sound but a completely different meaning. Quite a number of poems contain or end with playful inversions. For example, in oblivion he wonders why we rush to oblivion when oblivion rushes to us, and in The Hand he concludes:

Though every fool might have a hand

No hand by itself is a fool.

In The Ivy of Two Lives he states:

All words have meanings,

Not all meanings have words.

Tattered Boat is a finely balanced collection of poems full of insight and humour. A book that raises serious questions from a poet who is brave enough to ask them and honest enough to admit that he does not know all the answers. Highly recommended.

*****

Neil Leadbeater is an author, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad. His books include Librettos for the Black Madonna (White Adder Press, Scotland, 2011); The Worcester Fragments (Original Plus Press, England, 2013); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, England, 2014) and Finding the River Horse (Littoral Press, 2017).

AFTER THE SUNSTONE by MICHELLAN SARILE-ALAGAO

CHRISTINE FOJAS Reviews

After the Sunstone by Michellan Sarile-Alagao

(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016)

BOOK LINK

Almost Beyond Articulation

When it comes to poetry, my main criteria is inspiration. Do these works lead me towards a lushness of language, a lushness of ideas, towards picking up my own pen and writing things down? If so, Michellan Sarile-Alagao's first collection, After the Sunstone, receives a resounding Yes.

As Marjorie Evasco writes in the introduction, “Bearing Witness, Taking Just Measure,” the book is divided into four sections, each one with a title-poem: Another Look Back; The Mechanics of Time Travel; He Calls for the Moon in His Sleep; and The Weight of Words. But for the poet, it’s not merely a matter of looking to the past, but connecting it to the present moment.

As Sarile-Alagao's first collection, we see a range of experimentations with forms, and we glimpse a shadow of her inspirations from Whitman to Bishop.

She was dubbed

the goddess of lost things,

much to her dismay.

Most things

are simply misplaced:

a bookmark from a friend,

a pair of glasses;

the occasional set of keys.

Hearts, for instance,

are never truly lost

and the mind

is an infinitely hidden thing,

still there in the maddest of us,

only falling into itself;

a closed system

bent on the saddest of entropies.

From “Ana Go Lightly”

Some poems are sparse and seemingly fragile, with bones of steel. So it seems fitting that you will meet a lot of women in this collection, from imagined goddesses to all-too human personas.

They call me calmness. I retreat and return like my gift the moon, consistent in my presence and absence. And when the ocean responds to my appearance, I acknowledge. I follow the eyes of those who trace my journey and kiss the eyelids of children who sleep underneath.

From “Mayari’s Lament”

Some poems are dense, rolling forward inexorably, carrying their own weight. There are approximations of her poetics, as the writing becomes a search for a place or perspective from which to stand. Nowhere is this clearer than in the section on The Weight of Words.

There is pathos and pain and humor. And Sarile-Alagao's poetry also showcases her instinct for narrative, such as in the sarcastic poem, “A List of Unlikely Alternatives Collides with a Gifted Disregard for Awkward Facts” and the eerie “You don’t know the rich.”

I especially enjoyed the inventiveness of "Homemade Remedies."

Between the book of bad poetry

And inane sitcom reruns,

I thought of making

My own first aid kit

For the almost brain-dead.

…

For medication, a pill of each:

Cliogesic - to take away

political amnesia.

Eratocetamol - to cure

cheesy romance diarrhea.

Singing, rich with repetition and unexpected juxtapositions, incorporating science, technology, and even law with more traditional poetic subjects of myth, history and art, this is a collection of ideas and images, of small concrete details side by side with a largeness, a longing almost beyond articulation.

Look at me. Look at me.

I am a child ready to play hide and seek,

ready to be found.

From “Psalm”

But Michellan Sarile-Alagao manages it anyway.

*****

Christine Fojas is a Filipino-Canadian resident of Metro Vancouver, with a BA in Comparative Literature from U.P. Diliman. She is currently in the Library and Information Technology program at Langara College. She can also be found at https://curiouschrisblog.wordpress.com