poeta en san franciscogendered memory & geography

Barbara Jane Reyes

Born in Manila, raised in the Bay Area

BA Ethnic Studies UC Berkeley, MFA at SFSU

Author of multiple books of poetry, editor of Doveglion Press, board member of PAWA

Currently professor at USF in diasporic Filipino/a Lit

orient, dis-orient, re-orient What are the multiple meanings of “orient”?

Concept (Tropes) “I emphasize in it [my Orientalism] accordingly that neither the

term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.” - E. Said

Direction and geography (Tropical regions) “Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is

completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.” – E. Said

major themes Power of language

Persistence of the pre-colonial

Multiple history of colonization Spanish Catholicism US occupation, militarism and

war

The global city

What does it mean to be Filipina in SF given colonization, militarism, and war?

en esta ciudad

we find ourselves retracing the steps of gold hungry arrogant spaniards, walking on knees behind their ghosts, could we ever know how much blood has seeped into the soil – this church, a prison. here, tongues severed and fed to wild animals

en esta ciudad we have forgotten how to speak

What city is this?

Why have we forgotten how to speak?

the pure products of America

Allusion to William Carlos William’s poem “to Elsie” – masculine control and desire expressed over a woman’s body

homeless nam vets vs poetic speaker

Subic Bay – major military base from 1885-1992

Maganda ka – you’re beautiful; mahal kita - I love you; magkano ka – how much are you?

wala kang pag-asa pag darating ang araw ng pahayag – there is no hope for you on judgment day

the victory prayer

Consider this procession

First procession = religious celebration Violence of Spanish Catholicism

Second procession (25) = Memorial Day parade Violence of US militarism Who gets to count as war veteran?

Kumintang = ancient name for province of Batangas, site of anti-American resistance

why choose pilipinas? Pilipinas – Philippine islands &

Filipinas

Military occupation of islands parallels patriarchal possession of women

Given this legacy, what does it mean to be a Filipina in the US? Coconut vs Diwa Kayumanggi

vs hispanic hussy (99)

subjective catastrophe

What does it mean to view a subjective catastrophe?

joey ayala sings 16 lovesongs “Just how many kinds of love are there? In this

album there are16... Pop songs usually go for the girl-boy thing, and for good reason. It’s the most obvious form of love and almost everybody knows what it means. If you are tired of all the cliches you will welcome this album; it stretches the imagination and widens the definition of ‘what makes the world go round’”

dapat ganito ang pag-ibig: / tunay, / tunay. this is how love should be, real, real