dumbfoundry

Luisa A. Igloria: "The Filipina poets whose works you will read in this section, by no means represent the richness and plenitude of poetry as written by Filipina women. Literature in English, however, is only one small thread in the tapestry that is Filipino literature. In an archipelagic culture steeped in tradition and lore, vernacular languages and literatures tell as eloquently if not more so, of women - and men and children - and their precolonial, colonial, postcolonial and transglobal or diasporic realities.

As it happened countless times for me as I worked on curating this section, when you browse through these pages, doubtless some of the ads below the main Wompherence banner will call up some of those stereotypical images -- of the Filipina as mail order bride, the Filipina as domestic worker, or as shy and subservient "Maria Clara."

But there is so much more to the idea and reality of being Filipina -- whether she is indeed a mail order bride who has found her way to a rural community in Kansas; or a domestic worker in Dubai or Hong Kong helping her compatriots organize to learn more about their rights as migrant workers; or the nanny somewhere in Europe, who has temporarily put aside her teaching career and her degree in physics; or the former Wall Street banker who has decided to make wine and write poetry; the poets who are mothers and the mothers who are poets, and who use writing to forge new definitions of family in defiance of distance; or the poets who have come to writing from "outside the academy" ..."

This entry was posted by Ivy on Sunday, November 02, 2008 at 8:35 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.