Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers. (Philippines).
Flanagan, Kathleen
Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers
Nick Carbo, Eileen Tabios, eds. San Francisco. Aunt Lute Books 2000.
xxii + 336 pages. $16.95 ISBN 1-879960-59-1
BABAYLON, WHICH TAKES its title from the Bisayan word for
priestess-poet, is an anthology divided into three sections of short
fiction, poetry, and poetry in translation (in English as well as
Tagalog, Cebuano, Kinaray-a, and Ilocano). One introduction by Nick
Carbo gives an informative history of Filipina writing that discusses
such issues as the effect of Spanish and U.S. colonialism on the
nineteenth- and twentieth-century women writers, while another by Eileen
Tabios expresses a creative writer's point of view.
The 1927 short story that begins the anthology, "Dead
Stars," initiates the study of women's identity common to many
of the works. Here the female characters are portrayed as individuals
whose lives are exploited and changed by the desires of the men around
them. Women are spumed by lovers, sexually indentured (as in the case of
the farm wife in Merlinda Bobis's "Shoes" and the
"comfort women" of World War II in Elynia S. Mabanglo's
poem "The Ballad of Lola Amonita"), and physically and
emotionally abused by husbands ("The Birth" by Reine Archache
Melvin and "Silence" by Marianne Villanueva). Many of the
female protagonists undergo metamorphoses as a result of their contact
with men and the expectations of society about appearance and sexual
conduct.
The imperialism of the United States and its continued influence
spark many of the identity crises, and the works convey these crises as
they are particular to women's lives. In both the Philippines and
the U.S., women of Filipina origin face assumptions and stereotypes
about their identity ("You are too quiet to be a Filipina").
M. Evelina Galang's "Drowning" displays the stereotypes
created by the media of a teenage Filipina after she drowns near
Virginia Beach and the effect these have on her devastated family. These
sometimes occasion fractured selves, as when the protagonist of the
story "The Star" imagines her life is a play in which she
stars and ultimately commits suicide.
The poem "Home" begins and ends with the question
"Where is home?" -- an issue of identity that resounds
throughout the anthology. For immigrants to the States, this question is
often examined by means of jarring, surreal prose and verse forms.
Jessica Hagedorn's "Tenement Lover: no palm trees / in new
york city" uses a mixture of epistolary forms and drama to suggest
the unrest of a recent migrant from the Philippines to the U.S. In
Tabios's "Excerpts from an Aborted Honest Autobiography,"
nonlinear sections from the memoir of a protagonist born in the
Philippines but raised in Los Angeles achieve a similar effect. Other
works show that when migrants return to the Philippines, they are not
fully accepted as Filipinas. The poem "Tsimis"
("Gossip"), for example, depicts guests at a party for a
teenage girl visiting from the States who speculate on her reasons for
returning, her clothing, and her life in America.
The poetry and prose in the volume make clear that issues of gender
and imperialism trouble the sense of identity for the Filipina and
Filipina American protagonists in the works. The depictions of the
expectations and stereotypes of women in both the Philippines and the
United States are hauntingly powerful.
Kathleen Flanagan
Longwood College
