Author: Joyce Garcia

I'm just an ordinary individual with a taste for music, drawing and... food!

A Ploy on Tongues: An Earnest Parable Review

On By Joyce GarciaIn Earnest ParableLeave a comment

Everyone loves eating food, especially if they’re delicious or if they’re absolutely hungry, obviously. Whenever you’re bored or you’re out of ideas of what to do next and apparently, you’re all alone in your house, what do you do? You go to the refrigerator without knowing it or subconsciously look for a snack or so to relieve yourself. Not everyone might be like that, but most of the people I know definitely possess similar behaviors.

The food we eat is also a part of a country’s culture. We eat pandesal and dip it in our scalding hot coffee in the morning and this is a tradition or food that we only find here around the Philippines. Australians put Vegemite on their breads and savor its salty relish early in the morning, Japanese people would eat ramen or noodles in a nearby run-down restaurant at the end of the street or Americans will just stop by at Subway for a gigantic sandwich as a snack. The food we eat, the food that we end up craving for, are possibly a part of other countries’ cultures that were just brought from one nation to another.

An Earnest Parable is a short story that will tackle this kind of multiculturalism trope. You might think it has something to do with the bible since parables are often found in gospel readings or such, but funnily, it’s not.

An Earnest Parable is written by author Merlinda Bobis, a Filipina writer who now resides in Australia. She was born in Legazpi City, Albay and has a bachelor of arts degree from Aquinas University and also her postgraduate degree from the University of Santo Tomas (UST) and the University of Wollongong. She’s known to write in both Filipino and English in her stories.

Her stories often involve immigrant experiences, perhaps from a woman’s perspective. She also likes to use food and taste as her focused devices when telling a story. An Earnest Parable is simple a short story that is a part of her novel, White Turtle, which is a compilation of meaningful twenty-three short stories that are set in the Philippines and Australia.

Evidently, there were some symbolism in An Earnest Parable that involved food and taste, just exactly like her cup of tea. An Earnest Parable talks about five foreign people: a baker from Turkey,  a Filipino cook, an Australian couple running a fish shop, an Italian butcher and a Sri Lankan tailor. All these five live in one neighborhood, Bessel Street,  despite being drastically different.

However, as the story unfolds, we begin to see that even though we possess our tastes for our own native dishes, these said dishes can be inspired to turn into another dish or include a better and flavor in them — This shows that no matter the differences of our cultures, as long as we learn how to share and listen to one another, we can make better products or even build a better community.

The final scene of the story truly symbolized Australia with it’s foreign influences as of this moment, considering the fact that many people from different countries have migrated or immigrated to the land down under. It was interesting how Bobis used tongue as symbolism of our differences. This is a great example of a positive multiculturalism. In comparison to her other stories, this one gives off more optimistic vibes.

Thinking about it, the Philippines is similar to Australia in a way. The difference the immigrants aren’t as many as in Australia, but it certainly is heavily influenced by other nations’ cultures and trends, such as Kpop, anime, fashion trends, Kdrama, and so forth. If you go to malls and such, you’ll also end up stumbling on a Chinese or Japanese restaurant. We might even get to meet people who are avidly fond of these dishes.

It’s quite different from the other Philippine literature I’ve read so far since they’re usually Philippine-centered, promoting the simplicity yet beautiful routine of your typical Filipinos. Unless, we’re talking about how the Philippine literature also likes to unravel the dark and chaotic side of the country like the Moros and the Muslims. (See The Green Sanctuary for more details.)

Perhaps the literary approach we may apply to this story might be the Sociological criticism. Through Bobis’s stories, we get to have a glimpse of the environment she is in and how it has influenced her works, just like the fact that she switches between Filipino and English sometimes in some of her works. We may also dive in in the Cultural approach, since the story tackles a multicultural theme and how their diversities can also create something new and better if they work together. This is what I really liked about the book – How our diversities can be used to create for something peculiarly amazing. I can also speak from experience since I’ve met several people across the globe online whom we’ve shared about our cultural knowledge to one another.

When you read the text itself for the first time, you’ll truly find yourself at loss. It’s confusing whether the author was pertaining to a real tongue that was cut out or was she using the tongue as a metaphor. Either ways, it took me a while to understand the actual concept and I got to say, that was quite misleading. I myself thought that there was going to be a sacred ritual for a sacrifice by cutting off a Filipino’s tongue.

I’d give this book an 8/10 since I actually enjoyed the context of the story. This recommendable to folks who are interested in learning more about the dishes of some countries out there. Some people just found out what Vegemite is through this story alone. Maybe if this was written in modern standards, people will probably read this more than once since the central theme of the story and the unity of the diverse characters was intriguing.

 

 

 

 

A Critical Analysis on the Green Sanctuary by Antonio Enriquez

On By Joyce GarciaIn Green SanctuaryLeave a comment

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.