Status Updates From A Natural History of Empire

Some Quiet Conversation. Hokey at the end. Became clumsy because the writer could not help himself and just said the ideas of the story outright. This could work, maybe, if 1) earned prior or 2) the sentences were constructed in a more elegant way.

The Agonies of Fray Salvador. Amazingly well-written. However, there’re more shortcomings by its awkward combination of 1) conceptual ambition, 2) blatant derivativeness, 3) non-committal authorial self-insert and lastly 4) half-baked academic fight in the footnotes. The last point bring the most distasteful as the narrator’s POV is half of a two-sided argument but is still the weaker half

Then Cruel Quiet. Components are cliché. Execution was great

Halfway through, all of the stories are well-written but everything has been a bummer. Filipino Literary fiction that tackles capital-h History in its themes tends to stupefied in cynicism. Its limiting

A Natural History of Empire. This is the first short story set in the Filipino-American War and told from the perspective of the damned monstrous colonizers that I stomached reading through—even with depictions of slaughter & torture. The reason for this is its center is a Filipino traitor, and how their treachery ultimately tipped the tides against us, and caused out defeat. A cunning mind, a demonic soul.

The Fingers of Sta Juana. Fuedal relations, so-called-passions, during the period of society they were produced. I liked the style of Sy’s writing, it elevates what would be a standard crime of passion story (although content-wise that is still what it is).

I love defamiliarized fictions, I just wish I understood them right away T-T

i am in awe

Some Quiet Conversation gave me the horror vibes starting the interveiw. However, I still cannot connect all the dots—history, verbs, Martial Law, doppelganger. And that ending, was the narrator herself a double?

I like the form of Agonies though I might need to reread it someday to fully understand the project of the text. Who is this Peter Hua symbolizing, perhaps the gatekeeping academia? And why choose an exploration of the Christian faith and doubt for this matter of intellectual debate and “obscurism”? Overall, interesting form.

Then Cruel Quiet was set during or after Martial Law. The development projects mentioned at the beginning might be a signal to the edifice complex of the administration and the people during that time. The detailed imagery of the tortured frog might be a reflection of the torture that happened during that time. I’m not so sure if the discussion and the conflict was warranted.