Acts of creation in English, Spanish, and Tagalog

A Diwata is a nymph or fairy-like creature within Philippine mythology. It is also the title of Barbara Jane Reyes' latest collection of poetry —what Rigoberto González calls a "mythological invocation." Reyes weaves English, Spanish and Tagalog through the poems of Diwata, challenging ideas about colonialism, gender roles and beyond.

Read an interview with Reyes at Critical Mass, a blog from the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors:

I do think of Diwata as a feminist text and feminist project; in the most basic terms, each female figure is the native woman telling her own story, speaking her way out of dispossession, rather than succumbing others’ objectified versions of her. Many traditional stories tell us that obedient wives and daughters are rewarded, and disobedient ones punished. That’s the symmetry I’m interested in disrupting; in my stories’ versions, girls and women (including Eve, and the aswang) who transgress social boundaries actively unfetter themselves to reimagine and determine their own fates.