Transgressing Space and Time In the Writings of Brainard and Rosca.

The Literary texts that are compared in the paper both tackle about the Filipino diaspora. According to the source, diaspora is the “movement and dispersal of people across different parts of the world.” One of the texts were written by Cecelia Manguerra – Brainard, a famous migrant writer based in California. The text that Brainard’s work was compared to was that of Ninotchka Rosca, a fellow migrant writer who was a prisoner of the Marcos Dictatorial regime at around 1965 – 1986 due to her human rights activism. She was threatened the second time around, and was later on forced to leave for Hawaii. Both texts were written in English as the language medium of discussion. The purpose of comparing the works of these two writers who were born at around the same time, in different places, with different experiences, is to see their different perspectives about the Filipino diaspora phenomenon. The stories help us in understanding what the outcome of finding an entirely foreign place to live in, and the expectations (if any) of returning to the homeland. Migrant writing can be distinguished by its “social rootedness” and the “unique ability to deal with the pressures surrounding them” and the ability to analyze and describe experiences actually manifests in the way their writing. This is because distance from home affects the outlook of writers, there is a sense of “heightened awareness” and “sensitivity” to their situation. Rosca and Brainard are “class – privileged intellectuals”; meaning, they were pretty much well off to afford to migrate to another country such as the United States of America. The writing style of Brainard differs to the writing style of Rosca. Brainard’s style was almost autobiographical in a sense that she “weaves her fictional world by setting her characters and events in Ubec (Cebu), the place where she grew up.” Rosca’s style was more of merging the past and the present to “convey a recognizable portrait of the Philippines.”

In The Writer’s Path of Cecelia Manguerra – Brainard, her goal was to write down all that she remembered from Cebu and the Philippines in her writing to preserve the idea of “home” in her mind. She fictionalizes Cebu as Ubec, and instead of focusing on writing about her “adopted home”, she stays close to writing about the real Cebu City. In her writing style, she writes with the “shards of memory” that she has about Cebu as “authentic renderings” of Brainard’s life at “home.” Memory, according to the source, is what inscribes the stream of life within the story of life, linking the past to the present and to the future. Memories and events that connect with the idea of “home” can’t be totally cut off from a person in migrant writing. Migrant writers are more conscious of being in a new environment when they have a strong desire to return to their homeland due to nostalgia and engagement with memories of “home” that never escapes. Memory in Brainard’s novels functions to remind her of Cebu and the Cebuano community she grew up with. Brainard writes about Cebu as an outsider with an insider’s point of view, and she describes the American experience with the perspective of an outsider in spite of residing there for several decades.

Comparing Brainard’s work to Rosca, Brainard’s When the Rainbow Goddess Wept is a story which uses memory as a bridge between time and space. It focuses more on the happy memories of the Philippines, which gives the readers an understanding of how nice living in the Philippines is. Rosca’s Writer in Exile on the other hand, focuses more on the “negative and ugly realities of life in the Philippines.” Rosca’s perspective was more political compared to Brainard’s because Rosca was an activist, Rosca compares the system in her new “home” to the corrupt one back in the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorial reign. Rosca as a migrant was influenced by the society and culture during her time. She was able to compare the systems between the Philippines and her new “home” in the United States. She tackles on corruption in the political system and the consequences of that corruption to the Philippine society.

Studying about migrant writers is quite difficult in a sense that each writer has his/her own experience which can either be unique or similar to the other. Migrant writing is actually very useful to society because it allows us different perspectives from different people, it allows us to see the differences between systems from the comparison of different countries that migrant writers write about. Especially now in the Philippine society, most people prefer leaving the country for greener pastures and better lives instead of learning how to improve our own system so that people may have better job opportunities and lives here, meaning no more people would opt to leave the country anymore. Migrant writing contributes to comparative literature by comparing the differences between other places and the hometown, so that it may contribute to society.

REFERENCES:
Transgressing Space and Time on the Writings of Brainard and Rosca: The Other(ed) Woman by: Hope Sabanpan - Yu