Dead Stars: American and Philippine Literary Perspectives on the American Colonization of the Philippines

by Jennifer M. McMahon

Dead Stars: American and Philippine Literary Perspectives on the American Colonization of the Philippines examines the American colonization of the Philippines from three distinct but related literary perspectives. The first is the reaction of anti-imperialist American writers Mark Twain, W. E. B. Du Bois, and William James to America’s first foray into the role of colonizer and how their varied essays, letters, and speeches provide an incisive delineation of fundamental conflicts in American identity at the turn of the twentieth century. The book then analyzes how these same conflicts surface in the colonial regime’s use of American literature as a tool to inculcate American values in the colonial educational system. Finally, Dead Stars considers the way three early and important Filipino writers—Paz Marquez Benitez, Maximo Kalaw, and Juan C. Laya—interpret and represent these same tensions in their fiction.

146 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Tito Quiling, Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember my thesis adviser recommending this book as I was on the second leg of my master thesis in 2015 to get an idea how to structure the chapters. I ended up finishing this title in one sitting. While the reading and the materials for analyses can read a bit dated, literary and history aficionados may gain a few insights in terms of refreshing their perception of the collections written by the first generation of modern Filipino writers in English such as Maximo Kalaw, Juan Laya, and Paz Marquez Benitez, where the title of the book is taken from.

The language may seem a bit cold sometimes, however, it could be reflecting the mood of the data where the somber environment pervades in the selected texts. More than the narrative and character analyses of Laya, Kalaw, and Marquez Benitez's texts, the thrust of the work delves into the historical context when these works were written and how the temper of the times has seeped into the string of events presented in the analyses. More than that, what I've gleaned from this work points to the lens that one intends to use, regardless of the age of the materials.