For Cristina Pantoja (Jing) Hidalgo

By: Bob B0yer

 

When I first met Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo in 1998, she was a member of the English and Comparative Literature Department at the University of the Philippines-Diliman in Manila, where she also had just been appointed the Director of the Creative Writing Center. I confess to being somewhat in awe of this prestigious woman. I had felt the same awe for the nuns who taught me in grade school, before I came to recognize them as real people and even became friends and for some years a correspondent with my eighth-grade teacher. I think Jing may have sensed this when we first met. It was in the CWC. She was working busily at her desk in the Center’s imposing classroom/workshop, which, of course, added to the effect.

We became colleagues (I was an exchange professor in English Literature) and good friends over the semester. We have remained friends, first through my several return visits, then via email, and finally, of all things, through facebook. (For this connectiveness, I have decided to forgive facebook’s invasion of privacy, providing they are truly contrite.)

Jing retired from UP and took a position, similar to the one she had there, at the University of Santo Tomas. She comes back to UP frequently, including for my UP Press Book Launch in 2010 for “Sundays in Manila.” She continues to write and win national awards for her fiction and non-fiction. Jing has recently experienced a death in her family. I think of her often and have been moved by both her sadness and her courage. In a recent post she echoes a hymn that she finds helpful. “We are after all an Easter People.” Later, recently in fact, I remembered how the strong women characters in her novel “Recuerdo” dealt with death and tragedy. I taught this novel for years at St. Norbert and still have a folder of notes “for future reference.” When I opened the folder, the following page was right on top. It is a review assignment for students. I decided to share it here with Jing. It is unchanged except for a few parenthetical additions.

Notes from Lecture on “Recuerdo”

An examination of the development of the (main) character (and narrator) Amanda shows that she learns from the stories about her ancestresses (recuerdo- I remember) that she can have a life after the death of her husband Vicente. That she can face that tragedy and move beyond it. And she can do so without the strength and security provided by Carl (close friend). One can interpret most of the rest of the (novel’s) characters in light of this view of Amanda. Here are some of the details; you supply the interpretation(s).

Leonor: The lover of Father Gutierrez (a Catholic priest), by whom she bears two children. Only gradually does Amanda piece together the puzzle that explains why this partnership of love ended. Leonor never ‘left’ Father Gutierrez to become a ‘proper woman’, as family lore had suggested.

Asuncion (Cion): When cruelly treated by her husband and placed in an insane asylum, Cion, ironically, becomes a more balanced and caring person, a friend to the nuns and to the inmates of the asylum.

Maestra Cressing: She devotes herself to instructing the children of her town, eschewing considerations of marriage for this important duty. When the Katipuneros (revolutionaries) arrive, she bravely persuades the officer in charge to spare the townspeople, using charm, diplomacy, and hot chocolate.

Josefina: Amanda’s great-grandmother, (Lola Paz’s mother), the former actress who turned the ordinary into the special. Her grandfather was an English pirate! Her husband was tortured to death by the Spanish, and she was reunited with her children only after the war of independence against Spain. She refused to give up her lover, telling her daughter that any fiancé worth his salt would not break the engagement for such a reason.

Lola Paz: Her (Amanda’s) father was killed by the Spanish, her husband by the son of a collaborator with the Spanish. She experienced déjà vu when the Japanese came and took away her son-in-law.

Lola Isabel: Lost her son in childbirth; then her husband was taken by the Japanese, who tortured him to death, while she was pregnant with Amanda. She bagan to keep the “manuscript” record of the family events. Graduated from Santo Tomas. Entrepreneur.

Beatriz: The first family co-ed at UP, worked for the underground against the Japanese, became a professor, a Chair, and a Vice President of the university. Star-crossed lover; faithful.

Risa: One member of the class suggested that Risa is the most important character in the book, since she is (Amanda’s) daughter and heir of all of these stories, thus the beneficiary and witness (like the reader) of all that Amanda has learned. Significantly she studies broadcasting.

Contact Bob Boyer at Robert.boyer@snc.edu or <sundaysinmanila. com>.