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Angelica’s Daughters: A Dugtungan Novel

Angelica’s Daughters: A Dugtungan Novel

by Cecil­ia Brainard, Erma Cuizon, Susan Evan­ge­lista, Veron­i­ca Montes, Nadine Sarreal
Anvil 2010, soft­cov­er, 202 pages, ISBN 9789712724282
PALH has a few rare out-of-print soft­cov­er copies, $65 each, Free US ship­ping, email palhbooks@gmail.com

 

Engrossing Collaborative Novel

Angel­i­ca’s Daugh­ters is a dug­tun­gan or con­nect­ing nov­el writ­ten by five authors. The authors were inspired by this writ­ing tra­di­tion which was pop­u­lar in the Philip­pines in the 1920s. Each author wrote a chap­ter or part of the nov­el, then passed the work on to the next author. Test­ing to see if they could do this col­lab­o­ra­tive work, the authors did not set out to write a seri­ous nov­el, but some­thing fun.

 

Praise

“Chick lit with a com­fort­able dose of smart­ness and his­tor­i­cal verve. Angel­i­ca’s Daugh­ters cel­e­brates auda­cious hero­ines primed by deep pas­sion and fairy­tale romance! Set in the heat of a 19th-cen­tu­ry Asian rev­o­lu­tion and what its set­ting becomes by the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Angel­i­ca’s Daugh­ters beguiles with its myth­ic splen­dor, threat of a gen­er­a­tional curse, mas­ter­ful betray­als, and female leads read­ers can fall in love with.

The sto­ry found itself as one writer fin­ished her chap­ter with­out con­sult­ing the oth­ers, and passed it on for the next writer in line to do with as she pleased. The amaz­ing result is a delight­ful read by five writ­ers who cher­ish their His­pan­ic, Fil­ipino, and Amer­i­can cul­tur­al roots.” (Felice Pru­dente Sta. Maria, Writer)

This col­lec­tive and col­lab­o­ra­tive nov­el proves that writ­ers share much more than just an inter­est in, as one of the authors puts it, “the idea of cre­at­ing some­thing of rare beau­ty out of noth­ing at all.” They share a Cre­ative Uncon­scious that, when work­ing on a com­mon text, comes up with star­tling and unpre­dictable imag­i­na­tive delights and insights. This tale of two women liv­ing a cen­tu­ry apart (and the women and men in their lives) told sequen­tial­ly by five women is tru­ly an ensem­ble per­for­mance worth a stand­ing ova­tion. (Isagani R. Cruz for The Philip­pine Star)

“Part of the plea­sure of read­ing Angel­i­ca’s Daugh­ters, the engross­ing new col­lab­o­ra­tive nov­el by five estab­lished Fil­ip­ina writ­ers, is see­ing how deft­ly the authors deal with the chal­lenge of writ­ing in this res­ur­rect­ed lit­er­ary form. A dug­tun­gan is a genre of Taga­log nov­el pop­u­lar ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry, in which each writer cre­ates a chap­ter and hands it off to the next, who writes anoth­er chap­ter with­out direc­tion. The result, in this case, is an ensem­ble per­for­mance that con­tains some­thing of the exhil­a­ra­tion of the­atri­cal improv. One watch­es these accom­plished authors inven­tive­ly weave a his­tor­i­cal romance, cre­at­ing grip­ping hero­ines and turns of plot, cross­ing decades and nation­al bound­aries, tap­ping into cul­tur­al roots of the Philip­pines, Spain and Amer­i­ca. Read­ing Angel­i­ca’s Daugh­ters is a grip­ping expe­ri­ence. (Bri­an Ascalon Roley, Author of Amer­i­can Son)

Book Reviews

Libay Lin­san­gan Can­tor for The Mani­la Times, Octo­ber 17, 2010

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2010/10/manila-times-writeup-re-angelicas.html

 

Ron S. Lim for The Mani­la Bul­letin, Sep­tem­ber 24, 2010

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2010/09/novel-train-by-ronald-s-lim-manila.html

 

 

Dr. Michaela Keck­’s review for Asian Stud­ies, Vol, 47, 2011

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2013/08/book-review-of-angelicas-daughters.html

 

 


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Cecil­ia Brainard
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San­ta Mon­i­ca, CA 90409
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