I have frequently written about "Strong Filipino Women." It seems that, without looking for it, this theme continues to recur, in both public and personal realms. This one is more in the personal realm, as you will see.
rhb July 2018
For Cristina Pantoja (Jing) Hidalgo
When I first met Cristina Pantoja
Hidalgo in 1998, she was a member of the English and Comparative Literature
Department at the University of the Philippines-Diliman in Manila, where she
also had just been appointed the Director of the Creative Writing Center. I confess to being somewhat in awe of this
prestigious woman. I had felt the same
awe for the nuns who taught me in grade school, before I came to recognize them
as real people and even became friends and for some years a correspondent with my
eighth-grade teacher. I think Jing may
have sensed this when we first met. It
was in the CWC. She was working busily
at her desk in the Center’s imposing classroom/workshop, which, of course,
added to the effect.
We became colleagues (I was an exchange
professor in English Literature) and good friends over the semester. We have remained friends, first through my
several return visits, then via email, and finally, of all things, through
facebook. (For this connectiveness, I
have decided to forgive facebook’s invasion of privacy, providing they are
truly contrite.) Jing retired from UP
and took a position, similar to the one she had there, at the University of
Santo Tomas. She comes back to UP
frequently, including for my UP Press Book Launch in 2010 for “Sundays in
Manila.” She continues to write and win
national awards for her fiction and non-fiction.
Jing has recently experienced a death in
her family. I think of her often and
have been moved by both her sadness and her courage. In a recent post she echoes a hymn that she
finds helpful. “We are after all an
Easter People.” Later, recently in fact,
I remembered how the strong women characters in her novel “Recuerdo” dealt with
death and tragedy. I taught this novel
for years at St. Norbert and still have a folder of notes “for future
reference.” When I opened the folder,
the following page was right on top. It
is a review assignment for students. I
decided to share it here with Jing. It
is unchanged except for a few parenthetical additions.
Notes from Lecture on “Recuerdo”
An examination of the development of
the (main) character (and narrator) Amanda shows that she learns from the
stories about her ancestresses (recuerdo- I remember) that she can have a life
after the death of her husband Vicente.
That she can face that tragedy and move beyond it. And she can do so without the strength and
security provided by Carl (close friend).
One can interpret most of the rest of the (novel’s) characters in light
of this view of Amanda. Here are some of
the details; you supply the interpretation(s).
Leonor: The lover of Father Gutierrez (a Catholic
priest), by whom she bears two children.
Only gradually does Amanda piece together the puzzle that explains why
this partnership of love ended. Leonor
never ‘left’ Father Gutierrez to become a ‘proper woman’, as family lore had
suggested.
Asuncion
(Cion): When
cruelly treated by her husband and placed in an insane asylum, Cion,
ironically, becomes a more balanced and caring person, a friend to the nuns and
to the inmates of the asylum.
Maestra
Cressing: She devotes
herself to instructing the children of her town, eschewing considerations of
marriage for this important duty. When
the Katipuneros (revolutionaries) arrive, she bravely persuades the officer in
charge to spare the townspeople, using charm, diplomacy, and hot chocolate.
Josefina: Amanda’s great-grandmother, (Lola Paz’s mother),
the former actress who turned the ordinary into the special. Her grandfather was an English pirate! Her husband was tortured to death by the
Spanish, and she was reunited with her children only after the war of
independence against Spain. She refused
to give up her lover, telling her daughter that any fiancé worth his salt would
not break the engagement for such a reason.
Lola
Paz: Her (Amanda’s) father was killed by the
Spanish, her husband by the son of a collaborator with the Spanish. She experienced déjà vu when the Japanese
came and took away her son-in-law.
Lola
Isabel: Lost her
son in childbirth; then her husband was taken by the Japanese, who tortured him
to death, while she was pregnant with Amanda.
She bagan to keep the “manuscript” record of the family events. Graduated from Santo Tomas. Entrepreneur.
Beatriz: The first family co-ed at UP, worked for the
underground against the Japanese, became a professor, a Chair, and a Vice
President of the university.
Star-crossed lover; faithful.
Risa: One member of the class suggested that Risa
is the most important character in the book, since she is (Amanda’s) daughter
and heir of all of these stories, thus the beneficiary and witness (like the
reader) of all that Amanda has learned.
Significantly she studies broadcasting.
----Contact Bob Boyer at Robert.boyer@snc.edu or
<sundaysinmanila
