Going Home to a Landscape: Writings by Filipinas. Ed. Marianna Villanueva, Virginia Cerenio

"Writing landscape thus becomes constitutive of the process of selfhood. This Phillipines, as represented by the women in this volume, is a distinctly plural phenomenon constructed out of the comparison and intersection of past and present, of colonizations and immigration, of the cohabitation of different races and cultures."
- Foreward by Rocio Davis

Phew!! It's a good thing that the poetry and prose in this collection contain NONE of the academica-graduate-degree-speak contained in this foreward, which is nearly drowning in its own jargon. Yet this foreward is also something to be proud of, because it represents the achievements Filipino writers have made in the past 5 years. When I was an undergraduate in 2001, one of my classmates was working on creating a pretend anthology of Filiipino authors, just like this one, because she couldn't find anything like it out there!!

Still, you might want to skip the foreward, and jump right into the introductions by its two editors, for an introduction into the book's design and to Filipino literature in general.

This collection is all about discovery. Villanueva's introduction says that for Filipino women, maintenance of "the internal landscape" is vital, and this image (theme?) unites all the works. The book moves through five phases:

I. Las Dalagas (the time between girlhood and adult womanhood)
II. Landscapes
III. Traveling over Water
IV. Testament
V. Another Day
VI. Roots

The variety of voices is astounding! And it's quite refreshing, making this a fun read. None of the selections repeat, yet they are all actually connected. I am mid-way through the second part, but I'd like to share a few clips to show you the different voices I'm talking about:

april is the month of asparagus / of old uncles with bent backs and tired eyes / of hot sun on my back and shoulders / in april / my father greets the sun / and stays in the fields long after sunset / in dirty flannel and worn Dickies / for more than forty years he has cut and packed / a detestable vegetable / white people love to eat
--- "April in Stockton"

oh yeah, well check this:
my mama's hella brown,
a teacher/artist in da Flip nation
don't got an accent
'cause she's second generation!
-- by the Pinay M.A.F.I.A.

You think I am all mountain and valley, your mouth probing forests, your tongue climbing peaks.
I am small, a landscape defined by the space within your arms. Your palms journey and memorize me.
-- "Cartographer"

some women color their lips red.
not me, i like to color mine with good words instead.
--- "Some Women"

At 2:00 in the morning, the patients who are not unconscious drift in morphine-induced bliss. The events of the evening drift across Caridad's mind like the patients' cardiac tracings on the screen. She hates losing her composure in front of doctors, but she couldn't help herself, she thought. When she and Nita were wrapping Mang Tomas's body in that plastic shroud, she remembered words her father had spoken that summer long ago: "Over the years I built walls around my mind so nothing could hurt me."
--- "Mang Tomas"

I am really enjoying this reading. It is not at all work, though my motive to jump in was partially work-related, given the number of Filipino students in our school. I will update as I read more.