TAGOLOAN Community College

Baluarte, Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental

Tel.No. (08822)740-835/(088)5671-215

College of Arts and Sciences

GEC 10 Philippine Popular Culture
Semester of A.Y. 2020-2021

Introduction
Philippine Popular Culture is a three-unit course that develops students’ ability to appreciate, analyze, and
critic popular culture in the Philippines. This course equips students with critical perspectives in
understanding popular culture in the Philippines and provides students with the necessary tools of analysis in
exploring our popular culture.
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Rationale

To equip students the skills and tools necessary of analysis in exploring critical perspective in
understanding popular culture in the Philippines.

Intended Learning Outcomes

1. Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of popular culture and its political, economic and social
context.
2. Explain and evaluate the different forms of Philippine popular culture.
3. Analyze how popular culture affects the social, economic and political context.
4. Create their own cultural presentation as a way to explore specific social, political and economic issues.

Activity

Essay- Interpretation, Analysis, Criticism, Evaluation, Reflection

Plot Timeline

Quiz

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 Discussion

Module 9. Post Colonialism and Pop Culture

Leading Postwar Modernists

The struggle for modernism that Edades inspired was resume d by the original Triumvirate and the Thirteen
Modems. Carlos Francisco created his definitive modernist works in several murals. His first important mural
was done for the 1953 International Fai r held in Manila. On the theme of "Five Hundred Years of Philippine
History," its scope covered th e legendary origin of the Filipino with the first man and woman, Malakas at
Maganda, springing from the primal bamboo up to the contemporary administration of then incumbent
President Qu ir ino. The lasting masterpiece of Carlos Francisco consists of the mural series he did for the
Manila City Hall. This mural of the history of Manila, from the first great Rajahs of Tondo, through the Spanish
colonial period, Balagtas, Rizal, and the Revolution of 1896 up to the American period, illustrates the history of
the entire nation itself. In his work, the artist often integrated s everal historical vignettes with
emphasis on one central episode and the secondary ones around it on a smaller scale. The episodes, however,
are not static, but flow into each other by means of linking devices such as a winding river, flames branching
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out, or clouds coiling in spirals . The murals are likewise marked b y an artistic vigor and inexhaustible
inventiveness, a lively characterization of the numerous historical personages, and unifying all, an admirable
sense of modernist design.

The third member of the Triumvirate, Galo B. Ocampo, was also concerned with creating a Filipino modernist
idiom. The war was a theme that continued to haunt the artist through the Fifties. In his Flagellant series, the
images of Christ's passion are reinterpreted through images of war in a surrealist technique. In one, Christ,
crowned with thorn s and wearing a flagellant's hood, stands with arms bound together while warplanes fly in
the skie s. In another work, a devotee lies prostrate, his arms forming a cross on the ground, while the shadows
of warplanes are reflected on the sand. These paintings in predominantly brown tones convey t he feeling of a
wasteland, littered with the debris of war. But it was only in 1973, at the age of fift y- nine, that Galo B.
Ocampo held his first one-man show. For this exhibit he produced a new series in which he paid tribute to the
Tabon Man, the oldest human fossil found in the country. His field work in Palawan inspired him with images
of the early Filipino: Adam and Eve growing from the ancient stalagmites and reflecting the everchanging hues
of the mysterious caves.

It was only in the postwar years that leading artists, such as Vicente Manansala, Cesar Legaspi, and Romeo
Tabuena, had a first-hand exposure through brief stints in Paris art schools. Manansala, for instance, did
further training at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Montreal, Canada, in the United States, and in France where he
had a brief stint under Ferdinand Leger . Shunning Amorsolo's rural idylls, Manansala developed a new imagery
based on postwar urban realities . He came out strongly in the 1950s with such works as Madonna of the Slums
and paintings of jeepneys. The city of Manila through the vision of the artist had a strong folk color in its street
vendors and Quiapo devotees with all the symbols of a folk culture. Besides paintings of motherand- child, his
subjects included jeepneys, barong-barong, cockfighters, families gathering together for a modest meal, and
Quiapo women vendors of candles, novena s, scapulars, and food. His women vendors sit veiled and hunched
over their wares, their brown impassive faces like the indigenous bulol, or Cordillera guardian figures, blocklike
with broad planes, their large bare feet projecting from the hems of their skirts.

It may be said that Manansala indigenized cubism and developed the style of transparent cubism that was
generally shared by his fellow Neo-Realists Cesar Legaspi and Romeo Tabuena. The cubist aspect of
Manansala's work rests largely in the geometric faceting of forms and in the shifting and overlapping of planes.
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 But in his work, the facets and planes are broader and bring out larger rhythms than in the original cubist style.
He often incorporated linear decorative patterns, like the ironwork curlicues of gates and windows. Unlike
analytical cubism, which arbitrarily fragmented and dissected the figure into complex abstract elements,
Manansala stayed close to the figure, which was simplified to its basic geometric shape. In composition, his
works often indicate lines of perspective, but recession in depth is simultaneously denied by lines and planes
creating spatial ambiguities.

Manansala's vision of the city and his native Filipino approach to his subjects would influence numerous artists
who would take up his folk themes within an urban context. Among the artists who show his influence are
Mauro Malang Santos, with his own version of folk romanticism in paintings that convey the fragile, makeshift
character of the Fifties, and others from the University of Santo Tomas, where Manansala taught for a time,
such as Antonio Austria, Angelito Antonio, and Mario Parial. Others include Manuel Baldemor, whose roots are
in Paete, Laguna, as well as some Laguna lakeshore artists.

Cesar Legaspi also pursued art studies abroad as a scholar of the Cultura Hispanica in Madrid from 1953 to
1954 and subsequently entered the Academie Ranson in Paris. In Legaspi, the rigorous intellectual approach of
the analytical phase of cubism gave way to the more harmonious aspect of its synthetic phase. There is in his
work a facetting of the figures into larger planes that overlap and cut through space in transparent curvilinear
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rhythms and that achieve a textured orchestration of hues and tones. His early paintings of the period
immediately before and after the war reflected the themes of the time. Man and Woman (also entitled
Beggars), painted in 1945 in an expressionist idiom involving distortion, shows a couple in rags finding shelter
in the skeletons of buildings that resemble surrealist sculptures. Gadgets reflects the increasing importance of
machines in the life of the postwar industrializing period, with the insidious threat of man's metamorphosis
into machine.

In his later works of the mid-Sixties, the cubist idiom is significantly modified by rhythmic curvilinear line and
planes in contrast to the angularity of his original style. From 1974 his paintings became more chromatic;
layers of transparent passages create prismatic effects. Figures dynamically cut through space in gestural
movements. Light enhances color and form or dematerializes and dissolves them into airy transparencies
creating resonances in space.

Through the Seventies and Eighties, Legaspi produced paintings dealing with universal human themes, such as
The Survivor. These large, heroic canvases convey the surging, straining movements of human beings in
aspiration, struggle, and triumph done in his dynamic style. The human figure in its well-articulated muscular
and structural frame becomes an eloquent vehicle for expression, while a tension ensues between organic
form and geometric structure, transparency, and solidity, the flexible and the inexorable . In 1976 he did a
number of multi-layered paintings on wood panel to give actual depth and shadows to the illusion of spatial
movement.

A self-taught painter, Hernando R. Ocampo was a member of the Thirteen Modems and the Neo-Realists. His
significance in the context of modernism was the fact that he created an original Philippine abstraction that
bore little relation to the School of Paris. His initiation to modernism coincided with his proletarian period,
which reflected the debate in the Thirties between "proletarian art" and "art-for-art's-sake," also an issue in
the United Sates during the Depression years. His paintings showed the stark realities of the time and the wide
class gap in society . His later works became increasingly stylized and showed a growing abstraction in their
primary concern for design, color, and texture.

Shifting to abstraction, most of his work of the Sixties belongs to the mutant period, which derived inspiration
from a science-fiction fantasy on strange forms spewed forth by nuclear explosions. In the visual melody

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 period, he brought back tonalities into his abstract designs of organic shapes, creating a richer form of
abstraction. An example of this style is Genesis, which was executed into a tapestry for the main theater of the
Cultural Center of the Philippines. Its central motif is a bright flame that casts oscillating shadows and
reflections on the surrounding design of red and yellow elements.

From Paris to New York

After the war, however, the artistic center of gravity shifted from Paris to New York. The United States had
suffered the least damage and gained the most advantage from the war as it emerged as the new superpower.
As such, it assumed a new role as international arbiter of art. This was of particular significance to the
Philippines, being its former colony.

While the U.S. Federal Arts project had supported a wide range of art during the Depression years, the artists
of the New York School of abstract expressionism, mainly Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, won critical favor
over the regionalists and social realists, such as Ben Shahn and Ralph Sayer. The aesthetics that emerged out of
the Cold War and McCarthyism promoted an art of kinetic energy and direct gestural expression devoid of
social significations . This American brand of fashionable modernism dominated the art scene of the Fifties .
Unlike but parallel to it was the geometric abstraction of Josef Albers, an expatriate from Germany, as was the
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painterly and equally formalist Hans Hoffmann, both influential figures in the postwar period.

The modernist recognition of the specificity of art extended, in the American context, to formalism and the
absolute autonomy of art. Art, viewed as a pure and autonomous realm, was to be protected from the
political, which in this aesthetic ideology had the nature of an undesirable polluting influence . The powerful
human emotions and passions unleashed by the recent war, such as protest, guilt, and questioning doubt,
were to be kept away from the domain of art, as they had the dangerous potential of a Pandora's box. These
had no place in a superpower's agenda.

The United States eagerly sought to maintain its role as tutor and cultural arbiter of its erstwhile colony, the
Philippines. It could not have had a more propitious time to play the part. In the postwar Fifties, the myth of
the United States as the liberator of the Philippines made the Filipinos particularly receptive to its imperialist
designs. For one, the United States did not wish to lose the important gains it made in education with the
establishment of the public-school system using English as the medium of instruction. It thus instituted a
program of post-baccalaureate scholarships in order to attract the best graduates to earn their higher degrees
in American universities. In the visual arts, the principal schools were the Cranbrook Academy of Art in
Michigan, the Pratt Graphic Art Center in New York.

Modernism in the Philippines thus began its second phase with the arrival of Jose Joya from Granbrook and
Constancio Bernardo from Yale, both of them immediately given teaching posts in the University of the
Philippines. The first group of modernists, including the Triumvirate and the Thirteen Modems, worked under
the influence of Edades in a modernism influenced by the School of Paris. In contrast, the new breed derived
their art from the influential American art trends of the time, primarily abstract expressionism or gestural
painting, and secondarily, geometric abstraction that harked back to the Bauhaus studies in optical perception.
In the later Fifties, Joya did strong, gestural paintings of kinetic impulse. Obviously influenced by Pollock's art,
his work, however, showed a difference in composition, which tended to have an asymmetrical, off-center
quality rather than the even layering of pigment found in Pollock. This asymmetrical quality in Joya's work
reflects certain concerns of traditional Asian aesthetics, as in the obliqueness of Zen and its energy-filled space.
Another difference, apart from his earlier monochromatic works, is the hedonistic use of color, where pigment
is not just neutral or "objective" medium, but subjective and linked to feeling and pleasure. As he moved away
from the influence of the New York School, his abstract paintings explored the subtle harmonies of color and

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 from kinetic gesturalism turned more and more tranquil, rounded forms massed together, whether in oil
paintings or in acrylic/ rice paper collages that bear faint allusions to nature.

Another abstractionist, Constancio Bernardo, completed graduate work in fine arts in Yale in 1952. In his case,
the dominant influences in American art came from European expatriate artists, such as Josef Alberts and Hans
Hoffmann. He had worked in series, combining geometrism and color research, in works that clearly continue
the legacy of Albers. Although Bernardo's paintings were of high technical excellence, their intellectual/
ideological underpinnings were laid down a priori in a different cultural context and were not of his own
making. Bernardo influenced directly or indirectly such abstractionists as Lee Aguinaldo, Allan Cosio, and Impy
Pilapil.

It was in the mid-Fifties, that the avant-grade made its striking appearance. This was in the person of the
enfant terrible David Cortez Medalla, painter, sculptor, and poet. Influenced by European, particularly French,
artistic developments, he pioneered experimental kinetic, andperformance art in defiance of traditional
academic norms. He did portraits deconstructing the subject by their spontaneous and irrational approach,
rejecting volume and instead stressing the two-dimensionality of the picture plane. His few paintings show
affinities with "primitive" and children's art, with the distinct influence of dadaism and art brut, and at the
same time they mock the seriousness of high art and recuperate the element of play. The influence of art brut
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is seen in the scratching or graffito technique, which produces irregular outlines and mottled textures.
However, it was for his kinetic sculpture, such as the bubble-spewing machine, that he won recognition
abroad. The artistic contribution of Medalla paved the way for the emergence of conceptual art, which was
avant-garde spearheaded by Ray Albano and Roberto Chabet. Its practitioners were associated with the
Cultural Center of the Philippines, of which Albano was then the artistic director, at the same time that
Lucrecia Kasilag, avant-garde composer, was in her heyday .

Current Trends

The earlier debate between "art-for-art's-sake" and "proletarian art," which involved not only the visual arts
but more especially poetry and fiction, had its continuing repercussions in later art. The proponent of
proletarian art was the essayist Salvador P . Lopez in his Literature and Society, while the position of "art-for-
art's-sake" was espoused by the poet Jose Garcia Villa, who had also been a champion of modernism.
"Proletarian art" with its social commentary was a response to the postwar squalor, as seen in the early works
of Hernando R. Ocampo, Cesar Legaspi, and Vicente Manansala, but as the wounds of war healed, they shed it
without second thoughts and pursued other artistic directions.

The Sixties saw the emergence of a brilliant breed of younger artists who tackled social issues with artistic
verve. This generation of modernists counted among them Ang Kiukok, Ben Cabrera, Danilo Dalena, and Onib
Olmedo. They brought modernism to its full flowering in a multiplicity of personal styles; furthermore, they
made it flexible and responsive to local conditions as they drew their material from contemporary Philippine
life and history . In the Sixties, modernism had become fully appropriated and indigenized.

The Sixties also saw new developments in sculpture and printmaking. From Napoleon Abueva, a pioneer in
modernism in sculpture, to Eduardo Castrillo, Solomon Saprid, and Ramon Orlina, along with Allan Cosio and
Impty Pilapil, new sculptural concepts were contributed by leading sculptors. To the traditional media of stone,
wood, and metal were added chrome plexiglass, and studio glass, in modules, mobiles and assemblages.

Since the Seventies, the descendants of "proletarian art" have been known as social realists who often point to
their illustrious forebears, H.R. Ocampo, Legaspi, and Manansala. A closer look, however, will reveal important
points of difference between the two generations. On one hand, the first-generation artists were only

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 responding as sensitive individuals to the poverty and social inequality that they observed around them. On
the other hand, the core of the social realists, the Kaisahan (Unity) group founded around 1976 during the
martial rule of former president Marcos, was a political artists' group linked to the radical mass movement for
social change. Of a higher political/ ideological consciousness, they did not remain on a naive, purely cultural
form of nationalism nor on a limited reform program of social justice but one that articulated nationalism into
a radical discourse that advanced the interests of the proletariat and peasantry . The themes taken up by the
social realists such as feminism and environmentalism, were situated within the context of the large
movement for change. Beyond its social comment and protest, social realism had a utopian moment, a vision
of a human order of genuine democracy and freedom for all.

Social realism, however, was not one figurative style but many different styles showing diverse influences, such
as surrealism and expressionism, with realism as only one style among them. Some paintings such as those of
Edgar Fernandez, had a symbolic complexity. In the hands of the leading social realists, such as Renato
Habulan, social realism acquired a semiotic richness derived from the different aspects of contemporary
experience. This was also true in the case of the work of Jose Tence Ruiz who contributed an experimental,
avant-garde aspect to the movement.

Apart from the social realists of the Kaisahan group, many artists took up social and political themes, especially
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in the latter part of the Marcos period, which was marked by increasing suppression and militarization. The
nationalist viewpoint gained currency among many artists. But social realism had a wider influence beyond its
political content. For instance, it developed the use of popular forms, such as the comics, illustrations, editorial
cartoons, and portable murals to reach a wider public, thus breaking down elitist prejudice against these
forms, which were demonstrated, by outstanding examples, to have their own standards of excellence. It
spearheaded the search for alternative exhibition spaces, such as campuses, parks, and churches, outside the
regular galleries. It encouraged art, not only the visual arts, but also music and theater, at the grass-roots level
beyond the urban centers as a vehicle for the expression to the people's sentiments. It thus widened the public
of art, from the traditional Manila circuit to the local regions, thus significantly enhancing the vitality of art in
life.

A striking trend in Philippine art today is the use of indigenous materials, as best exemplified by the Baguio
artists. For its sheer innovativeness, this trend projects itself as the new Philippine avant-garde. More
importantly, it has displaced an earlier avant-garde, that consisted of the conceptual artists who had been
associated with the late Ray Albano of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) . This earlier "avant-garde"
movement had cultivated a cosmopolitan tone; or if it had Philippine allusions, it took pride in a hermetic
preciosity that had the character of an injoke among a small elite circle of initiates. A number of their works,
however, were redundancies of Marcel Duchamp's original gesture of "formalization" in which a banal object,
like the famous urinal, is removed from its daily setting and situated in a gallery context. The more complex of
their works blithely combined different forms and media from "high art" (painting) and "low art "
(comics) in a leveling, "post-modern" way. Yet, in a sense, the Orientalizing mode was at work in these
productions, for they proffered myths of the Filipino subjectivity as inscrutable, solipsistic, obscure, and
therefore of eminently exotic fare .

The trend in indigenous materials, doubtless, has a clearly positive, salutary aspect. Because the works are not
made of academic materials associated with museums and formal art situations, the art experience breaks
down the alienation of the ordinary viewer before a work of art that is now made of accessible, familiar
materials from the environment and initiates a fluid circulation of exchange between the work and the viewer.
Furthermore, the use of indigenous materials demonstrates that the creation of art is possible without a
dependence on expensive, imported materials. There is likewise the challenge to artistic ingenuity that these
materials bring, as well as a sense of being in close touch with one's natural environment.

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 Art from indigenous materials may take the form of disparate objects, such as tapestries, as in the work of Paz
Abad Santos, which draw inspiration from indigenous sources. Imelda CajipeEndaya uses folk elements for
their semiotic significations. Some works using vines, seedpods, and other organic elements are arranged or
constructed with clear mimetic intentions, as in works of Junyee. However, the use of indigenous materials can
also take the form of installations that inevitably imply social contexts. As installations, they may project the
subjectivity of the artist who takes on the role of shaman/high priest/healer, and it is here that the problems
begin.

Certainly, the trend in indigenous materials is not ideologically neutral. At the base, it can have a generally
nationalist, that is, anti-colonial character, because it foregrounds the values of the local environment, natural
and social. But it can also go to the ideological extreme of nativism, of a zealously guarded subjectivity that
excludes all that is not part of it, a nativism that romanticizes the precolonial past and situates, indeed
imprisons, the Filipino in that past, resurrecting its mythic gods and goddesses as the true and authentic
religion. But cultural identity is a problematic concept that must reckon with a diversity of contributions. Never
completed once and for all, it is continually shaped by the historical process. Likewise, the artistic avant-garde
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of a country is not found elsewhere in the cosmopolitan centers of the West, but is developed on home
grounds, forward-looking and progressive, constantly in quest of radical artistic languages that can
carry through the formidable project of change. (Associate Professor of Art Studies, University of the
Philippines/the Philippines)

Activity:

Compile pictures showing popular culture during post-colonialism.

Send to my messenger (not gmail) on or before November 4, 2020.

Discussion

Module 10. Feminism and Pop Culture

Feminism and Popular Culture

Among the principal influences to the Filipina image of herself and to her writings we include four women in
Philippine history, namely: Gabriela Silang, Leonor Rivera, Imelda Marcos and Corazon Aquino. Often
mentioned in Philippine literature, these four represent the struggle, perception and character of how it is to
be a woman in Philippine society. Gabriela Silang was a katipunera or a revolutionary – a representation of
female bravery – who fought against Spanish colonialism in the 18th century. Silang was a contrast to the
chaste and religiously devout image of the Filipino lady as portrayed by Jose Rizal through his Spanish-language
novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Within the pages of these 19th century novels, Rizal depicted
Leonor Rivera - a girlfriend of his - through the fictional character of Maria Clara as the epitome of virtue, i.e.,
the ideal Filipina. Then there was the arrival of Imelda Marcos – the “beauty queen and dictator’s wife … a
power-seeking type of woman…” – after that, the country saw the advent and rise of Corazon C. Aquino, the
first woman president in Asia and the Philippines – the elected 1986 replacement of a male despot, Ferdinand
Marcos. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, after two male presidents (Fidel V. Ramos and Joseph Estrada, respectively),
followed in the footsteps of Corazon Aquino to become a leader and political figure of an Asian nation.
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 In the latter years of modern-day Philippine literature, from the 1960s to the 1980s, feminism became the
focus of Philippine women writers – first in poetry and then prose – in order to break away from what was
termed the “Great Grand Silence of the Centuries”. Creating an image unique to themselves – through their
own individual efforts – became the norm. There was criticism against the Maria Clara image portrayed by the
Philippine paladin, José Rizal, as well as critiques and feminine disapproval of how Filipino men writers wrote
about women. Contemporary feminist female writers were also inclined to break away from the traditional,
idealized and typecast image of the Filipina of the past as matriarchal mystics and figures who performed
sacrifices, underwent suffrage and works of martyrdom which was to be expected, given their pious
upbringing. Women writers also passed judgment against the typical portrayal of women as sex symbols.
Among the first lady writers to break away from the old style and genre, exemplified in the works of past
female writers, were Paz Latorena's traditional "teachings" about the ideal Filipina in the feminist
poet, Marjorie Evasco. Other women writers like Kerima Polotan Tuvera, Rosario Cruz Lucero, Ligaya Victorio-
Reyes and Jessica Zafra even stepped forward to boldly make it a “fashion” to discuss aspects
of womanhood that were previously regarded as taboo in Philippine society, such as those dealing in female
anatomy, erotica, divorce or separation from former husbands, abortion, premarital affairs, and childless
marriages. An example is the 1992 publication of Forbidden Fruit, a bilingual volume combining Filipino and
English language works of women.
Feminist art reflects a struggle for equal access to sites that promote and display art. Feminist artists had a
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radical effect on art making, challenged history books and museums that encouraged the misrepresentation of
women, and demanded inclusion in the creative, decision making, and display processes. First wave feminist
artists organized shows and gallery spaces, highlighting the difference between male and female artists, and
traditional modes of art production. For example, craftwork had long been treated as a woman-centered,
devalued art form, relegated to the realm of utilitarian objects or busywork, whereas male artist were treated
as geniuses that created a higher form of fine art. Thus, feminist artists and historians sought to elevate
craftwork to the same level of skill and aesthetic recognition. Second wave feminist artists critiqued institutions
that documented, canonized, judged, and created art spaces and markets noting how they were specifically
exclusionary to women. They questioned historical texts and publications that pushed women out of canon in
order to focus primarily on a white, male perspective on creativity and genius. Third wave feminist artists
addressed broader issues 2 of gender, race, class, and violence against women, minorities, transnational, and
transgender peoples. Feminist artists are aware that this hierarchy could not be transcended completely
because gender is socially constructed therefore discrimination is repeatedly enacted and promoted by
society. Feminist artists expanded the definition of art to be more inclusive from subject matter to media.
Feminist artists pioneered the use of mixed media and performance techniques to display and interpret the
body on their own terms. Men have dominated the art world in the Philippines, as well. While history has little
to say about the Filipinas role, research has proven that they have been crucial since the beginning. A goal of
gender conscious historians, scholars, writers, and artists is to put women in the proper historical perspective,
and include their stories in Philippine history. One issue for women artists is to recognize these historical and
social strictures, and dismantle them through art. Two ways that artists have responded to gender issues is to
create protest art that speaks out against oppressive forces in society that keep women from attaining their
potential, and to affirm a woman’s personhood, power, and strength, in order to fully embrace her humanity.
In the 1970s, Filipina feminists or Peminists organized into a political unit called MAKIBAKA (Struggle). They
protested brutality against Filipina women like sexual trafficking, domestic violence, and other forms of
systemic oppression. They vocalized the rights of local farmers, participated in labor strikes, and encouraged
the reproductive health and wellness of impoverished women by setting-up clinics and nurseries. They staged
the first demonstration against a beauty pageant, and organized the first International Women’s Day
celebration, which involved the Women’s March Against Poverty. Under martial law, several MAKIBAKA
activists became victims of kidnap, rape, and murder due to their politics

Filipino Women Writers

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 The history of Filipino women writers is an account of how Philippine women became literary “mistresses of
the ink” and “lady pen-pushers” who created works of fiction and non-fiction across the genres. Writing
in English, Spanish, Filipino and other local languages and native dialects, female writers from the Philippine
archipelago utilized literature, in contrast with the oral tradition of the past, as the living voices of their
personal experiences, thoughts, consciousness, concepts of themselves, society, politics, Philippine and world
history. They employed the “power of the pen” and the printed word in order to shatter the so-called "Great
Grand Silence of the Centuries" of Filipino female members, participants, and contributors to the progress and
development of the Philippine Republic, and consequently the rest of the world. Filipino women authors have
“put pen to paper” to present, express, and describe their own image and culture to the world, as they see
themselves
1. Ninotchka Rosca (born December 17, 1946, in the Philippines) is a Filipina feminist, author,
journalist and human rights activist who is active in AF3IRM [1], the Mariposa Center for
Change, Sisterhood is Global and the initiating committee of the Mariposa Alliance (Ma-Al), a multi-racial,
multi-ethnic women's activist center for understanding the intersectionality of class, race and gender
oppressions, toward a more comprehensive practice of women's liberation. Ninotchka worked with the
anti President Ferdinand Marcos with the new People's Party. As a novelist, Rosca was a recipient of
the American Book Award in 1993 for her novel Twice Blessed.
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Rosca has two novels, two short story collections and four non-fiction books. Her novel "State of
War" is considered a classic account of ordinary people's dictatorship. She is a classic short story writer. Her
story "Epidemic" was included in the 1986 "100 Short Stories in the United States by Raymond Carver and in
the Missouri Review collection of their Best Published Stories in 25 Years, while "Sugar & Salt" was included in
the Ms Magazines Best Fiction in 30 Years.
She is also the author of the best-selling English language novels State of War and Twice Blessed. The latter
won her the 1993 American Book Award for excellence in literature. Her most recent book is JMS: At Home In
The World, co-written with the controversial Jose Maria Sison, who has been included in the U.S. list of
"terrorists".
Rosca was a political prisoner under the dictatorial government of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. She
was forced into exile to Hawaii, United States when threatened with a second arrest for her human rights
activism by the Marcos regime. Rosca was designated as one of the 12 Asian-American Women of Hope by the
Bread and Roses Cultural Project. These women were chosen by scholars and community leaders for their
courage, compassion and commitment in helping to shape society. They are considered role models for young
people of color, who, in the words of Gloria Steinem, "have been denied the knowledge that greatness looks
like them. In 1986 she returned to Philippine to report on the final days of Marcos.
She was at the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women which took place in Beijing, China, and at
the UN's World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria. At the latter, she drafted the Survivors
Statement, signed by four Nobel Prize winners and hundreds of former prisoners of conscience. This statement
first applied the phrase "modern day slavery" to the traffic of women. It was in Vienna as well where the slogan
"women's rights are human rights" gained international prominence; Rosca had brought it from the Philippine
women's movement and helped launch it internationally.
Works:

 Sugar & Salt (2006)

 Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World—Portrait of a Revolutionary by Jose Maria Sison and Ninotchka
Rosca (2004)
 Twice Blessed: A Novel (1992)
 State of War (1988)

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  Endgame: The Fall of Marcos non-fiction (1987)
 The Monsoon Collection (Asian and Pacific Writing) (1983)
2. María Rosa Luna Henson or "Lola Rosa" ("Grandma Rosa") (1927–1997) was the first
 Filipina who made public in 1992 her story as a comfort woman (military sex slave) for the Imperial Japanese
Army during the Second World War.
Maria Rosa Luna Henson was born on December 5, 1927. She grew up in poverty in Pampanga with her
single mother, Julia. Born the illegitimate child of Don Pepe, a wealthy landowner, Henson saw her father
sporadically throughout her childhood. After World War II started, Henson became a member of
the Hukbalahap, a Communist guerrilla movement resisting the Japanese invaders. In April 1943 while with her
comrades, Henson was taken by Japanese soldiers and led the local Japanese headquarters where she was
forced to be a “comfort woman.” In August 1943, Henson and the other girls were transferred to a larger
building in Angeles, Pampanga where the routine continued. In January 1944, Hukbalahap guerrillas attacked
the building and freed Henson. After nine months of being a comfort woman, Henson greatly suffered
psychologically and physically. She eventually married a young soldier named Domingo and had three children:
Rosario (August 1947), Rosalinda (September 1949), and Jesus (December 1951). Domingo died in November
1953. Starting in 1957, Henson worked in a cigarette factory for thirty-four years.
COURSE MODULE

In 1992, when Henson was 65, she decided it was time to tell the world about her experience during
the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during the war. Until 1992, only two people had known of her
secret: her late mother and her dead husband. After coming out publicly with her story at a press conference
in September 1992, Lola Rosa decided to write about her war-time experience in the book, Comfort Woman: A
Slave of Destiny.
In Comfort Woman: A Slave of Destiny, Lola Rosa discussed the silent and invisible existence of Filipino comfort
women. Fifty Filipino women soon followed Rosa's example as they decided to reveal themselves and their
personal stories for the first time—not only to the world but to their families as well. Other victims, including
those from Korea and China, joined the Filipino women to file a class action lawsuit against
the Japanese government in December 1993. The suit sought a formal apology from the Japanese government;
the inclusion of all the war-time atrocities committed by the Japanese into Japan's school history books; and
monetary reparations.
3. Angela Manalang-Gloria (1907–1995) was a Filipina poet who wrote in English.
Angela Marie Legaspi Manalang was born on August 24, 1907, in Guagua, Pampanga to parents, Felipe Dizon
Manalang (born in Mexico, Pampanga) and Tomasa Legaspi. However, their family later settled in the Bicol
region, particularly in Albay. She studied at St. Agnes Academy in Legaspi, where she graduated valedictorian in
elementary. In her senior year, she moved to St. Scholastica's College in Malate, Manila, where her writing
started to get noticed.
Angela Manalang was among the first generation female students at the University of the Philippines. Angela
initially enrolled in law, as suggested by her father. However, with the advice of her professor C.V. Wickers,
who also became her mentor, she eventually transferred to literature.
It was also during her education at the University of the Philippines that she and poet, Jose Garcia
Villa developed a lifelong rivalry. Both poets vied for the position of literary editor of The Philippine Collegian,
which Manalang eventually held for two successive years. In her junior year, she was quietly engaged to
Celedonio Gloria whom she married. She graduated summa cum laude with the degree of Ph.B. in March 1929.
After graduation, Manalang-Gloria worked briefly for the Philippine Herald Mid-Week Magazine. However, this
was cut short when she contracted tuberculosis. She was the author of Revolt from Hymen, a poem protesting
against marital rape, which caused her denial by an all-male jury from winning
the Philippine's Commonwealth Literary Awards in 1940. She was also the author of

10
 the poetry collection, Poems, first published in 1940 (and revised in 1950). The collection contained the best of
her early work as well as unpublished poems written between 1934 and 1938. Her last poem, Old Maid
Walking on a City Street can also be found in the collection.

4. Lualhati Torres Bautista (born December 02, 1945) is a Filipino novelist. Her novels

include Dekada '70, Bata, Bata, Pa'no Ka Ginawa?, and ‘GAPÔ. Bautista was born in Tondo, Manila, Philippines
on December 2, 1945, to Esteban Bautista and Gloria Torres. She graduated from Emilio Jacinto Elementary
School in 1958, and from Torres High School in 1962. She was a journalism student at the Lyceum of the
Philippines, but dropped out because she had always wanted to be a writer and schoolwork was taking too
much time. Her first short story, "Katugon ng Damdamin," was published in Liwayway Magazine and thus
started her writing career.
Bautista garnered several Palanca Awards (1980, 1983 and 1984) for her novels ‘GAPÔ, Dekada '70 and Bata,
Bata… Pa'no Ka Ginawa?, which exposed injustices and chronicled women's activism during the Marcos era.
‘GAPÔ, the Palanca Awards 1980 grand prize winner, published in 1992, is the story of a man coming to grips
with life as an Amerasian. It is a multi-layered scrutiny of the politics behind US bases in the Philippines, seen
from the point of view of ordinary citizens living in Olongapo City.
COURSE MODULE

Dekada '70 is the story of a family caught in the middle of the tumultuous decade of the 1970s. It details how a
middle-class family struggled and faced the changes that empowered Filipinos to rise against the Marcos
government. These events happened after the bombing of Plaza Miranda, the suspension of the writ of habeas
corpus, the proclamation of martial law and the random arrests of political prisoners. The oppressive nature of
the Marcos regime, which made the people become more radical, and the shaping of the decade were all
witnessed by the female protagonist, Amanda Bartolome, the mother of five boys.
Bata, Bata… Pa'no Ka Ginawa?, literally, "Child, Child… How Were You Made?", narrates the life of Lea, a
working mother and a social activist, who has two children. In the end, all three, and especially Lea, have to
confront Philippine society's view of single motherhood. The novel deals with the questions of how it is to be a
mother, and how a mother executes this role through modern-day concepts of parenthood.
Bautista's 2013 book In Sisterhood received the Filipino Readers' Choice Award Nominee for Fiction in
Filipino/Taglish in 2014, organized by the Filipino Book Bloggers Group.
In 2015, Bautista launched the book Sixty in the City, about the life of friends Guia, Roda and Menang, who are
in their mid-60s and realize that there's a good life in being just a wife, mother and homemaker.
Two of Bautista's short stories won the Palanca Awards, namely "Tatlong Kwento ng Buhay ni Juan Candelabra"
(Three Stories in the Life of Juan Candelabra), first prize, 1982; and "Buwan, Buwan, Hulugan mo Ako ng
Sundang" (Moon, Moon, Drop Me a dagger), third prize, 1983.
In 1991 Bautista with Cacho Publishing House, published a compilation of short stories entitled Buwan, Buwan,
Hulugan Mo Ako ng Sundang: Dalawang Dekada ng Maiikling Kuwento.
Bautista's venture as a screenwriter produced several critically acclaimed works. Her first screenplay
was Sakada (Seasonal Sugarcane Workers), 1976, which exposed the plight of Filipino peasants. Her second
film was Kung Mahawi Man ang Ulap in 1984, which was nominated for awards in the Film Academy of the
Philippines. Also written during the same year was Bulaklak ng City Jail, based on her novel about imprisoned
women, which won almost all awards for that year from various awards guilds including Star
Awards and Metro Manila Film Festival. In 1998 her work was used for Chito Rono's film adaptation of Bata
Bata Paano Ka Ginawa, starring Vilma Santos. In 2000 she wrote Gusto Ko Nang Lumigaya, the screenplay for
Maryo J Delos Reyes' political drama thriller.

11
 Bautista became a national fellow for fiction of the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center in
1986. She also served as vice-president of the Screenwriters Guild of the Philippines and as chair of the
Kapisanan ng mga Manunulat ng Nobelang Popular.
She was the only Filipino included in a book on foremost international women writers published in Japan in
1991.
Bautista was honored by the Ateneo Library of Women's Writings on March 10, 2004 during the 8th Annual
Lecture on Vernacular Literature by Women. In 2005, the Feminist Centennial Film Festival presented her with
a recognition award for her outstanding achievement in screenplay writing. In 2006, she was given the Diwata
Award for best writer by the 16th International Women's Film Festival of the UP Film Center.
Excerpts of Bautista's novels have been anthologized in Tulikärpänen, a book of short stories written by Filipino
women published in Finland by The Finnish-Philippine Society (FPS), a non-governmental organization founded
in 1988. Tulikärpänen was edited and translated by Riitta Vartti, et al. In Firefly: Writings by Various Authors,
the English version of the Finnish collection, the excerpt from the Filipino novel Gapô was given the title "The
Night in Olongapo", while the excerpt from Bata, Bata, Pa'no Ka Ginawa? was titled "Children's Party".
A full translation of Bautista's best works could better represent the characteristics of Filipino writing in
international publishing. Dekada '70 has been translated to the Japanese language and was published by
COURSE MODULE

Mekong Publishing House in the early 1990s. Tatlong Kuwento ng Buhay ni Julian Candelabra (1st prize,
Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, 1983) was translated in English and published by The Lifted Brow in
Australia.
Books
 Bulaklak sa City Jail
 Dekada '70
 Bata, Bata… Pa'no Ka Ginawa?
 ‘GAPÔ
 Sixty in the City
 In Sisterhood
 Sonata
 Hinugot sa Tadyang (non-fiction)
 Buwan, Buwan, Hulugan Mo Ako ng Sundang: Dalawang Dekada ng Maiikling Kuwento
 Desaparesidos
Novelettes
 Sila At Ang Gabi: Isang Buong Laot at Kalahati ng Daigdig (1994)  Ang Babae sa Basag na Salamin (1994) 
 Araw ng mga Puso  Apat Na screenplay 
 Ang Kabilang Panig ng Bakod
 Hugot sa Sinapupunan
 Desisyon
 Sumakay tayo sa buwan
Screenplays
 Sakada (co-writer)
 Kung Mahawi Man ang Ulap
 Bulaklak sa City Jail
 Kadenang Bulaklak
 The Maricris Sioson Story
 Nena
 Bata, Bata...Pa'no Ka Ginawa?: The Screenplay
 Dekada '70
 Gusto Ko Nang Lumigaya (screenplay)
 Sex Object
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  Isang Kabanata sa Libro ng Buhay ni Leilani Cruzaldo (television drama)
Teleplays

 Dear Teacher (co-writer)
 Daga sa Timba ng Tubig
 Mama
 Pira-pirasong Pangarap
 Balintataw (Episode title: "Labinlimang Taon"; 1987) [12]
 Desaparesidos (1998)

5. Paz Márquez-Benítez (3 March 1894– 10 November 1983) was a Filipina short-story writer,

educator and editor. Her career as a woman educator as well as her contributions as a writer are seen as an
important step within the advancement of woman in professional careers as well as in the development
of Philippine literature.
During her career as a writer, Paz Marquez-Benitez developed fictional short stories criticizing American
Imperialism. Paz is most known by her fictional short story Dead Stars (1925) in which the two main characters
are displayed as allegories to American imperialism in order to portray the slow decay of Philippine
COURSE MODULE

heritage. Her only other known published work is A Night in the Hills (1925). Even though she had only two
published works her writings would be regarded as the first steps of Philippine literature moving into the
mainstream.
Paz Marquez-Benitez remains as a prominent influence on Philippine literature through not only her writing
but her impact as a educator and editor. Her and her husbands establishment of educational magazines,
schools, and her contributions to the development of creative short story writing courses within the Philippines
is believed to have inspired generations of Filipino writers.
Paz Marquez-Benitez was born on 3 March 1894 in Lucena, Tayabas (now Quezon), Philippines.  Four years
after graduating from the University of the Philippines in 1916, Paz Márquez-Benítez became a teacher in the
English Department at her alma mater. While teaching at the University of the Philippines Paz went on to
develop and teach a course in short story writing for 35 years until she retired in 1951. Throughout her
teaching career, Paz had become known as an influential figure to many prominent Filipino writers in the
English language, such as Francisco Arcellena, Bienvenido N. Santo, Paz Latorena, Loreto Paras Sulit, Edra
Zapanta Manlapaz, and Arturo B. Rotor all of whom, were taught by Paz at the University of the
Philippines. The annually held Paz Marquez-Benitez Lectures in the Philippines continue to honor her memory
by focusing on the contribution of Filipino women writers to Philippine Literature in the English language.
As a professor Paz used her writing course as an opportunity to write her first major short story in 1925
named Dead Stars which was published in the Philippine Herald. Dead Stars would later become critically
acclaimed within Philippine literature and cited as a source of inspiration to many Filipino writers. Though Paz
was well known for her success with Dead Stars it would not be her only work as she would continue to release
short stories such as A Night in the Hills and Stepping Stones although these works were not received as well
as Dead Stars.
For Marquez-Benitez, writing was a lifelong occupation and in 1918, outside of her career in teaching, Paz and
her husband Francisco Benitez became founders of the Philippine Educational Magazine in which they
produced educational magazines for teachers. Francisco Benitez was the editor of the journal until his death in
June 1951 where soon afterword, Paz retired from her career as an educator and took his place as editor of the
journal.  In 1919, she also went on to found the "Woman's Home Journal," the first women's magazine in the
country. Also in the same year, she and six other prominent members of Manila's social elites, namely, Clara
Aragon, Concepcion Aragon, Francisca Tirona Benitez, Carolina Ocampo Palma, Mercedes Rivera, and Socorro
Marquez Zaballero founded the Philippine Women's College now Philippine Women's University.
13
 Works:

 Dead Stars (1925)

 A Night in the Hills (1925)

Other Filipina Artists:

1. Julie Lluch, YUTA, Earthworks, 2008, Ceramic (Figure 1D) Lluch (b. 1946) is a Filipina artist with a
degree from the University of Santo Tomas. She helped opened the national feminist movement to the
arts and co-founded the groups Katipunan ng Kababaihan para sa Kalayaan (KALAYAAN) and
KASIBULAN. Her work raises concern about women’s roles in society, addresses femininity, religious
conviction, social mores, and personal relationships. Yuta is a Visayan word for clay. She uses
indigenous clay, which she believes is sensuous. Her life-size figures express the role of women in
revolutions of the past and present.
COURSE MODULE

2. Pacita Abad, Filipina: A racial identity crisis, 1991, Lithograph, chine-collé and metallic powder (Figure
2D) Abad (b. 1946) traveled to the U.S. to study law, when she switched careers and began painting.
She is a Filipina activist, who has traveled to over 50 countries, created over 4,500 artworks, and
exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. She creates flat and trapunto (stitching and
stuffing canvases to give them a threedimensional effect) paintings. She transforms the surface with
materials like traditional cloth, shells, buttons, beads, and mirrors. 3 Her works investigates identity
formation and tells the stories of women she meets globally: male-dominated cultural experiences,
violence against women, sexploitation, and the difficulties that many women face when they emigrate
to work as domestic workers.
3. Kitty Taniguchi, Winged Lover, Oil on Canvas, 2010 (Figure 3D) Taniguchi (b. 1952) is a self-taught
Filipina artist influenced by literature, philosophy, rites of passage, iconography, and the complexity of
womanhood. She explores feminine modes of representations that challenge and reinterpret existing
social and cultural conventions, as well as her personal struggle to define artistic identity. Much of her
work is drawn from personal experience and her portraits display challenges women have faced
through centuries of spiritual and physical oppression. Symbolism is used to replace traditional
representation and create personal meaning.
4. Brenda Fajardo, American Occupation (Philip sold Maria to Sam), 1989, Mixed media (Figure 4D)
Fajardo (b. 1940) is a Filipina printmaker, graphic artist, and painter. She obtained her MA in art
education at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has historical and nationalist themes, and depicts
folk and mythological tales. The Tarot Card series indigenized tarot images to convey socio-political
and colonial struggles in the Philippines. She weaves events from the past into current issues of
migration, human rights, political corruption, and women’s rights, demanding historical recuperation
and the value of human dignity. Transforming the taro card (foretelling the future) into a dialogue on
myth and history, the viewers sees Philippine history as a continuing saga retold in different ways.
5. Karen Ocampo Flores, A Line of History, 2006, Acrylic on canvas (Figure 5D) Flores (b. 1966) is a Filipina
artist with a BFA from the University of the Philippines. She established the collective SURGE with
artists from Singapore and Australia, that runs an Internet forum tackling the five R’s – Race, Religion,
Region, Rhetoric and Realities. She helped to establish Grupong Salingpusa and Sanggawa, two art
collectives that have created large bodies of political work. A Line of History depicts the Philippine flag
bisecting two women representing indigenous culture and a religious order. Events from history

14
 referring to the colonization of the Philippines surround the women referring to the complexity of local
and national identity.
6. Agnes Arellano, Three Buddha Mothers: Vesta, Dea, Lola, 1995, Marble (Figure 6D) Arellano (b. 1949)
is a Filipina surrealist sculptor. Three Buddha Mothers represents a maiden, wife, and crone, or the
cycle of birth, life, and death. This trinity is derived from mother–goddess paradigms in religion and
literature. Vesta is the young, pregnant mother in a posture derived from Hariti, an Indonesian
goddess of fertility. As a vessel of creation, she is bursting with life. 4 Dea is in the posture of the
meditating Buddha. The figure has multiple breasts like Mebuyan from the underworld, whose body is
full of milk. She is consumed by her nourishing abilities and motherhood. Lola is an aged crone who is
no longer fertile, her skin is wrinkled and sagging. She seeks divination through introspection,
suggested by her closed eyes. By casting real mothers, she stressed the need to search for the sacred
in everyday life.
7. Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, Traces 15: Brave Girl, 2010, Monoprint (Figure 7D) Cajipe-Endaya (b. 1949) is a
Filipina printmaker, painter, mixed media, and installation artist. She uses indigenous materials and
folk elements to convey local texture and colors. She co-founded KASIBULAN, a female art collective in
the Philippines, and initiated the PANANAW Philippine Journal of Visual Arts, of which she was first
editor. Her work addresses identity, gender, race, migration, displacement, and globalization. She
analyzes Philippine identity through historical narrative and in old prints, drawings, and photographs.
COURSE MODULE

Her research into regional folk art and colonial printmaking are drawn upon to create deeply symbolic
artworks, collages, and installations. Traces, captures the female experience during war. Images of
peace are interspersed with images of weaponry that reject the permanence of war, alluding to events
and social conditions that appear to be contradictory like militarization and feminism.

Assessment/Activity:

Google Classroom: To be posted.

15