I’m not the type of person who reads a lot because I prefer watching. Whenever I start reading a book, a few sentences already makes me fall asleep. Although this is true, I know that I could never escape from reading because of my literature class. Through this class I got to read different stories like Green Sanctuary.

 

A sanctuary is simply means a place where you can find peace, protection and safety. It is also considered as consecrated place such as church, synagogue etc. and where religious services are held. I believe that people have their own idea about sanctuary and how they make it significant to them. For me, being with my friends is what makes me feel safe and at peace. Being with them is where I can find my sanctuary.
Antonio Reyes Enriquez was born in Barangay Labuan, Zamboanga city in 1936. Currently he and his wife, with their five grandchildren were living in Cagayan de Oro City but then he died at the age of 78 in 2014. He is a Filipino author of many different interesting books of short stories and novels and one of those is the Green Sanctuary. He has been published in his homeland, the Philippines and abroad. His short stories were also translated in Korean and German. He was educated at a local Jesuit school in Zamboanga. Antonio went to a university in Manila because his parents wanted him there to study medicine. Maybe because of not being satisfied on his field, he returned to Zamboanga City without a college degree after several years. Later on Antonio decided to do various jobs like writing a newspapers and magazines. Antonio also joined a surveying company in Cotabato where his experience provided him settings and characters for his novel Surveyors of the Liguasan Marsh. He graduated with liberal degree in creative writing it was also because of winning a writing fellowship award.
Green Sanctuary is about the culture and behavior of the Moros in Mindanao. Mindanao is the third largest city in the Philipppines known as the land of promise because of rich biodiversity and natural resources. The land holds an incredible wealth from nature, but also has dark moments of truth. As observed, every traveler who wants to explore Mindanao would ask about safety. Is it safe in Mindanao? Well the main problems are in Zamboanga, where there are bombings and kidnappings somewhat regularly. Although it describes to be harmful for people, of course there are many positive things you should know and could do in Mindanao.
The cultural value that you could find in the literary piece is that you should respect people’s lives. You should never use your power to control one’s life and never accuse people without justifying their actions.
Based on what I understand about the story, Green sanctuary is about one place in Mindanao called Pikit in Cotabato where Moros are living. People there say that visitors or tourists that would plan to pass and stop in Pikit will definitely shot by the Moros. Bangsamoro people or Moros are the Muslim population of the Philippines, forming the non-Catholic group in the country. Based on the story there was a datu who ruled the said entire place. He was extremely mischievous that he could kill whoever disobeyed him. Every early evening, sari-sari stores were already closed and no one were staying outside because Datu Mantel were about to go around the whole place. One night there was an innocent drunkard walking and Datu Mantel suddenly shot and killed the drunkard. He also promoted himself to be the chief of the place. There was also an incident where Datu Mantel was watching FPJ’s movie in a cinema house. The movie has a scene where Moros were being killed by FPJ, by that he got angry and suddenly shot the screen, and because of what happened the cinema house didn’t ever show FPJ’s movies ever again.

 

Green sanctuary is about cultural and social literary work therefore the literary approaches that I think are applicable in this story are historical criticism, sociological criticism and Marxist criticism. Historical criticism because seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it. We learned about the culture and behavior of the people in the story. A key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original readers. I chose sociological criticism because this approach is exploring the relationship between the author and society. Sometimes it examines the artist’s society to better understand the author’s literary works; other times, it may examine the representation of such societal elements within the literature itself. Marxism is also applicable because it focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of literature. It emphasizes the power of the Datu Mantel and his behavior for being a datu.

 

What I only like about the story is that how realistic it was and how brave the author was for showcasing his experiences in Mindanao. What I didn’t like about the story was the culture and the behavior of the Moros and Datu Mantel because obviously, his behavior was really bad and unforgiving.

 
I would like to recommend this book for those people who are curious about the culture of Moros and want to learn more about Mindanao. For me, I would rate this book as 8 out of 10 because although this book is saddening about the reality of what is happening in Mindanao, it still reminds you that you should be careful of places and people around you. Through this book you could also learn to not abuse your power especially for harming and killing other people. You should learn to respect and accept people’s lives and be a good leader for your people.

 

Source: http://home.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/spring97/litcrit.html
https://www.zamboanga.com/Literature/Laureates_AR_Enriquez_bio1.htm

Antonio Reyes Enriquez – A Filipino Contemporay artist from Mindanao

It took me a while to actually like this book since the intro didn’t entice me to continue reading it. I try not to be biased and continued on with the story and for a while it made me realize how the Moros were interpreted wrong by the Filipinos over the years.

Antonio Reyes Enrique is the author of several books of short stories and novels. He was born in Barangay Labuan, Zamboanga city in 1936. He was educated at a local Jesuit school in Zamboanga. His parents wanted him to study medicine and sent him to a university in Manila, but after several years, he returned to Zamboanga City without a college degree. Enriquez later did various jobs like writing a news and other features for various newspapers and magazines. He also joined a surveying company in Cotabato where his experience provided him settings and characters for his novel Surveyors of the Liguasan Marsh. Antonio Enriquez won a writing fellowship award which brought him to Siliman University where he graduated with a liberal degree in creative writing.

(taken from https://joeyzamora.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/antonio-reyes-enriquez-a-filipinoconmporary-artist-from-mindanao/) 

Throughout the excerpt, I can tell that Antonio wanted to showcase the culture of the Moros through the protagonist, Alberto Gonzales. Antonio knew he had to write down a story where it shows Mindanao on its own right and himself.

This novel represents the culture of the Moros and Mindanao considering these people were different from how Luzon and Visayas had shown their individual cultures but how did their culture differ from ours today? Well, all of us used to have the same culture until the Spaniards showed up and colonized the Philippines. The Spaniards tore the Philippines apart and let datus from each barangay face off one another thinking that the other datu had malicious intent. It wasn’t too long before our cultures slowly drift apart until it became what it is today.

Moro culture is very Malay-influenced. The Bangsamoro share similarities with the Malay people of Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore and southern Thailand, while being distinct from them. The Bangsamoro cultures represent the only living examples of the larger historic lowland cultures of the northern and central Philippines who were once also culturally, and in some cases religiously, similar to modern Bangsamoro ethnicities, prior to the gradual Spanish colonization of the archipelago between the 16th-18th centuries. The precolonial Tagalogs, Kapampangan or Visayan, are seen as being culturally similar to the Moro, although in the case of the Visayan people, they were more Hindu-Buddhist influenced instead (see Rajahnate of Cebu)

The best literary approach I have to give for this book is the historical approach considering the book has so many influences of Moro history that the book allows us to visualize what’s happening in Mindanao and how it greatly affected the innocent and the people who are far away from Mindanao.

The only thing I liked about this book is the way it narrates what’s happening in the story. It was gut-wrenching when it came to the parts where people killed one another. It was heartbreaking when someone loses another. The Protagonist was relatable even though I never experienced what he went through.

However, I didn’t like this book because it doesn’t have so much to offer. It didn’t feel like a novel. I thought I was reading a short story or novelette. Some descriptions didn’t sit right with me and when it came to the middle of the novel I wanted to drop it on the spot. There was nothing in the novel that wants me to keep on reading it.

I would recommend this book to people who need to know about Moros and what’s happening in Mindanao, even though this book was published in 2003, everything that happened in this book is repeating in today’s time. There are ignorant people thinking that “Moros are this, Moros are that” when it’s the total opposite. We should be aware of what’s happening in other places in our country too. They may be different from how we act but we are all Filipinos.

I would rate this book 7.8 cookies, this isn’t the best Filipino literature I have read but this book still needs credit for showing the war that’s happening in Mindanao. I wish I could have given a higher rating but this book was never my cup of tea, to begin with, it took me some time to appreciate this book in all of its forms. This book was interesting but when I got to the novel itself I had lost interest.

When one hears of the word “sanctuary”, the first thing that pops into their head is a haven free from any sort of harm. It can be whatever definition floats their boat — For certain plants, it can be the forest. For people, it can be their homes or they can be like me, a sheltered individual who finds comfort in small groups or their beds surrounded by their favorite stuffs.

A sanctuary is basically a place where you find comfort, away from harm or under protection. A typical idea about that will be home itself. But what if your own home wasn’t exactly an ideal place of refuge anymore? The earth was supposed to be a sanctuary for us humans and creatures alike, but what’s going that makes it so different right now that people just describe life as ‘cruel’ or ‘unfair’?

Antonio Reyes Enriquez is an author of short stories and novels from Zamboanga City in Mindanao. Originally, he was supposed to study medicine in a university in Manila as per his parents’ wishes, but later on decided to return to Zamboanga without any college degree and continued his studies there. Later on, he tried to write for news or magazines. He also joined a surveying company in Cotabato, where his experiences built the story we now know as “Surveyors of the Liguasan Marsh”, otherwise known as the excerpt, “The Green Sanctuary.”

Mindanao has always been the, say, example, the ‘black sheep’ of the three big islands family in the Philippines. Unlike Luzon and Visayas, Mindanao is actually dominated by Muslims or Moros, thereby practically separating their culture apart from the latter two. The diversity of their culture was enough to grant them an authority of their own known as the “Bangsamoro”, or practically known as, “Bansa ng mga Moro.” It was later known as the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao due to the rebels sufficing within the region.

Antonio Enriquez’s words has been described as Mindanao-centric, where there is often love, faithfulness and unfaithfulness, conflict and death in most of his stories. Perhaps the reason why he wrote the Green Sanctuary was because he wanted to show how truly chaotic it’s really been down there, especially with forming rebel groups and all. He may have also wanted to show the Muslim stereotype of being terrorists, which is not only seen in the Philippines, but also with other countries due to the abundance of terrorist attacks done by other Muslims. It’s a dark side of our reality how men have begun to live in fear out of this stereotype.

The author’s works also contained deep perceptiveness seen through the portrayal of various different people — such as men fearing certain superstitions or people with all of their love and hates, ambitions and bitter memories. The culture seen in the story is also strong under a political and historical light, since it mentioned certain historical events like the Spaniards coming in Pikit, then moving onto the other city. It also shows the conflict between two religion, such as Christianity and Islam and how people have been fighting over it, which is practically the main point of the story line.

You may apply a historical approach since the events here takes place in situation that did and are still happening. Perhaps marxism can also be used here since it shows the gap between what a datu can do to a simple police officer. Lastly, psychological, since Datu Mantel drives people in fear and he rampages whenever he wants to.

Perhaps the only thing I liked about this book is how Datu Mantel became some sort of symbolism of people’s stereotypes of how Muslims are being described nowadays. Sometimes, when a person in a hijab walks in and does anything that may strike off as sort of violent, people suddenly shake in their knees, fearing that they may reveal a gun any time. It’s how dark and cruel how the reality has come.

I didn’t like the author’s messy timelines, though. One day, we’re talking about the past then all of a sudden, you jump back in the present without realizing when it happened.

I’d recommend this book to someone who’s into history or wars or enjoys Filipino literature with strong culture influence and anecdotes. But personally, I wouldn’t really recommend this book to just anyone since the book standards nowadays are completely different.

Lastly, I’d rate the literary piece a 7 our of 10. Mostly because I didn’t really enjoy the story that much, but it has themes that tackles the reality of our country today, which I find it interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

A definition of the word sanctuary given by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is a place of refuge and protection. This brings to mind the feelings of security, where one could be safe from any persecution and judgment by other people and be generally be one’s self without any consequences. However, another definition given by Merriam-Webster is the immunity from the law attached to a sanctuary.  This was a slightly unexpected definition, but one fitting considering the literary piece that I will be reviewing today.

 

But before I start this review, we must first ask who is the person behind the piece and what are some possible reasons why they may be motivated to write it.  Antonio Enriquez, the person responsible for writing the piece, was born in 1936 at Zamboanga and was raised there. While initially, he went to Manila to study medicine, he eventually returned years later. While in the process of figuring himself out, he worked various odd jobs and eventually landed a position with a surveying firm in Cotabato. His experiences with this job eventually provided the basis for his works. Following a fellowship to the highly esteemed National Writers Workshop, he returned to school, graduated with a degree in creative writing, and landed a teaching position in the university. He eventually wrote several novels and short story collections before passing in 2014.

 

In my opinion, the reason why the author wrote this piece is to tell the story of  Mindanao from the point of view of someone who lived there. The reason for this speculation is because most published works are set upon the island groups of Luzon and Visayas, and when Mindanao is often talked about it is often in the context of something bad like the various rebel groups that currently reside there. I think the author wants to show that the people there are not some faceless terrorist wanting to murder you, but rather a collection of various people groups with their own history, culture, and traditions. And to try to humanize them so that they would not be considered as a mysterious other but rather as a fellow person.

 

With that established this piece, like every literary work, has some cultural values woven into it. The cultural values are shown in the work that I could recognize are The willingness to cooperate with one another in pursuit of a goal, although it is portrayed in a negative light. The tendency of people to hide when there is a good chance of trouble,  a strongman culture in politics, and the tendency of powerful or influential individuals to strong-arm people to get what they want.

 

And in relating to Philippine literature, The literary piece continues the tradition of social critique started by Rizal, in that it shows the things that the author considers wrong with society nowadays in hopes of creating a social awareness and causing reform. The difference between this and other literary pieces of this kind is that it takes a point of view that is not commonly found in Philippine literature, namely from a native of Mindanao, the machismo that is prevalent in our culture, and focusing on the culture clash between the Christian parts of the country and the Muslim parts of the country.

 

From what I could gather, The story is about the experiences of a surveying company from the Christian part of Mindanao as they do their work in Moro territory and the culture clash that happens when both groups interact.

 

It like any other literary piece could be analyzed in some literary approaches. The Literary approaches that I found applicable to the text are as follows: Historical approach because it narrates the history of Mindanao when the country was under Spanish colonial rule and tries to explain the conflict that occurs in the story as a result of the contact between the Christians and the Muslims.  Cultural Approach due to the fact that the cultures of the survey team and the Moros are either implicitly or explicitly shown in the work.  Psychological approach because of the fact that this work is influenced by his time working on with a survey company.

 

And now for some personal opinion. The thing that I particularly like about this text is the fact that this has a subject that is rarely seen in the popular works, giving us insight into the culture, traditions, and psyche of a people that is more often than not cast as the other, which should hopefully gives us a breadth of new ideas and perspectives to consider.

 

Regarding my personal dislikes, A thing that I dislike about the story is the tendency of the author to speak about one subject then immediately jump into another related one with little to no transition, which makes for a jarring read through at times

.

With all of that in mind, I personally would recommend the book due to the fact that it is interesting and actually teaches you something about the Moros. The sort of person that would enjoy reading this sort of thing would probably be the sort of person that enjoys reading biographical and anecdotal pieces, enjoy learning about cultures that are traditionally considered the other, like learning about cultures in general, or just curious as to the Moros.

 

So in conclusion, I would personally give the literary piece 8 out of 10. This is because while this is a generally interesting read and is actually competently done and is engaging. I personally don’t see myself rereading the piece in my own leisure because it didn’t click well with me.