In addition to indicating its unique
Philippine artistic form and heritage, the title
immediately invokes a female
genealogy, which has the novel join the ranks of the body of
Asian (American) women’s writing that, since the feminist projects of the
1960s, seeks to “preserve memory and establish a matrilineal tradition” (Wong
& Santa Ana 1999, p. 195). While Angelica’s
Daughters partly continues the 1960s Asian (American) feminist literature,
whose aim has been to remedy and counteract racist and sexist stereotypes by
turning to strong, heroic female ancestors, the novel also moves on—albeit at
times rather tentatively—to such sensitive issues as failed marriages, sexual
affairs with married men, as well the perpetual taboo of women having
considerably younger lovers.
The story revolves around Tess, a
young Filipina whose family emigrates to the United States when she was nine
years old. Although Tess grows up in America, marries there and lives close to
her father’s family, her childhood memories from Manila and her mother’s family
are not lost to her. Indeed, these
memories resurge strongest in times of crisis. Pressured by the paternal
family’s and the couple’s own (internalized) expectations of becoming parents,
Tess and her husband Tonio have grown apart. But while Tonio finds comfort and
salvation in a love relationship with what appears to Tess a younger version of
herself, Tess appears to be left to face the failure of her marriage without
any resources to cope. Too absorbed in being the wife of Tonio, Tess has
unlearned her ability to develop or nurture her self-identity. It is at this
point that the legendary forebear, Angelica, resurfaces from Tess’s childhood
recollections, which come alive during her visit to Manila and the ancestral
home. Angelica’s letters, as well as Tess’s grandmother’s (Lola Josefina)
stories add to a multilayered plot that interweaves past and present,
individual and collective experiences which evoke a rich and colourful female
heritage
that provides Tess with the sought
for resources to live through her crisis.
At first, still shrouded in Lola
Josefina’s romantic tales, in the course of events the mythical female ancestor
Angelica emerges as a headstrong woman whose fascination lies as much in her
stamina to follow her own desires as in her whims and weaknesses. Rather than a
towering mythical persona who is “in control of her life at all times” (p. 13),
Angelica increasingly turns out to be a character of flesh and blood whose
growth from young girl into a woman and mother includes both the struggle
against her own foibles as well as the adversities of the Tagalog War once she
gets involved with the painter and illustrator Teban. Reconnecting to her
female Philippines ancestors and their wisdom through Angelica’s letters helps
Tess recover her inner voice and compass—in short, her soul. Needless to say,
this soul is decidedly Filipino, notwithstanding the obvious Spanish and
American influences that surround her (and her ancestor Angelica) in Manila.
Tess’s full embrace and affirmation
of her Filipino origins and identity are mirrored in an intriguing episode
between her female forebear Angelica and the American consul and
stepfather-to-be. In her letters to Tia Elena, Angelica depicts the consul as
the quintessential colonizer who, while utterly unconscious of his blundering
and ignorance, is firmly convinced of his own moral righteousness and humane
mission: “Once, as he expounded (he loved to expound!) on the future of Asia,
he swung his right arm and knocked over the Meissen vase. It broke into a
million pieces! Mama saved the shards, hoping to put them together again, but
that project is doomed. The poor vase was pulverized” (p. 31). Apparently
unaware of his own presumption and convinced of the liberating and progressive
spirit of his mission to spread democracy throughout Asia, whenever the consul gets
into one of his “expounding” moods, he manages to drive even the present
colonizers into the corner: “people back off and let him have his say, even the
Spaniards” (p. 34). To Angelica, the American consul is a “magician” who both“charm[s]
and mesmerize[s]” (p. 35), but also an“idiot” (p. 34) and “blunderbuss” (p.
33). The authors are at their best in their ironic enhancement of the consul’s
colonial personality through the analogy of Perico, his parrot, a bird “meaner than sin” (p. 31). Against the advice
of Angelica’s mother and convinced of his magnanimity, the consul nurses the
half-dead parrot back to life, only to have Perico terrorize the rightful
inhabitants of the household, “ Papa’s three aging parrots” (p. 31).What is more,
“[t]he nasty bird is master of the place,
defecating wherever he pleases and pecking at the mahogany furniture” (p.
32).
When Angelica writes about the
consul’s gaze at her budding sexuality and relates that he looks at her “in a peculiar way” (p. 42), the classical
patterns of colonial and patriarchal appropriation seem to be complete.
However, neither in the life of Angelica nor in the life of Tess does
appropriation by a non-Philippine culture take hold; neither of their stories
is an example of assimilation. Quite the contrary, both women actually get
closer to their Philippine identity in the course of events, even though their
life stories are separated by more than a hundred years. In spite of the
overbearing behavior of the consul—and his parrot—Angelica takes on the American challenge:
driven by her hatred, a hatred that is shot through with her own (sexual)
attraction to and curiosity about this male Other, as she admits, Angelica’s
deceitful “romancing” of the American consul ends in expelling the intruding
foreigner for good with the unexpected retreat by the consul himself. Here, the
novel re-writes and responds to the tradition of the popular historical romance
that Amy Kaplan has identified as being complicit in the American
national-imperial project in two ways. First, it provides a counter-narrative
to the traditional assimilation and incorporation of imperial subjects. Second,
it shifts the focus away from the “spectacle of American manhood” (Kaplan 1990,
p. 667) and onto Filipina womanhood. But in doing so, the novel deviates from
the traditional pattern of flawless, heroic characters, aware of the fact that
the production of a mere counter-narrative necessarily remains entangled within the troubling
discourse of empire and nationhood. Instead of a shining heroine that would
qualify for a “spectacle of womanhood” within a national project, Angelica is
exposed as “selfish and short-sighted” (p. 59), a flawed fictional character
and a woman who openly acknowledges her faults and dark sides. As she writes in
her letter to Tia Elena: “I will try not
to exaggerate, nor twist things in my favour” (p. 41).
photo old Philippine church, by Cecilia Brainard -could be a scene from Angelica's Daughters
Similarly intriguing are the
situations two other female characters find themselves in: Lola Josefina’s
relationship with her considerably younger dancing instructor, and Tess’s
second cousin Dina’s affair with a married man and father. While I applaud the
authors to include the unusual love story of Tess’s grandmother with the
43-year-old Dante, I find it unfortunate that her point of view is excluded
from the narrative focalization. Except for the fact that Lola Josefina feels
like a teenager in love and that Dante behaves as a handsome lover and graceful
dance instructor should—courteous and respectful—in their relationship the two characters remain shadowy and
underdeveloped.
In contrast, Dina is allowed her own
focalization and her story opens up yet another angle at Filipina womanhood,
love, and sexuality. Dina’s obsession with Mike is quickly smothered by her own
bad conscience and an angry outburst by Tess, which brings Dina’s secret affair
into the open. The older women scold and wail, and once Dina’s father finds out
about her affair with a married man, “the house seemed to shake down to its foundation”
(p. 138). It seems that much of the parental disapproval of Dina’s
“foolishness” (p. 139) derives from cultural and social expectations in which
female morality plays a central role. Both Dina’s bad conscience and her
preoccupation with the nuns, as well as the older generation’s rage, reflect
the ideal of a young Filipina who knows how to restrain her sexual appetites
and make the “right” choice—that is, not to have an affair with a married man.
Sociologist Yen Le Espiritu (2001) has discerned a similar “‘ideal’ Filipina”
in immigrant communities whose “sexual virtuosity” (p. 427) and family
dedication often pose severe restrictions for the younger female generation.
However, contrary to the parental strictures, Tess’s first harsh reaction to
Dina’s transgression derives neither from a misdirected sense of morality nor
from an insistence on limiting traditional values. Instead, through Dina she
relives the anger and disappointment about her own failed marriage. In their
later reconciliation Tess apologizes to Dina: “I’m ... sorry Dina. I had no right to tell your family. It was a terrible
thing for me to do” (p. 166). All in all, the female descendants of Angelica
show an extraordinary openness toward matters of sexuality and passion, no
matter what their age.
Throughout the novel, female
sensuality is further underscored by the increasing, and increasingly
mouthwatering, omnipresence of Philippine food and cooking. While all these
issues show the authors at their very best, a number of scenes display a
sentimentality and stock inventory of romance that may disappoint the
sophisticated readers, in particular when it comes to the male lovers Luis and
Teban who remain truly sentimental men. This may, however, be perfectly
satisfactory to those who read Angelica’s
Daughters as what it is intended—namely, as “a relatively light romance”
(p. vii). This definitely pertains to the erotic encounters between Tess and
Luis, as well as Angelica and Teban. Their lovemaking is filled with romantic clichés
and hackneyed phrases. For example, in one of her letters Angelica relates her
first moments of bliss with Teban:
We stayed locked together for a long time. I rested my head
on his
chest and his heart thumped against my cheek. “I have to
leave today,”
he said.
“I know,” I replied.
He stared deep into my eyes, and he
ran his fingers over my forehead,
my nose, my cheeks, my chin, and
then he held me closer to him. “Are
you real?” he murmured. “Perhaps you
really are an angel sent from
heaven and you will vanish at any
moment.” He kissed me, and I
kissed him back. And he wrapped me
tight against him, and continued,
“What will I do without my angel?
...”
(p. 89)
Likewise, when at the end of the
book Tess finally finds in Luis the
wished-for significant Other, a
scene unfolds that sounds all too familiar:
Tess turned to find Luis standing just a few feet away.
“What are you
...?” she said. And then, “You’re here.” Without any
forethought, she
found herself moving quickly towards him. He opened his arms
to her
as if he had been doing it for years.
“Paolo told me I would find you here,” he said. He held Tess
to
him for a few moments, and when she lifted her head to look
at him, he
said, “We don’t have much time right now. Just tell me,
Tess. Tell me you
feel the way I do.”
Suddenly, all the trepidation she had felt about Luis, all
the fear of
commitment, of being hurt again,
were gone; all she knew was how safe she felt in his arms. In answer, Tess had
done what she’d wanted to do from the first moment she saw Luis: she kissed him
deeply. (pp. 158-159)
While I consider Angelica’s Daughters most impressive in
its ambiguous and puzzling moments than in its major romantic figure constellations
(Tess and Luis; Angelica and Teban), I definitely recommend the book to readers
to make up their own minds about such matters of taste. Tess’s ultimate—and
predictable—fulfilment of true love, however, leads to a question on which the
authors remain conspicuously silent throughout the novel: where does Tess stand
concerning her other “home,” the United States? Does it still qualify to be
called “home”? Let me return once again to the titular emphasis on the making
of the novel and the process of dugtungan writing. Indeed, if one did not know
otherwise, one would suspect that the book was the result of a single author,
since Angelica’s Daughters proves a
surprisingly even narration. In fact, the success of any dugtungan
writing may stand or fall by being too uneven, or not uneven enough. The result
may be a texture stitched together so poorly that it falls apart completely or degenerates
into “tasteless pap” (considering all the traditional and delicious-sounding
food and recipes in the book this comparison
comes naturally). If successful, however, it may produce an excitingly diverse
texture whose individual patches generate fascinating, fresh meanings and a
life of their own. But apparently the published version of Angelica’s Daughters is the result of the authors’ efforts of
rewriting their initially submitted manuscript. The final novel is thus heavily
revised and reworked in answer to the “scathing” review by a critic from Anvil
Publishing who had panned the novel’s “lack of unity” (Lim 2010). One cannot
help but wonder whether the writers, in their tour-de-force revisions, did not
do too much of a good thing erasing all the bumps and crags of their original
product, since it is often the rough edges that make the most endearing
characteristics of artistic expression. But since any predilections for or against
such criteria obviously depend on the eye of the beholder, or rather the
respective reviewer, it is moot to speculate whether the original unevenness
would have added spice to this romance in a positive sense. Hence, after this
first publication, we eagerly await the next dugtungan novel, which, hopefully,
will gratify a less conventional critic and be bolder, and prouder, of its
idiosyncrasies and experimental nature.
Michaela Keck
Institute of English and American
Studies
Carl von Ossietzky University,
Oldenburg,
Germany
Notes
1 The element of the “talking story”
is surely no coincidence. Not only is it a common
“female practice of telling stories,
often from one generation to the next” (Grice 2004, p.
182) among Asian American women
writers, but it has already defined the form of
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s novel, When the Rainbow Goddess Wept (1991).
2 The short story was published in
Sawi: Funny Essays, Stories and Poems on All Kinds of Heartbreaks, edited by A. J. Loredo,
B. J. A. Patino, and R. Bolipata-Santos (New Manila, Quezon City: Milflores Publishing,
2007).
References
Espiritu, Y. L. (2001). ‘We don’t
sleep around like white girls do’: Family, culture, and gender in Filipina American lives. Signs,
26 (2), 415-440.
Grice, H. (2004). Artistic
creativity, form, and fictional experimentation in Filipina American fiction. Melus, 29 (1), 181-198.
Kaplan, A. (1990). Romancing the
empire: The embodiment of American masculinity in the popular historical novel of the
1890s. American Literary History, 2, 659-690.
Lim, R. S. (2010). Novel train. The
Manila Bulletin, September 24. Retrieved from http://
PHOTOS
Above - l-r: Susan Evangelista, Cecilia Brainard, Nadine Sarreal
Next - Veronica Montes
Next - Old Church in the Philippines
Next - Erma Cuizon
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tags: Philippines, Philippines, Philippine American, literature, fiction, novel, dugtungan, women, writing, author, writers, romance, love story
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