#gina apostol

[ilaw-at-panitik]

It's not the fault of the student who has not read Nick Joaquin, who does not know "May Day Eve." I think it's a structural issue. I think it's an education issue. I think it's a political issue. I think it's a government issue. Shame on the government. Shame on the educational institutions that don't move the Filipinos to read the work of their own writers from the time they're little. I grew up reading Philippine Journal of Education in a really backwards, teeny tiny river town in Leyte. Not even in Tacloban, in my mom's hometown Barugo, Leyte. [...] But in that hometown, people had, my aunt had Philippine Journal of Education. I would read the stories of Nick Joaquin there... and so many books were available to me. Martial Law really changed the kinds of books that were offered to me. From reading the Victorian Era poets, and [other] English language poets, and Nick Joaquin, we ended up reading stories about aswang... I don't know what happened with my English education... But I would always go to have generosity with the Filipino who is the victim here. They're not the ones who are perpetuating their own ignorance. It is the government that's doing that; it is the schools. And I think it is our job to have that generosity for the Filipino reader. To say "the Filipino is not a reading public" already puts the burden on that Filipino. The burden should be on the government, that should have a better educational system for all of us.

Gina Apostol, in MCAD TK’s Rediscovering Nolledo: Reading But for the Lovers

[alightinthelantern]

best of the bunch: phenomenal novels read in 2022-23 that I highly recommend

O Caledonia (Elspeth Barker)

Inland (Téa Obreht)

Temporary People (Deepak Unnikrishnan)

Insurrecto (Gina Apostol)

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Anthony Marra)

Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro)

The Mask Carver’s Son (Alyson Richman)

Pavilion of Women (Pearl S. Buck)

A Free Life (Ha Jin)

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (Stuart Turton)

[bookjotter6865]

Winding Up the Week #385

An end of week recap “To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.” – Jeanette Winterson This is a post in which I summarise books read, reviewed and currently on my TBR shelf. In addition to a variety of literary titbits, I look ahead to forthcoming features, see what’s on the nightstand and keep readers abreast of various book-related happenings. CHATTERBOOKS >>  If you are…

[7r0773r]

Insurrecto by Gina Apostol

And the power of that— the certainty of his director's vision gives her invidia: a disease of empathy. It's that envy of the artist that arises in certain readers: a visceral connivance with his dreams matched only by the desire to kill him for fulfilling them. (p. 21)

***

As she reads, Magsalin keeps track of her confusions, annotating each mixed-up chapter as she goes, taking out from her bag an actual notebook and a fountain pen, a pale green Esterbrook, bought on eBay. In the notebook, she includes problems of continuity, the ones not explained by hopscotching chapters; issues of anachronism, given the short life-span of the male subject (1940-1977) contrasted against the women, who have superpowers: longevity and dispassion; words repeated as if they had been spilled and reconstituted then placed on another page; a stage set of interchangeable performers with identical names, or maybe doubles or understudies as they enter and exit the stage; an unexplained switch of characters' names in one section; and the problem of lapsed time in which simultaneous acts of writing are the illusions that sustain a story.

At times, she feels discomfort over matters she knows nothing about, and Magsalin hears rising up in her that quaver that readers have, as if the artist should be holding her hand as she is walked through the story.

But she rides the wave, she checks herself.

A reader does not need to know everything.

How many times has she waded into someone else's history, say the mysteries of lemon soaps and Irish pubs in Dedalus's Dublin, or the Decembrists' plot in Dostoyevsky's The Devils, or Gustave Flaubert's Revolution of 1848 in what turns out to be one of her favorite books, Sentimental Education, and she would know absolutely nothing about the scenes, the historical background that drives them, the confusing cultural details, all emblematic, she imagines, to the Irish or the Russians or the French, and not really her business and yet she dives in, to try to figure what it is the writer wishes to tell.

She calls these reader moments the quibbles when she gets stuck in the faulty notion that everything in a book must be grasped.

Why should readers be spooked about not knowing all the details in a book about the Philippines yet surge forward with resolve in stories about France!

Against her quibbles, she scribbles her Qs, her queries for the author to address later. (pp. 102-03)

***

Language is witchcraft, a transformation. (p. 224)

***

And sure, maybe her child will grow up, another desperate mimic, like her dad, to fathom a reason for why anything happens at all. Narrating too many scenes that do not count. When really, all one needs is to bring back the feeling of having once been absolutely loved. That is all. Love is the site of their wounding, these two women, mother and child.

The child tears open the pale blue box.

The child, only six, embraces the present. It is all she has.

It is a Brownie camera. (pp. 287-88)

[bookloure]

This is perhaps my most anticipated read of the year, and I’m happy to report that it did not disappoint. This novel has a lyrical, almost feverish prose that is brutal in (a lot of!) places. If you do not like flowery writing, I don’t think you’ll appreciate this.

On a sentence level, “But for the Lovers” demands a lot from the reader. The prose is dizzying, challenging, and is rife with code-switching. It is not a book that will coddle purely English speakers, which I laud. In the novel's foreword, Gina Apostol wrote that every time the Filipino employs the English language, the purpose is always subversion. BftL perfectly demonstrates this point. The way Nolledo used English in this book is very Filipino and very weaponized. And as I read, I got the sense that he was having a lot of fun writing this masterpiece. This book is not an easy read, but one that is worth the trudge.

So what is it about? “But for the Lovers” follows a cast of characters living in a rundown tenement building in a Japanese-occupied Manila at the tail end of World War II. This is a war novel with much waiting; the characters await their American “liberators.” And the reader waits too—knowing full well that when Americans do finally arrive, Manila will be razed to the ground.

The way Nolledo employs language in this book is really unique. It reads a lot like magical realism with its lyrical and flowery prose, but this book is very much grounded. And brutal. The seemingly magical things are actually happening in the physical world. For example, the opening sentence reads: “He was beginning to eat flowers, and the crescent moon was in his eyes when he awoke again.” It sounds a lot like a work of magical realism. But later in the chapter, we find that the man was literally eating flowers because he passed out under a flowering tree. And when he awoke, he saw the crescent moon. This push and pull of seemingly fantastical language against the physicality of the scenes continues throughout the novel. In magical realism, the fantastical elements are also usually employed to shield against the brutality of the physical world. In Nolledo’s novel, the brutality of the physical world disrupts the reader's enjoyment of its fantastical language. When brutality happens to the characters, it punches you in the gut.

So much trust is put in the ability of the reader. Whenever a chapter opens, the reader is plunged into the middle of the narrative and is expected to make sense of what’s happening—who’s the speaker in this chapter? Where am I? What is happening? And it’s only in the latter part of the chapter where things will start to make sense. Then, you’re on to a new chapter, and the disorientation starts again. I enjoyed trudging through the book, but can understand why people may be turned off by that.

Another marvel of this novel is that from start to finish, everything moves parallel along two realms: this is a physical novel, but it’s also very much an allegorical one. This beautifully reflects the poetic quality of our history and experiences. Of how we always seem to repeat the mistakes of the past. Of how, many years later, we seem to find ourselves in the same situations. And if we extend this to the rise of the Marcoses and the historical revisionism happening in the present… hay nako.

Which leads me to the way Nolledo wrote the novel's climactic moment: this war novel culminates in an overlap of memories. The parallel sentences hone in on the point that things that have happened before will happen again. America fooled us twice—first when they colonized us in 1899 and now in 1945 as they shelled Manila to the ground—both done in the pretense of being our liberators.

I found the allegories too in the nose at first. But thinking about it now, I’m glad the subtexts are simple and obvious, because the text itself is already challenging enough. Kung mahirap pa pati subtext san na lang ako pupulutin?

Some things I did not enjoy: I did not like the dream sequences in this novel. I did not like the woman (or, in the case of BftL, girl) as a nation trope employed. Especially since the waif who is the stand-in for the nation is worse than Maria Clara in Rizal’s novels. I don’t appreciate the sexist language (i.e., penetration), especially around the awakening of the nation’s soul. That said, I forgive Nolledo for his sexism. He’s a genius but still very much a product of his time.

The novel ends on a hopeful note, a promise of becoming, of blossoming for this nation. (Reading it today under another Marcos administration is bleak and depressing.) But one has to hold on to hope.

This novel is breathtaking, audacious, and blatantly anti-imperialist. It also tells us that the poor, the masa, carry the nation’s soul—not the educated middle class, not the wealthy landowners, not the ruthless authoritarians in power. But for the Lovers is a challenging read, but one that is well worth your time.

More photos from the book on my Instagram!

[sforzesco]

Author's Note on the American Edition of The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, Gina Apostol / Gina Apostol's Forward and Vincente L. Rafael's Introduction to Nick Joaquin's The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic / A map of the Philippines

[ilaw-at-panitik]

It's really interesting that in one of [Gramsci's] essays on education, he maintained that workers should be taught to read Dante. It's kind of weird because of the complexity of Dante, but his point was that no one, including workers and the general populous of nation, should be alienated from the culture production that their own world has produced. And that would be my response against the concept of reading, the question of cult in English, et cera, or that pop vs. jazz assumes. What we should do as Filipinos is strive to make as many people as possible able to read Nolledo with pleasure. And since English is also part of our lives, we need to keep moving into the direction of having a nation of radical justice that will allow all of us Filipinos to read the complexities of ourselves in our novels, in whatever language we find our novels. The received idea of "cult," even imagining that only a few people would enjoy this kind of English... I think we are limiting ourselves and our imagination for our fellow Filipinos.

Gina Apostol, in MCAD TK’s Rediscovering Nolledo: Reading But for the Lovers

[alightinthelantern]

Today I finished reading Insurrecto, by Gina Apostol. Set in the Philippines, it tells the story of Magsalin, a Philippino translator living in America who returns to her birth country after her mother’s passing, who agrees to serve as translator and guide to Chiara Brasi, a film director and daughter of deceased film director Ludo Brasi, who died under mysterious circumstances, and whose Vietnam war film and cult classic The Unintended is a more philosophical and melancholy counterpoint to the Francis Ford Coppola’s famed Apocalypse Now. Chiara has come to the Philippines for research and location scouting for her new film, intended as a counterpart of her father’s film, which will tell the story of the real-life American genocide in the Samar region in 1901 which inspired her father’s film. Chiara already has a script prepared. Magsalin reads it, then boldly prepares an alternate script of her own, which she gives back to Chiara, infuriating her. This begins a battle of scripts and world-views in a plot that veers in and out of stories within stories within stories, in an incredibly meta, even meta-meta, way that is in constant dialogue with itself.

The novel was absolutely fantastic. The narrative veers between 1901, 1974 and the 2000s, of Samar uprising, the making of The Unintended, and the modern day, and does so deftly and expertly, the narrative splitting between Chiara’s and Magsalin’s lives and and the stories they’ve scripted. Of the two scripts, one centers on a wealthy American heiress and photographer named Cassandra Chase who comes to the Philippines to take stereoscopic photos of the Philippine-American war. The other script focuses on a native Philippine woman, Casiana Nacionales. In fact there are two Casianas, or Cazes, one in 1970s Philippines, the other in 1901. The novel veers in unexpected directions and slowly builds up its various timelines chapter by chapter, at times building toward forgone conclusions, at other times swapping out these conclusions for new ones entirely. The narrative plays with itself in meta and meta-meta ways, but always in a way that’s easy to understand, with intelligent yet plainspoken prose whose only stumbling blocks might be a plethora of native Philippino words scattered throughout. It’s also very wryly funny, especially in the early chapters.

This book is entirely one of the most intelligent, brilliant novels I’ve ever read, and I loved it from start to finish. I heartily recommend reading it, for it’s an intensely rewarding story.

[pag-sigaw]

Re-Read: Gun Dealers’ Daughter by Gina Apostol, read with Elites and Ilustrados in Philippine Culture by Caroline Hau

“I am a coward. I do not have the imagination to possess affection. To be honest, I have never been able to envision society as a creature with genuine warmth or pumping heart.”

On the romanticism of the colonization of the Philippines, brought forth by Magellan’s arrival:

“A charming romance. Fancy dress-up for the evils that occurred in the colonizer’s name.”

Reeling, still, from the return of another Marcos to Malacañang, I decided to re-read Apostol. I read it once before, in a fugue state, too caught up in the language and the imagery of a pretty patient boarded up in New York (like the wife in the conjugal dictatorship) to really linger. I first read it as a sophomore in the same university as Sol and Jed and Soli, too like the narrator to surface something genuine. It didn’t take.

Now, though. With Hau in the margins and my own pencil marks, I am gutted. The amnesiac telling the same story, over and over, is told to forget it to make room for new memories. Is told to tell stories in the present tense. Everyone else, her doctor says, has already forgotten. How cruel. “It’s horrible,” the artist says, “how we forget the past, just like that—we forget how war has killed the best of us.”

Apostol is a master story-teller, that rare Twitter invention: someone who can write write. Her language repeats because it’s what the tongue remembers. It cuts like an accusation. It is accented with the inflections of this burgis girl who cannot pay attention during EDs in huts for all the roaches there, who retches at the funeral of those killed in protests. Apostol writes pointedly, “You are who survived.” Caroline Hau, academic-historian, herself a writer, rephrases it more plainly: the non-elite is the victim of the elite, killed off by two rich kids hatching an assassination plot. So what now?

It’s terrifying and comforting both that this is a story familiar in the now. Apostol tells it with grace.

— bookstagram

[thetrial]

2, 4 & 14!!!💌💌

<33333

2. Did you reread anything? What?

i already talked about some of the books i reread here. i also started reading some of my favourite books from when i was a child with my little sister :) so far this year we've read the neverending story and momo (both by michael ende), ella echanted (gail carson-levine) and the first percy jackson book. if i get my hands on the earthsea novels then those are next <3

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

i did! i finally read a toni morisson novel (the bluest eye, specifically the audiobook as read by the author) and it was a difficult book to get through but her words were so full of love (& the additional layer of kindness brought by her narration). by far the author i am most excited to read more of.

i also loved the books i read by olga tokarczuk (drive your plow over the bones of the dead), china miéville (the city & the city, the last days of new paris) and mary doria russel (the sparrow), all new-to-me authors from this year. i'm not sure if that counts but i also rediscovered franz kafka (the trial, letter to my father) and ursula k le guin (the left hand of darkness) after not reading them in years

14. What books do you want to finish before the year is over?

there is a lot of non-leisure reading on my plate right now so i am doubtful i will succeed in finishing either of those before the 31st but; i am in the middle of ghost music (an yu), which is quite short and enjoyable so far, many mushrooms, and i might stay up late tonight or tomorrow and simply read it all in one sitting. in addition, i got sidetracked halfway through insurrecto (gina apostol) and i would love to get back into it, i thought it was wonderful

thank you so much!!

[rotzaprachim]

want to read some Gina Apostol. Think I’d like her work

[bookloure]

Some book and art photos from a recent trip to Baguio City🌲|

I brought The Kindness of Birds by Merlinda Bobis, but of course, I wasn't able to read it. Wishful thinking lang talaga magdala ng book on vacations eh lol. I managed to sneak-read some stories from The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, though, because I have it on ebook. So far, I'm loving it. 🤍

Another highlight of the trip was BenCab museum. The man himself was there when we went, but because I'm shy, so I did not dare to take a photo with him. I just took a photo of the legend from where I was seated. Oh well.

I also finally saw Woman with Fan by BenCab. This painting is the cover art of Gina Apostol's Insurrecto. I had to take a pic.

Of course, I had to visit Mt. Cloud! Sadly, I missed both Ninotchka Rosca and Ambeth Ocampo's talks Sayang. Anyway, I bought five books from there plus a cute bag that I got from the Night Market.

So much walking in this city! (:

[thesecretroot]

I’ve read 23 books so far this year - more than I had expected to get to at this point, by far, and there are some real winners on the list. Top books of 2023 (so far):

1. The Candy House, Jennifer Egan

2. Five Decembers, James Kestrel

3. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Michael Chabon

4. The Future of Another Timeline, Annalee Newitz

5. Civilizations, Laurence Binet

6. Dead Souls, Sam Riviere

7. The Colossus of New York, Colson Whitehead

8. The Mirage, Matt Ruff

9. The Making of Incarnation, Tom McCarthy

10. The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, Gina Apostol

11. The Ferryman, Justin Cronin

12. Titanium Noir, Nick Harkaway

13. The Anomaly, Herve Le Tellier

14. Rogues, Patrick Radden Keefe

15. The Metaverse, Matthew Ball

Books I’ve read so far this year: https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/39272374

[ilaw-at-panitik]

For those who missed the talk, here's a recording courtesy of the UP Diliman Department of English and Comparative Literature Facebook Page.