Books to hold up half the sky

Last Thursday, Sept. 23, a media luncheon hosted by book publisher Julita Campos-Benedicto was held at Latitude Restaurant in Trader’s Hotel Manila. Top of the menu was a “sneak peak” at The Legacy of Hope and Triumph, a 300-page coffee-table book that details in vintage images and text how Filipino women helped shape Philippine history.

Featured on the book’s cover are Josefa Llanes Escoda and Trinidad Legarda — seen marching with the Girl Scouts of the Philippines, a platform for women’s development they organized and led.

The book compiles stories of hopes and triumphs covering 80 years of Filipino women leadership since the first notable cause that was the right of suffrage. It is also as much a story of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs of the Philippines, chronicling the passing of the torch among its leaders and members.

As promotional material has it, “Part One bares the seed of hope and its planting on soil drenched by the blood of heroes; Part Two reveals the clubwomen’s quest for servant leadership; and Part Three covers the triumphs and travails of clubwomen as history marched on.” Filipinas certainly struggled and succeeded in becoming part of that history.

Mrs. Benedicto, a two-term president of the NFWCP founded in 1921, and now the president of the NFWCP Foundation Inc. established in 1991, said the foundation embarked on the project a year ago “to etch on paper the Filipino women’s legacy of hope and triumph when times called for their tenacity and zeal.”

In the foreword, she writes: 

“Traveling through the pages of this book, you will encounter an awesome past where overwhelming social restrictions and conditions placed on women did not deter them from achieving an excellent record of pioneering dynamism that shaped the steady growth of women leaders in the Philippines.”

Media Wise Communications chief executive, artist, and the book’s co-designer Ramoncito Cruz, together with Ed de Guzman, scoured through hundreds of documents and thousands of photographs in the NFWCP archives, which Cruz commends as “a veritable archivist’s dreamland.” Somehow, the wealth of pre-1941 materials managed to survive, even if the building they were stored in was razed to the ground during the Japanese occupation of Manila.

NFWCP member Telly Farolan-Somera was responsible for much of the text. The book will be formally launched on Oct. 6 at the Centennial Hall of the Manila Hotel, with simple ceremonies starting at 5 p.m.

This Wednesday, Sept. 29, starting at 6 p.m. at the third floor exhibit area of Shangri-La EDSA Plaza Mall, Mario I. Miclat’s novel, Secrets of the Eighteen Mansions (Anvil Publishing), longlisted at the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize, will be launched during the 2010 Maningning Miclat Art Awards.

Now in its eighth year, the awards will be given to winners of the Maningning Painting Competition for artists aged 28 and below, with the grand prize winner receiving P28,000 and a Julie Lluch sculpture trophy.

An invocation through song will be rendered by Aba Dalena, followed by poetry reading by the LIRA (Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Anyo), which recently received the 2010 Gawad Pedro Bucaneg from UMPIL (Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Pilipinas).

Actress, singer, performance artist and educator Banaue Miclat will sing songs in honor of her late sister Maningning — the celebrated prize-winning young artist, published author and trilingual poet who passed away on Sept. 29, 2000.

The Maningning Miclat Art Foundation was formed in 2001 to encourage, support and award outstanding poets and artists. Since 2003 and the following odd-numbered years, the Maningning Poetry Competition in Filipino, English and Chinese has been successfully held to honor and award outstanding young poets from the Philippines and other countries. In 2004 and the succeeding even-numbered years, the Maningning Painting Competition hailed the most outstanding young visual artists.

The twin-bill event melds literature and art together anew with a special limited collector’s edition of Mario I. Miclat’s book offered as a fundraiser for the foundation. Maningning’s and Banawe’s father Mario is himself a prizewinning author, China expert, and dean of the University of the Philippines Asian Center.

Miclat’s novel is said to be “an extraordinary story of underground Filipino expatriates in China during the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution. The novel’s seamless intertwining of the characters’ lives with contemporary Philippine and Chinese history brings to life the so-called First Quarter Storm of student activism and the formation of the New People’s Army in the Philippines, and China’s Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The novel’s protagonist’s interaction with Premier Chou Enlai and President Marcos or with ordinary people like Xiao Zhang and Goldie provides a sense of adventure, excitement and love in situations at times comic and at times full of pathos.”

Mario’s better half Alma e-mailed recently:

“This year, 2010, is Maningning’s 10th angel year and while writing this, I feel a lump in my throat and the tears welling in my eyes. Grief will forever be here. And it comes especially strong during occasions like this. But in her death, there’s birth, in the form of Mario’s book perhaps, and rebirth in young artists coming out and being recognized for their outstanding feat. Then I feel the bittersweet realization that indeed, we are witnessing Maningning’s legacy of excellence being perpetuated.”

On Thursday, Sept. 30, the Ateneo de Manila School of Humanities Dean’s Office, the Ateneo Center for English Language Teaching (ACELT), the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings (ALIWW), and the Ateneo de Manila University Press will launch Prowess and Grace: A Festschrift for Edna Zapanta Manlapaz, edited by Maria Luz C. Vilches, Rica Bolipata-Santos, and Ana Maria O. Fernandez. This will be at Ateneo Art Gallery, starting at 5 p.m.

Contents include the introduction by Maria Luz C. Vilches and sections on “Essays on Woman” by Soledad S. Reyes, Dolores de Manuel, Emma Porio, Rocio G. Davis, Lorenzo Alexander L. Puente, and Luis S. David, S.J.; “Creative Writing: Poetry” by Marjorie Evasco, Fatima Lim Wilson, Gémino H. Abad, Benilda S. Santos, Lawrence Lacambra Ypil, Mookie Katigbak, and Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz; “Creative Writing: Fiction” by Linda Ty Casper, Joy Dayrit, Cyan Abad-Jugo, Christine Bellen, Maria Teresa M. Sicat, Susan Evangelista, Rofel Brion, and Mayette Bayuga; “Creative Writing: Creative Non-Fiction” by Rica Bolipata Santos and Exie Abola; and “Essays on Education, Teaching, and Learning” by Isagani R. Cruz, Karina Africa Bolasco, Alfred A. Yuson, Danton Remoto, Ramon C. Sunico, and Ma. Eloisa N. Francisco.

An academic career timeline and bibliography by the honoree are also included in the book, whose cover illustration is by Gilda Cordero Fernando.

The festschrift honors a much-loved figure in the Ateneo campus before she retired a few years ago, but not before she had established ALIWW among her numerous academic initiatives. 

Edna is hailed as “a perceptive scholar, great teacher, wise mentor, creative thinker, gentle feminist — through essays, poems, and short stories written by students, colleagues, and friends that depict women in their various aspects and experiences as well as portray the stimulating world of scholarship, teaching, learning, growth and becoming.”