By Pet Cleto, GABRIELA Ontario
Speech delivered at the launch of the book
"GARDEN BEHIND BARS: The Diary and Letters of Angie B. Ipong"
April 9, 2010
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
It is often said that literature is fruit of the writer’s imagination. But, just as important, but not as often said, is that literature is also the fruit of the reader’s imagination. But how, you would ask, is imagination supposed to work, given that Angie Ipong is telling us the reality of her life? Let’s see how we employ our imagination to see the landscape of Angie Ipong’s book.
Imagine that you were a woman…a woman who has made the choice to give her best in order to help others, especially to help those who are poor. And it is to this choice that you devote your life. Imagine too, that you were living in a very dark country – so dark that the government suspects a woman like you, making this kind of choice…. a government that looks at this choice as too unusual. It thinks therefore that a woman like you is definitely subversive. When this government has you arrested because you are this subversive woman, can you imagine how the government and your captors think and feel about you? What would they do to you? You, because you are a woman who has gone beyond what people expect of a woman, because you are a woman too bold to take this unusual choice, will you not imagine that they are going to give you a punishment worse than what they give a man? If a subversive man is treated as a sub-human, then the subversive woman must be treated as an animal. You have gone beyond the normal bounds of your womanhood, you have even made a political choice which is not the state’s idea of the right political choice, and so you must be very severely punished. If media informs the public about how severely you were punished, your punishers will say, then good - other women will not follow your way. If you talk about it, even better - others will know your shame and you have branded yourself forever.
What is this darkness and why do we still have it? Centuries of uprisings, revolts and a revolution, yet we are still there. A century of women’s resistance all over the world, and more than over a century’s resistance of Filipino women, and yet the great majority of Filipino women still need to break down the chains of their oppression. From the many peasant women who have to take over the obligation of providing for their families because their husbands have lost their lands to the women workers who have had to fill in for their husbands who have been laid off. From the professional women who have had to find out ways to supplement their incomes with part-time jobs or businesses because their husbands’ incomes were insufficient to keep their family together, to women like Angie, who come from different sectors of society, who are looking for each their own way to pierce through that oppressive darkness. It is perhaps, in many ways, a deeper darkness for women like us, migrant women or women in exile, who have to contend with the additional challenges in a new culture and society.
In that darkness, where people who question and criticize are silenced, in the shadow of a government that terrorizes its people, what could you, as a woman, see? In that deep darkness where you, called a subversive woman, are tortured and a captive, what would you see?
In her book, Angie gives us the landscape of freedom in which she has come to firmly believe. Through her story, she wants us to see this inner landscape where truth and justice live, and she hopes that we will also want this landscape to be realized.
In her book, Angie very simply opens her story with an honest description of her illegal arrest and torture. Then she gives us, in chronological order, the basic features of her life as a farmer’s daughter, who struggled through poverty to stay as a student, then became a rural missionary, married another missionary, and after being widowed, continued to devote herself to the welfare of rural folk. These makes us begin to see the darkness in the landscape, but it is a landscape in which she shines all the brighter because she nevertheless held on to hope, and continued to work for justice and freedom.
Angie’s honesty, fearlessness, cheerfulness and hope come through in the book, so that it touches and dazzles you with the abundant life and love in its pages.
The joy and camaraderie experienced by those who live in a rural community of farmers and fisherfolk are there, and enlivens her tale of growing up as part of a farmer’s family. It also gives the setting for Angie’s later choices in life. She sums this part with two concepts: that her father was “a living example of what every Filipino farmer stood for: dedication to the land, unflinching devotion to family and concern for others.” The other was after her father almost hacked the landlord when he was accused of being a thief: “I realized that there was so much injustice in the world and especially where landlords are concerned.”
The next chapters about her studies and her life after college also show her developing sense of “class struggle” – between her family and their wealthy relatives, between her well-to-do classmates and herself, and between the progressive parts of the Church and the agribusiness multinational corporations in Mindanao. From her life after college to the chapters about her love and family life, and the joys and pains of motherhood, mark the deepening path of her commitment “to the poorest of the poor, in particular, and progress of humankind in general”.
About her prison life, she writes how, taking “great inspiration from all the victims of human rights violations and those who have given their lives for the country”, she has overcome loneliness and self pity by doing garden work, art work (on cards), sewing and teaching it, cooking and supervising cooking teams, and finally, by organizing inmates. All these ways have helped inculcate positive values among the inmates, and have regained their hope and faith in a better future. These people whose lives have been touched and changed by Angie show their affection by calling her “Nanay” (Mother).
In a Q & A interview with Angie, she tells her interviewer how she started these “therapeutic” projects, and says, “ Get out of yourself and be forward-looking. Bloom where you are planted.” She seems to be directly talking to us, who are so far away from the land that we love, from all those people who love us back, from the joys of community and friendship that we have known for most of our lives. For us who have been forced to choose a life abroad because of some necessity, whether it be the need for bread or for freedom, these words are stirring. Even as we have to struggle with challenges, realizing that the government we left does not have the political will to protect us, we know that such an inner landscape is what we need so that we – as women and as daughters, mothers and sisters of men - can move forward.
We have employed our imagination to see Angie’s landscape. Now we see that our imagination can show us the texture of our spirit, and more than that, inspire it to seek a better world.
© Petronila Cleto, April, 2010
Speech delivered at the launch of the book
"GARDEN BEHIND BARS: The Diary and Letters of Angie B. Ipong"
April 9, 2010
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
It is often said that literature is fruit of the writer’s imagination. But, just as important, but not as often said, is that literature is also the fruit of the reader’s imagination. But how, you would ask, is imagination supposed to work, given that Angie Ipong is telling us the reality of her life? Let’s see how we employ our imagination to see the landscape of Angie Ipong’s book.
Imagine that you were a woman…a woman who has made the choice to give her best in order to help others, especially to help those who are poor. And it is to this choice that you devote your life. Imagine too, that you were living in a very dark country – so dark that the government suspects a woman like you, making this kind of choice…. a government that looks at this choice as too unusual. It thinks therefore that a woman like you is definitely subversive. When this government has you arrested because you are this subversive woman, can you imagine how the government and your captors think and feel about you? What would they do to you? You, because you are a woman who has gone beyond what people expect of a woman, because you are a woman too bold to take this unusual choice, will you not imagine that they are going to give you a punishment worse than what they give a man? If a subversive man is treated as a sub-human, then the subversive woman must be treated as an animal. You have gone beyond the normal bounds of your womanhood, you have even made a political choice which is not the state’s idea of the right political choice, and so you must be very severely punished. If media informs the public about how severely you were punished, your punishers will say, then good - other women will not follow your way. If you talk about it, even better - others will know your shame and you have branded yourself forever.
What is this darkness and why do we still have it? Centuries of uprisings, revolts and a revolution, yet we are still there. A century of women’s resistance all over the world, and more than over a century’s resistance of Filipino women, and yet the great majority of Filipino women still need to break down the chains of their oppression. From the many peasant women who have to take over the obligation of providing for their families because their husbands have lost their lands to the women workers who have had to fill in for their husbands who have been laid off. From the professional women who have had to find out ways to supplement their incomes with part-time jobs or businesses because their husbands’ incomes were insufficient to keep their family together, to women like Angie, who come from different sectors of society, who are looking for each their own way to pierce through that oppressive darkness. It is perhaps, in many ways, a deeper darkness for women like us, migrant women or women in exile, who have to contend with the additional challenges in a new culture and society.
In that darkness, where people who question and criticize are silenced, in the shadow of a government that terrorizes its people, what could you, as a woman, see? In that deep darkness where you, called a subversive woman, are tortured and a captive, what would you see?
In her book, Angie gives us the landscape of freedom in which she has come to firmly believe. Through her story, she wants us to see this inner landscape where truth and justice live, and she hopes that we will also want this landscape to be realized.
In her book, Angie very simply opens her story with an honest description of her illegal arrest and torture. Then she gives us, in chronological order, the basic features of her life as a farmer’s daughter, who struggled through poverty to stay as a student, then became a rural missionary, married another missionary, and after being widowed, continued to devote herself to the welfare of rural folk. These makes us begin to see the darkness in the landscape, but it is a landscape in which she shines all the brighter because she nevertheless held on to hope, and continued to work for justice and freedom.
Angie’s honesty, fearlessness, cheerfulness and hope come through in the book, so that it touches and dazzles you with the abundant life and love in its pages.
The joy and camaraderie experienced by those who live in a rural community of farmers and fisherfolk are there, and enlivens her tale of growing up as part of a farmer’s family. It also gives the setting for Angie’s later choices in life. She sums this part with two concepts: that her father was “a living example of what every Filipino farmer stood for: dedication to the land, unflinching devotion to family and concern for others.” The other was after her father almost hacked the landlord when he was accused of being a thief: “I realized that there was so much injustice in the world and especially where landlords are concerned.”
The next chapters about her studies and her life after college also show her developing sense of “class struggle” – between her family and their wealthy relatives, between her well-to-do classmates and herself, and between the progressive parts of the Church and the agribusiness multinational corporations in Mindanao. From her life after college to the chapters about her love and family life, and the joys and pains of motherhood, mark the deepening path of her commitment “to the poorest of the poor, in particular, and progress of humankind in general”.
About her prison life, she writes how, taking “great inspiration from all the victims of human rights violations and those who have given their lives for the country”, she has overcome loneliness and self pity by doing garden work, art work (on cards), sewing and teaching it, cooking and supervising cooking teams, and finally, by organizing inmates. All these ways have helped inculcate positive values among the inmates, and have regained their hope and faith in a better future. These people whose lives have been touched and changed by Angie show their affection by calling her “Nanay” (Mother).
In a Q & A interview with Angie, she tells her interviewer how she started these “therapeutic” projects, and says, “ Get out of yourself and be forward-looking. Bloom where you are planted.” She seems to be directly talking to us, who are so far away from the land that we love, from all those people who love us back, from the joys of community and friendship that we have known for most of our lives. For us who have been forced to choose a life abroad because of some necessity, whether it be the need for bread or for freedom, these words are stirring. Even as we have to struggle with challenges, realizing that the government we left does not have the political will to protect us, we know that such an inner landscape is what we need so that we – as women and as daughters, mothers and sisters of men - can move forward.
We have employed our imagination to see Angie’s landscape. Now we see that our imagination can show us the texture of our spirit, and more than that, inspire it to seek a better world.
© Petronila Cleto, April, 2010
