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Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

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Conversation with Author Cecilia Brainard, YouTube LA Public Library

October 27, 2021 by admin Leave a Comment

Many thanks to Ana Cam­pos, Act­ing Prin­ci­pal Librar­i­an at the Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library for host­ing a vir­tu­al pro­gram, A CONVERSATION WITH AUTHOR CECILIA  BRAINARD: SELECTED SHORT STORIES.  Writer, Actor, and Bud­dhist pas­tor Noel Alu­mit was  the interviewer/facilitator.

You can watch the pro­gram on Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library’s YouTube site. Don’t for­get to like it!

Noel had sent me some ques­tions before the pro­gram, and while the actu­al one-hour inter­view cov­ered more top­ics than just these ques­tions, I’m shar­ing my notes to answer his ques­tions. The taped inter­view is much rich­er and more detailed, so do try to view that one.

NOEL How do your sto­ries explore the com­plex his­to­ry of the Philip­pines along with his­to­ry between the Philip­pines and America.

 CECILIA  I should men­tion that I wrote many essays that look at the Philip­pine-Amer­i­can con­nec­tions. For instance I inter­viewed Mari­na Espina years ago about the Manil­a­men in Louisiana. They were the Fil­ipinos who jumped ship from the Span­ish galleons of the 1700s and set­tled in the bay­ous of Louisiana.

            I also wrote an essay about Chi­no, the Fil­ipino who joined the Spanish/Mexican expe­di­tion to Los Ange­les back in 1791.

           Some of my short sto­ries and all three of my nov­els When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept, Mag­dale­na, and The News­pa­per Wid­ow, look at the rela­tion­ship of the US and the Philip­pines. My first nov­el, When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept, the com­ing of age nov­el of a young girl dur­ing World War Two, involves alliance between the Fil­ipino guer­rilleros and the Amer­i­cans in their fight against the Japan­ese. This alliance how­ev­er is lop­sided and in the nov­el, my char­ac­ter Nan­do real­izes that Fil­ipinos have to decide the des­tiny of their country.

My sec­ond nov­el, Mag­dale­na, is a frag­ment­ed piece about the lives of three women affect­ed by the var­i­ous wars in the Philip­pines, includ­ing the Philip­pine Amer­i­can War, World War Two, and the Viet­nam War.

My third nov­el, The News­pa­per Wid­ow, is set in Ubec dur­ing the Amer­i­can peri­od, the time when Amer­i­ca was test­ing the waters at being a colo­nial power.

I have also writ­ten sto­ries inspired by what I call my Fil­ipino Amer­i­can expe­ri­ences: my arrival here as a stu­dent at UCLA, my life in San Fran­cis­co as a preg­nant wife, and so on.

While my sto­ries are anchored in spe­cif­ic time frames, I do not set out to write “his­tor­i­cal fic­tion” but focus on char­ac­ter under stress and how they nego­ti­ate their con­flicts. Hav­ing said that some crit­ics have referred to my two nov­els in par­tic­u­lar – When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept and The News­pa­per Wid­ow – as his­tor­i­cal novels.

NOEL: How do you research these sto­ries? What is it about the past that inter­ests you?

CECILIA: The begin­nings of my sto­ries revolve around char­ac­ters that I find inter­est­ing. These char­ac­ters are in my imag­i­na­tion. In my head they walk and talk and do their thing. When I find there are gaps in my imag­i­na­tion, I will do research.  For instance, when writ­ing “The Black Man in the For­est:, I had to find out what sort of guns the Amer­i­cans car­ried when they were in the Philip­pines in 1901; I looked it up, and they car­ried Krag rifles.

            In oth­er words, I will gath­er infor­ma­tion to get the images clear­er in my head.

            Anoth­er exam­ple is how I had to do research for my third nov­el, The News­pa­per Wid­ow. The pro­tag­o­nist is loose­ly based on my great-grand­moth­er who lived dur­ing the Amer­i­can peri­od in Cebu. I had some infor­ma­tion about here, but I didn’t know how the street lights looked like, and I had to see that in my imag­i­na­tion. I had heard that the Amer­i­cans had built a train sta­tion in Cebu, and I also looked that up and found excit­ing bits of his­to­ry about that.

            The past, espe­cial­ly that of the Philip­pines, inter­ests me because when I was grow­ing up, infor­ma­tion giv­en me or that I accessed was West­ern ori­ent­ed. Philip­pine his­to­ry as I was taught had one chap­ter about pre-Span­ish Philip­pines; it seemed Philip­pine his­to­ry only began when Mag­el­lan “dis­cov­ered” the Philip­pines. That was how I learned it: Fer­di­nand Mag­ellen dis­cov­ered the Philippines.

            I had to relearn and rearrange facts in my brain when I became con­scious of these things. The writ­ing, the imag­in­ing, the research, all serve to give me anoth­er point of view of how things were.

 NOEL: Let’s dis­cuss your his­to­ry of writ­ing. How did you become one? What are some sto­ries that you’re hop­ing to write?

  CECILIA: I had a late start in writ­ing fic­tion. It wasn’t until I was a wife and moth­er when I found the time to write with some kind of seri­ous­ness. I was always writ­ing in jour­nals, and one Christ­mas, many years ago, my hus­band gift­ed me with an elec­tric type­writer. This was very expen­sive and nov­el at the time. I felt some oblig­a­tion to use the type­writer and I arranged to write a bimonth­ly col­umn with the Philip­pine Amer­i­can News. Then I decid­ed to take my fic­tion writ­ing with some seri­ous­ness. I had had a few short sto­ries pub­lished in The Philip­pine Graph­ic and Focus Philip­pines, but they were hit and miss. I didn’t real­ly know how to do it. When I look at those ear­ly sto­ries I cringe at the clichés. Again, at the prod­ding of my hus­band, I start­ed tak­ing fic­tion writ­ing class­es at the Writ­ers Pro­gram of UCLA Exten­sion. The chil­dren were young and this was like ther­a­py to me. Once a week, Wednes­day, I had some time for myself. I would leave my hus­band with the kids and race off to UCLA for the fic­tion class.

I’m trun­cat­ing the sto­ry, but I learned the craft and busi­ness, and bit by bit, I got more sto­ries pub­lished. At some point, I felt I had enough short sto­ries for a col­lec­tion. The writer Ben San­tos him­self wrote his pub­lish­er, Glo­ria Rodriguez about me and my work, and she accept­ed and pub­lished my first book, Woman With Horns and Oth­er Stories.

What are some oth­er sto­ries I’d like to write. I start­ed sketch­ing three or so years ago and have become very inter­est­ed in Art. I have in my head a book project that involves my draw­ings with per­son­al essays. I don’t know what will hap­pen because the art keeps on evolv­ing and the draw­ings I am mak­ing now are dif­fer­ent from what I made last year. We’ll see what happens.

Anoth­er project I’m work­ing on is Grow­ing Up Fil­ipino Book 3. You recall that I edit­ed and col­lect­ed the first vol­umes of Grow­ing Up Fil­ipino: Sto­ries for Young Adults, which have been suc­cess­ful. These books have been reviewed by Book­list, Library Choice and oth­er main­stream review­ers; the books were fea­tured in the Nation­al Georgraphy’s rec­om­mend­ed sum­mer read­ing as well.

            Now, I’ll start pro­duc­tion of Grow­ing Up Fil­ipino Book 3 for an expect­ed release date in August 2022.

 Ques­tions and Answers 

      1: There was a ques­tion from a teacher about books for his stu­dents, and I rec­om­mend­ed the two vol­umes of my Grow­ing Up Fil­ipino 1 and 2.  In fact my Select­ed Short Sto­ries can be read and appre­ci­at­ed by young adults, but Grow­ing Up Fil­ipino 1 and 2 are tai­lored specif­i­cal­ly for young adults.

  1. There was a ques­tion from Dr. Luisa A. Iglo­ria, Poet Lau­re­ate of the Com­mon­wealth of Vir­ginia: Would you talk about how female char­ac­ters in your sto­ries reflect some of the com­plex­i­ties, chang­ing roles, and iden­ti­ties not only relat­ed to female­ness, but also to gen­der in gen­er­al — in the Philip­pine con­text as well as in the con­text of the Fil­ipino diaspora?

Many of my sto­ries have women pro­tag­o­nists, and many crit­ics have com­ment­ed on these women char­ac­ters are being strong. Dr. Jack Wigley for instance wrote a research paper on “Fic­tion­al­ized Bod­ies: The Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Female Body in the Short Sto­ries of CMB”, Dr. Rhodo­ra Mag­an wrote a paper “Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s Ori­en­tal Ori­en­tal “Mag­dale­na”: A Lin­guis­tic Reinvention”

There are many more aca­d­e­m­ic papers about this.

Many of my female char­ac­ters have been inspired by women I knew –Angeling in my nov­el, When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept” has traits like my moth­er; Petra San­ti­a­go in the same nov­el and in the short sto­ry, “The Virgin’s Last Night” is sim­i­lar to my one of my old maid aunts; Ines Mace­da in The News­pa­per Wid­ow has traits like women I knew in Cebu.

Like the real peo­ple I pat­terned them after, these female char­ac­ters are tough and resilient and have had to deal with the so-called “dou­ble stan­dard of moral­i­ty” in the Philip­pines, that is hus­bands hav­ing mis­tress­es or girl­friends; they had had to live and nego­ti­ate a male-dom­i­nat­ed soci­ety but they are smart and stand straight and are now cowed and are quite brave, just like the women I knew.

            I will tell you a favorite sto­ry: When I was new­ly mar­ried, my moth­er talked to me one-on-one. “Day, she said, tell your hus­band what he wants to hear, but you do what you want to do.” This reveals a lot to me about how Fil­ip­ina women, in the Philip­pines, or in any part of the world, prob­a­bly say that not only to their hus­bands but to their com­mu­ni­ties: Sure, sure, I won’t make waves;’I’ll tell you want you want to hear, but I will do what I want.”

            In some unfor­tu­nate cas­es, how­ev­er, some Fil­ip­inas do end up bul­lied in a bad way. We have heard of Fil­ip­ina maids being abused, even killed in the Mid­dle East or in some Asian countries.

            But over­all, Fil­ipino women have a tough­ness that seems almost con­trary to the image they present.

            My hus­band and I were in the Hongkong air­port once, enroute to the Philip­pines, and he got to talk­ing to a young Amer­i­can man who was on his way to the Philip­pines to meet his fiancée. He said, he want­ed to mar­ry a Fil­ip­ina because they are pas­sive and obe­di­ent. My husband’s laugh­ter filled the airport.

  1. There was a ques­tion from Pro­fes­sor Ralph Semi­no-Galanof the Uni­ver­si­ty of San­to Tomas: If a read­er has only the time and/or oppor­tu­ni­ty to read three of your “Select­ed Short Sto­ries”, which ones would you rec­om­mend from each of the books pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished as “Woman With Horns and Oth­er Sto­ries”, “Aca­pul­co at Sun­set and Oth­er Sto­ries”, and “Vigan and Oth­er Sto­ries”, and why?

            All the sto­ries my Select­ed Short Sto­ries are strong. They are all pub­lished and even anthol­o­gized sev­er­al times. Some real­ly pop­u­lar ones, used by edu­ca­tors and beloved by stu­dents include: Woman With Horns, Flip Goth­ic, Romeo, When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept. There are stu­dent films on YouTube about some of these stories.

  So, what I’m say­ing is that this is like “Sophie’s Choice” because I do love each story.

But per­haps if one can only read three sto­ries, the best would be to get a sto­ry from each part of the book. The first part are sto­ries set in Ubec; the sec­ond part are set in oth­er parts of the Philip­pines; and the third part are sto­ries set out­side the Philippines.

            So here goes Sophie’s choice:

            From Part 1 – “The Black Man in the For­est” – this is set in 1901 dur­ing the Philip­pine Amer­i­can war. A Fil­ipino gen­er­al and his men are retreat­ing in the for­est when they come across a Black Amer­i­can sol­dier. The gen­er­al kills him and what fol­lows is the soft­en­ing or the human­iz­ing of the gen­er­al as he deals with the body.

            From Part 2 – “Romeo” – This is a sto­ry inspired by a dog I owned named Romeo. This sto­ry is about the dog and the moth­er who are in Mani­la dur­ing the Mar­cos years. It’s a mourn­ful piece that I wrote this after I learned from my broth­er how my real pet Romeo had died.

            From Part 3 – “But­ter­scotch Mar­ble Ice Cream” – this sto­ry is about a Fil­ipino Amer­i­can young woman, who is preg­nant and uncer­tain about her new life in Amer­i­ca. She and her hus­band live in the Mis­sion dis­trict of San Fran­cis­co and they set out one night in search of But­ter­scotch Mar­ble Ice Cream that the hus­band han­kers for.

~~

Cecil­ia Brainard’s web­site has infor­ma­tion about her and her books

Select­ed Short Sto­ries by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard is avail­able in the Philip­pine from Laza­da and Shopee; in the US, it is eas­i­ly avail­able from Ama­zon or Barnes and Noble. Check also East­wind Books for Berkeley.

Tags: #FAHM2021 #Fil­ipinoAmer­i­can­His­to­ry­Month #Philip­pinelit­er­a­ture #Fil­ipinoau­thors

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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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