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Herminia Menez Coben Reviews 2 Short Story Collections by Cecilia Brainard

August 5, 2021 by admin Leave a Comment

 

From Halo-Halo Reviews, Her­minia Menez Coben reviews 2 short sto­ry col­lec­tions by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard. The books have been recent­ly reis­sued in the Unit­ed States. 
***
WOMAN WITH HORNS AND OTHER STORIES by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard (U.S. Edi­tion PALH 2020, New Day 1987) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1953716032
and
ACAPULCO AT SUNSET AND OTHER STORIES by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard (U.S. Edi­tion PALH 2020, Anvil 1995) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1953716075
 
In her debut col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, WOMAN WITH HORNS, Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard launch­es her myth­i­cal Ubec (Cebu) – a his­toric, cos­mopoli­tan and vibrant city – the set­ting of many of her short sto­ries, as well as her most recent nov­el, THE NEWSPAPER WIDOW. 
 
Ubec is home to the his­tor­i­cal fig­ure Lapu-Lapu, por­trayed in “1521” not in his role as the leg­endary defend­er of the island against Span­ish con­quis­ta­dors but as a new father engulfed with joy at the birth of his first son, only to lose him, soon after, to ene­my fire.
 
In “Black Man in the For­est,” as in “1521,” war serves as the nec­es­sary back­ground for high­light­ing the com­plex emo­tion­al dra­ma that is at the core of the nar­ra­tive. The Philip­pine Amer­i­can War sit­u­ates Gen­er­al Gre­go­rio in a for­est, where he has fled with a few of his men to escape the Amer­i­cans. Con­front­ed by a “black man,” he is wound­ed in the leg and he fires back, killing the Amer­i­can sol­dier with his last bul­lets. In the after­math, the gen­er­al reflects on his victim’s death, and with great com­pas­sion gives the stranger a riv­er-funer­al, sav­ing him from the pre­da­tion of one of his men, the can­ni­bal­is­tic Liver-Eater.
 
These and oth­er sto­ries below clear­ly demon­strate Brainard’s abil­i­ty to draw the read­er into the sto­ry by cre­at­ing char­ac­ters that are tru­ly believ­able, whether they are plucked from the pages of his­to­ry (“1521,” “Chino’s Dream”), drawn from folk­lore (“Woman with Horns”), or from one’s mem­o­ry of ordi­nary peo­ple lead­ing ordi­nary lives. All of them share com­mon human frail­ties and redeem­ing virtues, and, always, all are wor­thy of redemption.
 
In the title sto­ry, Dr. Ger­ald McCal­lis­ter, a hol­low man, grief-strick­en after the death of his beloved wife, assumes the post as Ubec’s Amer­i­can direc­tor of a pub­lic health pro­gram to con­tain a cholera epi­dem­ic. A stranger in a strange land, with­out any mean­ing­ful con­nec­tion to any­one, he becomes con­sumed by his work. In the end, an unusu­al­ly seduc­tive young wid­ow, believed to have been sired by a riv­er spir­it, redeems him from a joy­less, lone­ly existence.
 
In “Woman with Horns,” as well as in oth­er sto­ries in the sec­ond col­lec­tion, begin­ning with “Aca­pul­co at Sun­set,” the char­ac­ters seem haunt­ed by a sense of dis­place­ment, a “feel­ing of being a stranger” (“Killing Time”), “of not belong­ing” (“Alas­ka”) in a coun­try where even the sun­sets are nev­er the same as in one’s native land (“Aca­pul­co”). Brainard is a spe­cial­ist in the psy­chol­o­gy of exiles, of alien­at­ed immi­grants, trans­plant­ed to a place they nev­er can quite call home.
 
Brainard’s prose is lean, sparse, and easy to read, but each sto­ry is nev­er sim­ple. If one real­ly pays atten­tion to her sto­ry­telling craft, one is reward­ed with delight­ful dis­cov­er­ies, as in “Aca­pul­co.” The open­ing scene about a spi­der con­stant­ly weav­ing its web is a recur­ring metaphor for the hero­ine her­self. “I, too, am cre­at­ing a web, am I not?” she asks her­self. The gos­samer web reminds her of her mother’s sina­may weav­ings and the pover­ty of her child­hood, which she lam­en­ta­bly con­trasts with the wealth and com­fort her suc­cess­ful hus­band has giv­en her in her new land. Despite that, she feels “dry and hol­low,” like a “float­ing ghost,” a ghost like Jaime, the love of her life, still hov­er­ing in her mem­o­ry, and res­ur­rect­ed only with the annu­al let­ters deliv­ered by the galleon from Mani­la. At the end, when her hus­band calls her to join him and their twin daugh­ters, his loud, urgent voice leaves “the spi­der… cring­ing in her web.”
 
A gift­ed spin­ner of tales, Brainard can turn a sim­ple event in an ordi­nary life, like a crav­ing for “But­ter­scotch Mar­ble Ice Cream” into a heart­warm­ing sto­ry about a young wife, preg­nant for the first time, con­tem­plat­ing her future in a small rental apart­ment in San Fran­cis­co. Look­ing out her win­dow, she is per­turbed by the scene of a woman hang­ing out her laun­dry. Is this what mar­ried life is all about, she won­ders. Her hus­band, Mark, a law stu­dent, craves for a par­tic­u­lar fla­vor of Swensen’s ice cream and per­suades her to go on what turns out to be a quest from one ice cream shoppe to anoth­er in the damp and fog­gy city. Pleased with their suc­cess, Mark set­tles down with the pint of ice cream in front of the tele­vi­sion. His wife, by the win­dow, is still think­ing of the neigh­bor and her laun­dry when the baby gives a kick. Shift­ing her weight, she catch­es Mark’s reflec­tion on the glass, hap­py and con­tent with the but­ter­scotch mar­ble ice cream, and she real­izes that “in that reflec­tion (is) my future.”
 
“But­ter­scotch” and oth­er sto­ries in these two col­lec­tions are them­selves like reflec­tions on a win­dow pane or like snap­shots of a moment in time, which reveal much more than what appears on the surface.
 
“A Very Short Sto­ry” cap­tures a few hours in the life of a mar­ried man, on a tryst with a lover at the Hilton. It is very brief, no more than half a page. It is up to the read­er to fill in the rest.
 
Hav­ing read most of Brainard’s short fic­tion, as well as her nov­els, I think that I can safe­ly say that these sto­ries are some of the best in her exten­sive repertoire.
 
(Her­minia Menez Coben, a retired Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Stud­ies at Cal State, Sono­ma, is author of EXPLORATIONS IN PHILIPPINE FOLKLORE and VERBAL ARTS IN PHILIPPINE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES: POETICS, SOCIETY, AND HISTORY.)
tags: #philip­pinelit­er­a­ture #philip­pinefic­tion #philip­pine­books #pinoylit #bookre­view

Filed Under: Fiction, Uncategorized Tagged With: book review, books literature Cebu Philippines, Philippine literature

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Welcome!

I am a daugh­ter of the Philip­pines and an adopt­ed daugh­ter of Amer­i­ca. I have also trav­eled to many places so I am also a daugh­ter of the Earth. My expe­ri­ences have found their way into my sto­ries, which try to depict char­ac­ters caught in impor­tant moments in their lives, sit­u­a­tions that force them to act, make deci­sions, change. I try to see the world from my own point of view, not the dom­i­nant West­ern one, thus my inter­est in his­to­ry, cul­ture, and set­ting. But my char­ac­ters car­ry my sto­ries; they are the most impor­tant in my sto­ry-telling. I have to dive deep into them to under­stand their human­i­ty – their good­ness as well as their bad­ness, their beau­ty as well as their ugli­ness. Just like us. Just like each of us. I need to know where they came from, where they are now, so I under­stand where they are going. Just like us.

Please read my full biog­ra­phy here

 

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