My cup of tea! Finally! I initially thought this was going to be the same story as the other stories in the textbook, the usual literary selections that happen to be in the book even though they don’t really make sense. I am genuinely happy that this story is a different case! This is a parable that I appreciate so much. Very much!

Award-winning writer Merlinda Bobis grew up in Albay, the Philippines at the foot of an active volcano, which figures prominently in her writing and performance. As a child, her main interest was painting, but at age ten she began writing poetry because ‘painting with words’ was cheaper. She has published novels, short stories, dramas, and poems. Her plays have been produced/performed on stage and radio in Australia, the Philippines, Spain, USA, Canada, Singapore, France, China, Thailand, and the Slovak Republic. She has performed some of her works as theatre, dance, and music.

(Source: http://www.merlindabobis.com.au/biography.htm)

I admire Merlinda Bobis for creating beautiful imagery in her prose. She’s able to create stories that make you feel like you’re in the story itself. She pulls you in with her paragraphs that’s easy to imagine and feel. When her story describes food, you can feel your taste buds tingle in delight. When her story describes places, you can feel that you have visited that spot before and so on.

I feel the need to say that she may have written this story in order to give a lesson and showcase how multiculturism has changed society over the years. We were all divided before globalization has started. It takes months for a message in this country to reach the other one. People were sheltered to only know a certain culture which is their own and now we can appreciate everyone’s culture by taking the time and effort to get to know this specific culture from another country.

The theme of this book, multiculturism, isn’t far from what Philippine literature can offer. Most of the modern Philippine literature published today has influences from world literature but it mainly focuses on our own culture, unlike this story, it promotes several cultures.

To keep the story short, this is a story of 5 different people who came from different countries. They shared a dish to one another in order to give someone a taste of what their culture is like. (No, really! That’s the summary!)

It’s a wholesome story that I ever read about sharing one’s culture. It’s a bite-sized story you can easily read without having to sit through an hour trying to figure out what’s the meaning of a certain object that wasn’t meant to have meaning at all.

The best literary approach for this story is Sociological Criticism. It examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or received. It explores the relationship of an artist and the 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.

(Source: http://home.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/spring97/litcrit.html)

I like this story for its admirable writing style. It’s a beautiful representation of how ‘show and tell’ works. I can’t help but look back at how it was written from time to time. Her writing style is delicate and imaginative. The way she describes the ‘taste of the food’ makes me ‘feel hungry’ to know about other cultures and how these people experience them. I also like how this story wasn’t ‘in-your-face-philosophical” type of narrative. Some stories just tend to go overboard in showing symbolism and moral lessons that just tend to be overwhelming.

However, some of the descriptions didn’t sit right with me. Some descriptions just seem off and tend to give another picture instead of the actual intention. The first opening lines were a bit difficult to understand but after rereading again, I came to terms with it.

I would recommend this book to… everybody! 

This story won’t make someone bored and it’s entertaining to read. This story is perfect for both light and heavy readers who want to view different cultures in a new perspective and a respectable way.

Overall, I give this story 9 out of 10 cookies. Beautiful! Just beautiful!

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.

 

 

 

 

One thing that defines our nature its that we are the cumulative sum of all of our experiences. Every action that we have done, all the entertainment media that we have consumed, all the ideologies and believes we have learned, all of these things affect us in ways both blatant and subtle. Another thing that defines us is that we have no idea on what are the things that we like, after all how would one know that they like fan fiction of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo if they hadn’t read one. Variety is the spice of life and status quo is the starch.  So with this established, how could one continue to make their lives still interesting?

 

The short story that I will be discussing today was authored by Merlinda Bobis.  The author was originally from in Legazpi City, Albay, attended Bicol University High School then  completed her Bachelor of Arts Degree at Aquinas University in Legazpi City. And has post-graduate degrees from the University of Santo Tomas and University of Wollongong, and currently lives in Australia.

 

A reason as to why she decided to pursue writing this short story, the writer theorizes that she wanted to narrate the story of the modern immigrant experience. She wants to show what happens to these people using a woman’s perspective, while also integrating the traditional culture of the countries they came from. And with this remind us of their plight and hopefully become more concerned as to the happenings regarding them.

 

The cultural values that the writer could is multiculturalism and cooperation. Multiculturalism because the story is about people from different countries around the world doing things they wouldn’t normally do because of the influence of the people they surround themselves with, learning things they didn’t know about themselves in the process. Cooperation because it would have been easy for one of them to hog the tongue for themselves only, but they decided against that and instead cooperated with one another for the use of the tongue.

 

A major difference between this and Philippine literature is the fact that it does not focus on the details regarding Filipinos and the country but rather a group of people coming from different nationalities. Another thing that sets this apart is the fact that the story does not focus on anyone woes or negative experiences. But the fact that makes this similar to Philippine literature is the fact that the story tries to push a moral that aims to improve society.

 

The story begins with the Filipino chef enjoying their native delicacies then goes to mention that after an hour the Sri Lankan tailor would be using the tongue. It then proceeds to state that the community at Bessel Street share a communal tongue. Then the narration states the events that happened last week when the Italian butcher who gained the tongue from the Australian couple a week before, and what experience he had with the tongue along with his family. The story then introduces the characters of the story which are respectively a Turkish baker, a Filipino cook, an Australian couple who owns a fish shop, an Italian butcher with his family, and a Sri Lankan tailor. It then tells how having to share a tongue affected the way the people lived. It says that they began to cherish things they would have taken for granted before, and how they began to try things from the other resident’s culture. It then proceeds by saying that the tongue remembered where it came from, which was understood by each of the households. The piece ends with saying that even though it is its own thing, it became a part of something greater than itself.

 

The literary approach which could be applied to the story would be the Cultural approach due to the fact that the text shows the cultural phenomena that happens when one is a migrant worker. Another literary approach that could be applied would be Historical approach because it shows a possible situation that would happen to migrants. Formalistic approach could also be applied because all the elements in the story contribute to the theme it is trying to show.

 

A thing that I like regarding the story would be the optimism that permeates through it, the fact that community decide to share the tongue rather than have it devolve into some sort of free for all is quite nice to me. Another thing would be the fact that the piece is rather well thought out makes me like the text.

 

A thing that I have come to dislike about the text is the fact that the sequence of events is sort of all over the place makes it a bit frustrating to read.

 

I would recommend the book mostly due to its relative brevity and the moral that it teaches. The sort of person that I would recommend the book to would probably be someone looking for the experience of being an immigrant and someone who needs to learn why people need to learn to appreciate multiculturalism.

 

So in conclusion I would rate the book a 7 out of 10. Mostly due to the fact it contains a semi-interesting story and competently made make it worth reading. Although it is the sort of thing that you will only read once and never pick up again due to the fact that it is not engaging.