INTRODUCTION
[bibliography]
[poetry]
[web links]

[feature]
Emily Lawsin

[gladys's home page]

This site deals specifically with Filipina women's writing, both in the United States and in the Philippines. Words, for Filipinas in particular, can be used as instruments of struggle against the media representations of them over which they have no control and which perpetrate indirect violence on their bodies, their identities, and their lives. Literature is a way for women of color to empower themselves through the use of words, changing the way people see the traditional histories written by the "victors," and reconstructing themselves, their bodies, and their lived material existences. 

I feel that literature by Filipina and Filipina American women is a very important aspect of gender representation in the media, but one that is not disseminated nearly enough. These women writers take up agency in the very act of writing, and in this way and through the content of their words, reappropriate their identities - or "peel off the labels" that have been essentially stuck on them by other people. 

An example of these labels is the descriptions of the women who advertise as mail-order brides that are written by the people who are their "pimps." These labels are much more disseminated than literature by Filipinas, especially on the web. Go to any search engine, type " 'Filipina' and 'writing' ", and you will get at least two or three sites that deal in  mail-order brides, several more XXX adult sites, and maybe one or two of the literature sites you were looking for. Even then, the literature sections are composed chiefly of male writers.

After the research I have done in compiling books, poems, and other literature for an annotated bibliography, I have sadly realized that I know more about the stereotypes of Filipinas that have traveled from the "labels" than about the incredible artistry and creativity of brilliant Filipinas in the Philippines, United States, and many other countries. I knew so little about writers like Jessica Hagedorn, Virginia Cerenio, Catalina Cariaga, Evelina Galang, Emily Lawsin, and others, many of whom live here in the United States. I still feel like I don't know very much. We don't see their names, read their words, or hear about them often enough, even though they are exceptional scholars, teachers, and artists. Moreover, finding them in the first place takes considerable time and effort. It's almost like you have to acquire a very specialized knowledge before you can find out about these women. My goal is to get the word out as much as I am able, and publishing a site like this on the Internet is a good way to do that. Like the truth, these women are out there.