Francisco Balagtas

Considered to be the Filipino equivalent of the renowned William Shakespeare, Francisco Balagtas, or Baltazar to some, had a big impact on Filipino literature. Born on April 2nd, 1788 as one of the four children in his family, Balagtas began writing poetry at an early age with poems such as “Mahal ko ang Bayan ko.” His education first began at a school in Bigaa and later he enrolled at Colegio de San Juan de Letran in the city of Manila. However, it wasn’t until he met his mentor Jose de la Cruz did Balagtas’ poetry really began to blossom. During his work as a house keeper for the Trinidad family in Tondo, Manila, the head master allowed Balagtas to study at the Colegio de San Jose where he had the privilege to study under the great writer of Tondo, Jose de la Cruz. Although it was evident that Balagtas was a gifted writer, Cruz always wanted him to push himself to be better and to refine his skills. His most famous and celebrated piece of writing is the masterpiece Florante at Laura. Balagatas was inspired to write such a tale after his move to Pandacan in 1835, where he met the lovely Maria Asuncion Rivera. Maria would become Balagtas’ inspiration, his light, for Florante at Laura where she would become personified in his characters of “Cecilio.” However, Balagatas did not begin to write the story until after he was framed by Mariano Capule, a contender for Maria Rivera’s love. Capule was a very wealthy and influential figure that eventually convinced the authorities to imprison Balagtas for the false accusation that he had placed orders for a servant girl’s hair to be removed. Ironically, the themes of Balagtas’ life during those times, lost of love and imprisonment, were reflected in Florante at Laura through the main character Florante.

The story of Florante at Laura begins in a dark Albanian forest where the main character is tied to at tree after being exiled from his kingdom. Florante is in a state of despair after receiving news that his father had be murdered, and his beloved Laura was forced to marry his child hood rival Adolfo. All hope seemed to be lost until he was rescued by a Persian prince named Aladin. Florante narrates his life story to Aladin and explains that he had met Adolfo during his childhood years while studying in Athens, Greece. Adolfo, once praised as the smartest student, became jealous and resentful after Florante surpassed his skills and attempted to kill Florante. Adolfo’s plan failed because Menandro, loyal friend of Florante and later to be the general to the Albanian army, intervened. After sharing expeditions with Menandro, Florante would meet his beloved Laura, through the ruler of Albania, King Linseo. Florante would gain popularity and the status of “Defender of Albania” after assisting the Albanian army during the wars against the Persian army and Turkish forces. Adolfo would get his revenge on his childhood rival when he ambushed Florante with a large group of soldiers during Florante’s journey back from visiting his father. Adolfo imprisoned Florante and exiled him into the Albanian forest, beheaded the former king and Florante’s father, and forced Laura to take his hand in marriage. After hearing Florante’s story, Aladin confesses that he also faces similar circumstances and longs to be reunited with his love Flerida. The two men are interrupted by the events of Flerida saving Laura from a rapist, and they are all reunited at last. Menandro with his powerful army was able to overthrow Adolfo’s reign, and Florante and Laura were now able to return to Albania, while Aladin and Flerida returned to Persia after the corrupt sultan committed suicide. Peace and prosperity were achieved in the two kingdoms with the return of their rightful rulers.

Francisco Balagtas passed away on February 20th, 1862, at the age of 73 sealing his legacy as a great poet. Before his death, he uttered his last wishes that his children would not have to endure the pain and hardship that he faced throughout his life as a poet. It is very admirable of Balagtas to dedicate his life to his passion of being a poet, even though it caused him much grief and pain. He wanted to share his gift with the world, and to represent Filipino literature at its best, even at the cost of his own suffering.

El Filibusterismo

El Filibusterismo, written by the Filipino patriotic hero Jose Rizal, is a very influential novel that encouraged the Filipino people to revolt against the Spanish authority that existed in the Philippines. Rizal began writing the novel in October of 1877, and after a few revisions, was finally completed and publicly released on March 29, 1891 in the city of Biarritz. El Filibusterismo is the sequel to Rizal’s first novel, Noli Me Tangere, but unlike the first book is more serious in nature and echoes a graver overall tone. In order to understand the novel, one must first consider the word filibustero on its own. Author Rizal reveals that he was first introduced to the word after hearing about the unjust executions of the three priests, known as the Gomburza, in 1872. Many Filipinos feared to be associated with the word because it represented individual(s) who were patriotic but eventually faced the punishment of death. Rizal, however, did not fear the subversiveness of the word and used it as the title for his book while at the same time dedicating the book in memory of the Gomburza.

El Filibusterismo, written four years after Noli Me Tangere, continues the story of Crisostomo Ibarra from the first novel who is believed to be dead. Ibarra creates a new identity for himself in Simoun—a wealthy jeweler --and returns to the Philippines with the ambitions of seeking revenge and revolution. No one sees through the disguise except for Basilio, also from the first novel, who is now a medical student. Simoun’s first attempt at sparking a revolution fails because his sweet heart Maria Clara has died; he had originally planned to rescue her from the convent. Simoun tries to convince Basilio to join his revolution, but he refuses due to his own personal views. Although Basilio is in debt to Simoun for helping him bury his mother, this alone was not enough justification for Basilio to join the cause. Basilio offers his full cooperation to Simoun, however, after being imprisoned and hearing news that his lover Juli was killed as she was trying to escape a friar’s house. Fueled with revenge, bitterness, and a debt to Simoun for freeing him from prison, Basilio supports Simoun’s cause for revolution. Simoun’s second attempt at revolution comes in the form of a bomb that he plants at Captain Tiago’s house. A wedding is to take place that day, and the Governor General and Padre Salvi are amongst some of the very important people on the guest list. Everything plays out as planned, until Basilio has a change in heart and decides to throw the bomb into a nearby river, diverting the explosion from the house. After the second failed attempt, Simoun takes refuge at the home of a Filipino priest, and decides to take his own life by consuming poison.

Jose Rizal wrote El Filibusterismo in Spanish, but did not want the book to fall in the hands of the Spanish authority. He wanted his book to belong to the Filipino people because it was meant to encourage revolution against the unjust ruling system. Through his book, Rizal wanted to highlight issues in the Philippines such as corrupt officials, the need for reform in the education system, and the threat of the growing social status of the Spaniards, while also encouraging social reform for his people. I believe it is important to praise Rizal for his ability to rally the Filipino people together for the cause of revolution without having to use means of violence. Through El Filibusterismo, Rizal was successfully able to use the power of words, and not fists, to inspire Filipinos to speak out and fight back.

Jose Rizal

Jose Rizal, born on June 19, 1861, was a man of many talents and intelligence—he could speak over ten languages, paint, sculpt, and write. He is considered the patriotic hero to the Filipino people during the Spanish colonial period, and played a key role in informing the Filipino people of social reform and inspired them to fight against Spanish rule through non violent means.
Perhaps one of the many things worth mentioning about Rizal, aside from his notorious reputation with having affairs with women, is his strenuous and dedicated path in building his education. Rizal began his education career at the Ateneo Municipla de Manila and was one of nine students to graduate his class with the honorary title of sobresaliente or “outstanding” student and earning his Bachelors of Art degree. He continued his journey at the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Arts and Letters where he was focused on Philosophy, but upon hearing the bad news about his mother’s failing eye condition, switched to the Medicine and Surgery school to focus on ophthalmology in order to find ways to aid her. He was unable to finish his degree in Medicine however, due to the discrimination that he claimed was placed upon him by the Spanish Dominican friars that held authority at the school. Rizal decided to depart the Philippines, without the consent of his parents, and study abroad in Madrid where he would earn two degrees in Medicine: one at the University Central de Madrid and one at the University of Paris. He would receive and achieve more success in his academic career throughout his life, such as being inducted as a member of the Berlin Ethnological and Anthropological Societies, but it was not until Rizal began his first influential novel titled Noli Me Tangere that he was considered an important figure of social reform and a threat to the Spanish authority.
Noli Me Tangere and the sequel novel El Filibusterismo became defining masterpieces in Rizal’s career that sparked much controversy due to the light that it shined on issues of social unjust that existed in the Philippines. With the novel’s many insulting symbolism directed at Spanish colonial authority and the governing friars, Spaniards and the Filipinos that supported them were extremely angered and wanted Rizal prosecuted. Unfazed by the criticism and threats he received, Rizal preceded with educating the general Filipino public through writing essays, editorials, poems, allegories for newspapers such as La Solidaridad where he echoed the ideas of freedom and equal rights for the Filipino people. Rizal would later be affiliated with a civic movement called La Liga Filipina which advocated for social reforms using legal means and not violence. However, this movement was short lived and suppressed by the government. As the Filipino Revolution began to build momentum, Rizal was exiled to Dapitan for four years. During this time, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death due to his affiliations with the secret militant group named Katipunan that were active in the rebellion against Spanish colonial rule. From his earliest days of being a social reformist, to his last breaths before his execution, Jose Rizal remained calm, collected, and true to his ideals of a non-violent and peaceful reform. Jose Rizal, like Martin Luther King Jr., projects the ideals that equality and justice can be achieved through intelligent words instead of acts of violence or war.

Estella Habal and San Francisco’s International Hotel

From 1968 until 1977 the International Hotel in San Francisco resisted numerous attempts of eviction. For years the I-hotel had provided many Filipino immigrants with low income housing. It was the gathering place of the first manongs who had arrived to work in the canneries and fields during the 1920’s and 30’s. It had become the center of what was then known to be a massive Manilatown full of Filipino shops, restaurants and businesses. While technically, the Filipino people at the time could not own their own properties or businesses, they were considerably well off and appeared to be thriving. So once word had come about that such a marvelous place of community to so many people, was going to be torn down and replaced with a parking lot, it is no surprise that many went through drastic measures to keep it standing. A human barricade consisting of thousands of students, and other civilians (not only Filipino or Asian American) surrounded the entire block where the International Hotel stood.

Estella Habal, a professor at San Jose State University, writes a memoir of the decade long protest in support of the International Hotel. She , who worked as an organizer for the I-Hotel Tenants Association during the mid-70’s describes the importance of not only the structure of the hotel itself, but its influence on the community as a whole how it was the root of the numerous Filipinos in Manilatown during that time. Maniltown in San Francisco by then had grown to be about 10 blocks beginning for Kearny and California Street and stretching to Columbus Avenue. The I-hotel, even during the years of protest against its eviction, had become a community center, and was not only remembered for providing homes for the low-income working class, but also for the retired Filipino workers and war veterans. Sadly regardless of the amount of effort that so many people put through to keep the I-Hotel standing, it’s remaining tenants were evicted by force and the structure torn down. The grand Manilatown of San Francisco had gradually disintegrated along with the fall of the I-hotel. Through her book San Francisco’s International Hotel: mobilizing the Filipino American community in the anti-eviction movement and her current position on the Board of Directors of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, she hopes to keep the legacy of the International Hotel and Historic Manilatown alive through various projects on the former I-Hotel’s grounds. By keeping their legacy alive, it emphasizes its impact and importance in Filipino American history.

Jessica Hagedorn

Writer, poet and playwright Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn , born in 1949, had grown up in the Philippines. Her childhood memories were made at 4461 Old Santa Mesa Street surrounded by family and friends. But when her Mother made the sudden decision to uproot the family due to their father’s unfaithfulness, Hagedorn was far from ready or willing to accept a different concept of “home” in the United States. In 1962 at 13 she along with her brothers along accompanied their mother to their new home in San Francisco. Friends and family back home begged for them to return, her brothers eventually did, she however did not calling her mother “[a] wronged woman, after all. And [she], the loyal daughter.” It was during these years of adjustment which she was tormented by heartbreak, anger and homesickness. She turned to books, movies and eventually writing to escape her “problems” and express her discontent. It would take years before she would return to her homeland. Once she did, she would find something completely different from what she had left behind.

Writing and poetry had become her outlet. Her home in San Francisco along with school and her environment allowed her to find ways to express her anger guilt and other emotions. She eventually took up multimedia work, acting and was a lyricisist for a band. Many of her writings carried rebellious ideals of that time period of the early 70’s. While she would eventually return to the Philippines, it was not always the center of her writing. Here is a poem from For Young Women: Poems that appears to be directed at her mother who while in the United States, kept her Filipino identity and the country close to her despite everything that had happened.

The Death of Anna May Wong

My mother is very beautiful

And not yet old.

A Twin,

Color of two continents:

I stroll through Irish tenderloin

Nightmare doors—drunks spill out

Saloon alleys falling asleep

At my feet…

My mother wears beaded

Mandarin coat:

In the Dryness

Of San Diego’s Mediterranean parody

I see your ghost, Belen

As you clean up

After your sweet senora’s

mierda

Jazz,

Don’t do me like that.

Mambo,

Don’t do me like that.

Samba, calypso, funk and

Boogie

Don’t cut me up like that

Move my gut so high up

Inside my throat

I can only strangle you

To keep from crying...

My mother serves crepes suzettes

With a smile

And a puma

Slithers down

19^th street and Valencia

Gabriel’s o.d.’s on reds

As we dance together

Dorothy Lamour undrapes

Her sarong

And Bing Crosby ignores

The mierda.

My mother’s lavender lips

Stretch in a slow smile.

And beneath

The night’s cartoon sky

Cold with rain

Miss Alice Coltrane

Kills the pain

And I know

I can’t go home again.

1971

Her trips to the Philippines would serve as inspiration for her novels and books. Her writings truly “Filipino American” for they are based off both personal experiences and the examinations of the Filipino culture and how it has continued to live off the American culture. She had witnessed the country’s evolution during the Marcos era from Philippine soil as well as from afar when she was in the United States. In her novel and turned play Dogeaters she describes the life and struggles of the Filipino people separated by wealth and class through a story and eyes of the youth. Through various characters of different backgrounds and personalities from the beauty queen pageant winners to djs and families, Hagedorn is able to present the different types of people in the Philippines as well as what they were experiencing through the country’s time of change.

Al Robles: A Representative of Old and New

                Al Robles was born in 1930 and raised in the Filmore district of San Francisco. His works not only represented his sense of respect for the manong generation of the 1900s-1960s but also a sense of concern toward the present state of Filipino America itself. As an activist, Robles worked to fight the demolition of the I-Hotel, brought activists to the Delano Agbayani Village settlement and led trips to the Tule Lake and Manzanar concentration camps. Robles’ top concern was promoting the history and experiences of the past to young activists, Filipino or not. Through the use of poetry, oral histories and written stories, Robles attempted to bridge the cultural narratives of young and old Filipinos together.

Protestors outside the I Hotel

      Robles work seemed to reflect a concern that it is the responsibility of the younger generation to not just accept Filipino American history, but also to record and remember it for all its glories and unhappiness. Robles wanted his poetry to inform his readers and bring his perspective on history and community. Through many interviews with the aging bachelors of the manong generation, Robles used his literature to paint a picture of the Filipino American legacy. In his collection of poems Rappin with Ten Thousand Carabaos n the Dark, Robles writes of the manong experience for all its gloomy truths, at times using such verses as,

brown hands
unfolding
black flesh
dyin’ pimps
laid out cold
on piss streets

            Robles characterization of the manong experience brings to the foreground the importance of examining the past for all its miseries as well as pleasantries. In addition to recounting the Filipino American experience however, many of Robles’ works also seem to illustrate his sense not only as a Filipino American but also as an Asian American existing within a multiracial space of community. In one of his more famous works, “Winter Rain Yum Cha with Gin San,” Robles examines the “urban nomad” as a racially ambiguous (or perhaps free of race?) traveler as a product of both nature and the city and compares it to his own image of a drunken Buddha “clinging to the wind”,

Winter rain yum cha with Gin San
A fat, sloppy ragged, dirty, nose-
picking recluse, who hangs out at
Portsmouth Square all year-round.

Dragonflies get all tangled up in
his thick black mountain hair
Knotted with pine cones

                   Robles died in May of 2009 relatively unknown in the mainstream American literary circle. Nonetheless his efforts at community building and preserving Filipino-American legacies will not be forgotten. His attempts at reconnecting past histories with the present generation should be carried on by activists today.

        

M. Evelina Galang

M. Evelina Galang on her website describes an occasion where she once encountered a fourth grader who asked her why she writes. “I don’t know why, but I spoke before thinking and what I told him was that I was the oldest of six children and that growing up, my family was very big and loud and chaotic. ‘No one ever listened to me,’ I told him. ‘I wrote my words down so I could be heard.’ Later I realized how true that was. How true that is. I write so I can be heard.” In a published conversation between herself and poet Nick Carbo, she describes that growing up, she lived in two worlds: one, where she was struggling to fit into the American culture, the other, where she was immersed in Filipino tradition by her Family and the rest of the Filipino Community. Even throughout her adolescent years, when she had entered the “in crowd” she believed that she had a stronger connection with the Filipinos and did whatever she could to keep that connection and the sense of belonging.


Her book Her Wild American Self is a compilation of short stories of young women struggling with the identity of being a Filipina in America. With various examples of a culture over powering the other or trying to find a balance in between, these stories mirror the experiences of many Filipino Americans. She along with many other Filipino American writers express their struggles of living in two cultures: Filipino and American. The majority of them grew up or arrived in the US in the late 60’s and 70’s and today, communicate their constant longings to return to their homelands or the homeland of their parents in order to be accepted. The older generations of Filipinos in America were forming their communities with one another, while the younger generation was forced into the “American way of life”, attending schools where they were the minority, where they were different, and needed to find ways to fit in. And when they came home, they were in another world, with different customs and morals than they were attempting to follow earlier in the day. Filipino American students were invisible, suffering from racism both subtle and not so subtle, and as children lacked a voice not only socially in America but in their homes as well. This is why books such as Her Wild American Self are important in learning about Filipino American Experience and Culture, because it carries the voice that had been silenced in the past and in the present.

N.V.M. Gonzalez: "An Affair with Letters"

Filipino writer N.V.M. Gonzalez once said, "Literature is an affair of letters." Born Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez, this journalist, essayist, author, and teacher has become one of the most widely recognized and studied Filipino writers to date. "N.V.M." was raised in Mindoro, Philippines by his father, a school supervisor and teacher. After high school, he attended the National University in Manila, but never earned in degree. However, while in Manila, N.V.M. edited for the Evening News Magazine and Manila Chronicle, and in 1934, he had his first essay published in the Philippine Graphic. In 1948, the Rockefeller Foundation gave the aspiring writer a chance to travel to Stanford University and Columbia University to study and meet with prominent American writers. When he returned to the Philippines in 1950, Gonzalez started teaching at the University of San Tomas, then later at the Philippine Women's University, and finally spent 18 years teaching at the University of the Philippines. Here, he hosted the first writers' workshop.

When Gonzalez moved back to California, he continued his teaching career in several universities, including UC Santa Barbara. Throughout his entire teaching career, N.V.M. Gonzalez wrote 14 books and various poems and short stories. For all his writings, he has received a multitude of awards such as an honorary doctorate from the University of the Philippines, the National Artist Award for Literature, and the Jose Rizal Pro Patria Award. Gonzalez passed away in 1999 due to kidney complications.

N.V.M. Gonzalez's tremendous impact on the literary world helped encourage other Filipino and Filipino American to pursue different careers in writing. This is evident in the foundation established in his name, N.V.M. Inc. This Filipino non-profit organization continues his literary legacy by hosting short story workshops, writing competitions, and other artistic events. Moreover, their NVM awards has already given $1000 to aspiring writers looking to furher their careers in literature. Along with this foundation, Gonzalez's teaching career was a significant contribution in itself to students in both the Philippines and in America. N.V.M. was a mentor especially for writers of Filipino heritage, and as a Filipino teacher and writer in the United States, he provided the minority perspective since there were not many Filipino writers in the country during his time. His lengthy career may encourage other Filipinos to be more expressive of their ideas through the arts, especially through writing or even pursue a career in teaching higher level education.