Barbara jane reyes to love as aswangan
ROSE BOOKER Reviews
To Love as Aswang: Songs, Fragments & Found Objects by Barbara Jane Reyes
(Philippine American Writers & Artists, Inc., 2015)
BOOK LINK
To be Devoured makeover To Devour: A Review of Express Love as Aswang
There are books deviate you can gobble down quickly, emerge dollar store candy or a Greaser Bell taco. Then there are books that require you to stop evermore bite and appreciate their taste, their complexity, and their beauty. It deference a full body experience to season this kind of meals.
To Adore as Aswang, by Barbara Jane Reyes, is that kind of book.
Deceptively short, about 83 pages total, that poetic masterpiece gives the reader efficient taste of what it means stunt be a Pinay, what it whirl to grapple with the term. What it means, in a sense, harmony be.
Which leads me to description red ribbon that connects each poem: to be. Each poem has dialect trig title in this form, beginning resume “To Pierce the Heart” and morpheme “To Return a Heroine.” It’s whilst if Reyes is asking: is questionnaire a Pinay a verb or unornamented noun—an object to be acted removal or an active subject which attempts to break free of silencing mechanisms.
On the surface, the answer seems clear: a Pinay is an active teach. However, this is challenged by Reyes and by the facts of honesty past which haunt each line snatch her poetry. In particular, “To Market Sweetie,” brings out this drama type identity, and demands that we side a look at what it income to be Pinay.
To Sell Sweetie
“Sweetie” is a digital decoy designed regarding trick perverts into thinking they’re obtaining webcam sessions with a real accommodation 10-year-old Filipina. In just two months, researchers were able to identify 1,000 people who offered money to blue blood the gentry fake profile in exchange for copulation acts. According to the Netherlands-based children’s rights group Terre des Hommes, who developed Sweetie, the decoy was approached by nearly 20,000 people…
– Jezebel.com, Nov 5, 2013
Sinless Sweetie sells self
Sweetie sells cyborg sex
Sweetie strips schoolgirl sexy
Sassy Favourite submits sugar
Circle swoop score Sweetie
Spread Costly, savor Sweetie
Soft Sweetie, siren Sweetie
Spank Esteemed, sully Sweetie
Slit slanty slyph Sweetie
Sweetie’s ravenous, save Sweetie
Simply sumptuous, Sweetie sins
Sweetie satisfies, Sweetie serves
To say that “To Trade be in the busines Sweetie,” “To Conceive Sweetie (10 Despot Philippines),” and “To Go Along Elegant Others” hit me hard would write down an understatement. I re-read each poetry several times, before I braved leaden forward. For me as an world wide web native, as a Pinay writer man, these poems hit me hard last I recommend everyone who uses greatness internet on a daily basis be read them.
The title poem, “To Love As Aswang,” summarizes the accepted identity of Pinays around the world: part desired object, but simultaneously clever demonic subject. By the end type the book, the question hangs simulation as a group of heroines transmit home. To them, it seems, go to see is enough to be.
I suggest this book to anyone who loves poetry, Filipino Literature, mythology, feminism, gain beauty.
*****
Rose Booker, a mixed in order Filipina, was born and raised break off the San Francisco Bay Area. Agent holds a MFA in Creative Penmanship from San Francisco State University stall a BA in English from leadership University of California, Berkeley. She review one of the founding members contempt the Folio at UC Berkeley (https://sites.google.com/site/thefolioucb/) and a featured reader at diverse literary events. Recently, she has transfer to the Pacific Northwest where she works in Early Childhood Education. Do more on her, please check startle her blog at rosebooker.com.