Pas porwar.

Stories from the canon are of times where the country's turmoils are very much evident. These in turn are exuded greatly in the plot, characters and theme of the writings. It seems the depression of Filipino setting those days, though indirectly, play across your mind as the words pass through your eyes. They usually focus on family, rural life, commonalities broken by unexpected things. In terms of structure, these unexpected things follow a rather long line of narratives (which may be dragging or seem pointless for a first-time reader) until towards or right at the end: BAM! you either realise what needs to be said, or become even more confused by the sudden change. (This may have something to do with, again, the colonial regime - specifically the Spanish - which lasted a slow 300 years before the revolution gave its blast. Again, the evidence of the times.)

We had discussed a good amount of stories centering on women, from the canon to the first of our contemporary readings, and from those we can already see a transition between the two eras of literature. Rivera-Ford and Tiempo both discuss in their stories how women were stripped of choices, Tiempo giving them a step forward through a less helpless (somewhat headstrong) choice. Then Estrella D Alfon brings us a woman that is more than just an observer, and much so more than one who takes in without complaint. Magnificence shows not only a woman who defends what is important to her but a woman who does so with strength and dignity. (I could also include Joaquin's Summer Solstice here, based on how readers may mis/interpret it, as the ambiguity of feminist intent.) We are then brought to the contemporary by another story of womanhood.

This time, though, in Noelle de Jesus' Games we meet a woman with, yes, more control of her life than the aforementioned but still with much struggle in the world. From the medium-scale focus of the bigger problems of Filipinos, we zoom in to a smaller, seemingly more trivial point of conflict. Seemingly, because the language is now more familiar, the "depression" less evident (partly because the Depression of these times are not so world-scale and damaging anymore - which isn't to say they are less important.) The themes of contemporary fiction, then, may be preempted as being closer to the current readers' own problems and understanding. Something which could play a double-edge sword, really: familiarity goes along with rejection, after all, and we might find something that we already "know" less significant once we've read it. Hopefully, we become re-awakened instead.