Letras Latinas Hosts Barbara Jane Reyes

Therese Marie Konopelski interviews Barbara Jane Reyes at the Letras Latinas blog about her latest book, Invocation to Daughters (City Lights, 2018). Konopelski writes, the collection's "an intimate account of the Pinay woman experience." From there: 

Reyes invites the reader to gain an understanding of the female identity in Philippine culture, from a religious, economic and familial context. The invocation to daughters could be understood as a prayer for these women, part of the third-largest Catholic population in the world. The mythos of liturgy with its manifold purposes of contrition, thanksgiving, adoration, and petition are reshaped into human psalms, gospels, and even apocryphal poetry. 

In her diction, Reyes uses stylistic conventions from scripture. It offers a deeper spiritual reflection on the feminine spiritual identity and the call to action from the New Testament. Echoing Christian theology, words dwell among us in the flesh for Reyes, a living testament itself to the multicolored, nuanced, anti patriarchal and deeply joyous celebration of feminine will.
-Therese Konopelski, University of Notre Dame (class of 2020)


[Therese Konopelski]: Invocation to Daughters invites Pinay women to meditate on their relationship with their fathers, the patriarchy, and ultimately their colonialist heritage. What distinctive qualities or personalities do you believe Tagalog, Spanish, and English bring to writing?

[Barbara Jane Reyes]: Tagalog brings Filipino Core Values into the work -- concerns and practices of reciprocity, collectivity, community, and collaboration, over the individual, what I like to call, “we” culture. There is the term, kapwa, which means shared humanity, shared self. Tagalog brings gender-neutral language. Tagalog also brings what I think of as an emphasis on root words, upon which you can build meaning and connection. 

Spanish and English are languages of conquest, but they also very deeply communicate what I think of as contemporary Filipino identities. They bring patriarchal structures and white supremacy into the mix. They also bring cosmopolitanism. Spanish brings Lorca’s duende. Spanish and English bring my ambivalence to the forefront. For example, Filipino reverence for the Virgin Mary recalls the pre-colonial babaylan -- the “poet-priestess” figure, as Filipina author Marjorie Evasco calls her. It also brings the virgin/whore dichotomy, the dutiful daughter, the product of Spanish rape, the cloistered, the ghostly María Clara of José Rizal’s Noli Mi Tángere. Spanish also brings the Nuyorican, Xicanx, Latinx, poetics of dissent and resistance. 

English is the language in which I am most proficient. Yes, it is colonially imposed, and therefore, a marker of social status. And as an American, as an immigrant aligned with other marginalized groups, my English is not just standard or institutional. My English is hybrid, incorporating urban vernacular, code switching, and “Tag-lish.” This hybridity is also a kind of resistance.    

Read on at Letras Latinas.