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Herminia Meñez Coben Reviews The Newspaper Widow by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

August 26, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Book Review by Her­minia Meñez Coben, Ph.D.

Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta from Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty of Sonoma

Title: The News­pa­per Widow

Author: Cecil­ia Manguer­rra Brainard

Pub­lish­er: Uni­ver­si­ty of San­to Tomas Pub­lish­ing House, 2017, Beato Angeli­co Bldg., Espana, Mani­la, Philippines;

Avail­able from Ama­zon in hard copy and in Kin­dle format

Num­ber of pages: 234 pages

Soft­cov­er, $18.95 in the US

 

            The News­pa­per Wid­ow, a fast-paced, mul­ti-lay­ered nov­el of romance and mys­tery, presents an inter­na­tion­al cast of char­ac­ters: a Span­ish fri­ar; an ill-fat­ed lawyer; an expa­tri­ate French­woman and her gay friends, a Taga­log and a Cata­lan; an Amer­i­can doc­tor and researcher at the lep­er colony; and final­ly, the enter­pris­ing pub­lish­er wid­ow of the novel’s title, Ines Maceda.

            Set in urban Ubec and rur­al Car­car in the East­ern Visayas, Philip­pines dur­ing the first decade of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the sto­ry unfolds through the alter­nat­ing voic­es of those prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters, who are some­how drawn togeth­er because of the mys­te­ri­ous dis­ap­pear­ance and death of the Augus­tin­ian priest, Father Zafra. Depart­ing from the con­ven­tion­al struc­ture of the mur­der mys­tery, how­ev­er, the author deft­ly weaves the inter­sect­ing nar­ra­tives of each of her char­ac­ters into a com­plex social dra­ma of fam­i­ly feuds and for­bid­den loves, pet­ty jeal­ousies and class rival­ries, but also of deep friend­ships and endur­ing bonds of kinship.

            Against the back­drop of Philip­pine his­to­ry dur­ing that country’s crit­i­cal tran­si­tion from Span­ish to Amer­i­can colo­nial rule, The News­pa­per Wid­ow, more­over, high­lights the chang­ing world of Ube­cans as they con­front cru­cial polit­i­cal issues such as the man­dat­ed trans­fer of the fri­ars lands and land reform, gov­ern­men­tal con­trol of people’s health, as in the iso­la­tion of lep­ers and the cam­paign against rat infes­ta­tion. With­out inter­rupt­ing the flow of the nar­ra­tive, the author ref­er­ences spe­cif­ic his­tor­i­cal events like the Balangi­ga mas­sacre by the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary, the role of the Thom­a­sites in the new edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, and the estab­lish­ment of a mod­ern trans­porta­tion net­work, as spec­i­fied by the rail­way link­ing Ubec and Carcar.

            The main crit­i­cal voice through­out this peri­od is the local news­pa­pers: The Ubec Dai­ly, found­ed by Pro­fes­sor Pablo Mace­da, an intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal crit­ic, and The Light, owned by Mrs. Maceda’s child­hood friend, San­ti­a­go Echev­e­ria. The lat­ter resem­bles what might be called a tabloid, devot­ed to local gos­sip, where­as the for­mer, with guest columns by her husband’s pro­fes­sion­al col­leagues, aspires to report­ing the “Truth.” The exis­tence of two local papers, with very dif­fer­ent view­points, in Ubec dur­ing the first decade of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is indica­tive of an emerg­ing pro­gres­sive society.

            Moder­ni­ty comes to Ubec also by way of its expa­tri­ates from Europe and the Unit­ed States. For­eign­ers like the French dress design­er and the Cata­lan chore­o­g­ra­ph­er intro­duce Ube­cans to new ideas about fash­ion and the­ater. Ubec’s social elites attempt to out­do each oth­er espe­cial­ly dur­ing the town fies­ta, with its typ­i­cal dis­play, pal­abas, of the women’s prized jew­el­ry and Euro­pean-style gowns, designed by the French woman, dur­ing the car­ni­val and the coro­na­tion of the beau­ty queen, chore­o­graphed as an Egypt­ian spec­ta­cle by the Catalan.

            Still, under­neath the expo­sure to for­eign influ­ences and grow­ing mod­ern­iza­tion lies a strong adher­ence to tra­di­tion­al cul­ture, as evi­denced by wide­spread beliefs in por­ten­tous dreams, ghost­ly appari­tions, super­nat­ur­al beings, and babay­lanes (shamans and local healers).

            Strad­dling both worlds, the char­ac­ters in this book, despite per­son­al tragedies, adapt remark­ably well to their fast-chang­ing soci­ety. In the end what starts out as a major dis­rup­tion at the begin­ning of the nov­el, i.e. the dis­cov­ery of the victim’s skele­tal remains in a creek along the Augus­tin­ian monastery, and the var­i­ous per­son­al con­flicts fol­low­ing the event, con­cludes with a restora­tion and reunion, a com­mu­ni­ty made whole once again. The last chap­ter pro­vides a clo­sure to the romance of the French Melisande, although the mys­te­ri­ous death of Father Zafra remains a mystery.

            A must-read from a mas­ter sto­ry­teller, The News­pa­per Wid­ow promis­es not only to enter­tain but also to edu­cate the read­er about a crit­i­cal peri­od in Philip­pine history.

 

Her­minia Meñez Coben

Los Ange­les, California


            BIO: Dr. Her­minia Menez Coben is Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta from Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty of Sono­ma. She is the author of “Ver­bal Arts in Philip­pine Indige­nous Com­mu­ni­ties: Poet­ics, Soci­et, and His­to­ry” and “Explo­rations in Philip­pine Folk­lore.” She was the first Fil­ipino grad­u­ate of Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Folk­lore and Folk­life Department.

 

 Tags: Philip­pines, Fil­ipino, nov­el, lit­er­a­ture, fic­tion, lit­er­ary, Cebu, his­tor­i­cal, mys­tery, crime, lit­er­ary mys­tery, Ubec

 

Filed Under: Fiction, Nonfiction, Uncategorized Tagged With: Cebu, crime, Filipino, literary mystery, literature, mystery, Philippine literature, Philippines, Ubec

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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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