The Use of Narrative in Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto

Literature Review: Filipino Diaspora Studies

indeed, the (hi)stories at the novel’s core are as mutable and, at times, as contradictory as the people who tell them. Insurrecto is, at its most basic, a series of overlapping narratives, story upon story upon story, most of which revolve around two women: Magsalin and Chiara. Magsalin is a native of the Philippines,

Part Memory, Part Script: The Uses of Narrative in Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto

By Kate Avery ’19

Filipino Diaspora Studies, Spring 2019 Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude BA, Honors in English 1st Year MA American Studies, University of Iowa, Mixed Race Filipina-American

The United States’ history of imperial violence against the Philippines is an infrequentlymentioned aspect of its national narrative. Insurrecto is notable for the power with which it drives this history – and the brutality of its character – home: “Filipinos will slaughter forty-eight Americans, then Americans will slaughter thirty thousand Filipinos,” Apostol writes, “Tit for tat” (254). She provides readers with the specifics: which guns were created for what purposes, who was court-martialed and why. Who Jacob “Howling Wilderness” Smith was, and the sheer horror embodied by his command to slaughter “everyone over the age of ten.”

“Language is witchcraft,” writes Gina Apostol, “A transformation.” This certainly is the case in Apostol’s Insurrecto (Soho Press, 2019) a novel concerned – viscerally and fundamentally – with questions of story and storytelling. It is in the telling, Apostol seems to say, that the shaping of the narrative truly lies: the story told is dependent upon the language in which it is told, and the languages she uses to tell this story are manifold: English, Tagalog, and perhaps a smattering of Waray. She offers the written word as well as the spoken word – screenplays, book chapters, music – and does not stop there. Translation. Photography. Film. Fiction. Fact. All are threads stitched carefully into the fabric of Insurrecto. Finally, Apostol offers that most treacherous and vivid of languages: that of memory. They are, all of them, tangled up in one another, impossible to extricate. The story being told is told – and must be told – through all of them. The premise of Insurrecto is in many ways terrifying: it suggests that histories are unstable. And indeed, the (hi)stories at the novel’s core are as mutable and, at times, as contradictory as the people who tell them. Insurrecto is, at its most basic, a series of overlapping narratives, story upon story upon story, most of which revolve around two women: Magsalin and Chiara. Magsalin is a native of the Philippines, a translator and aspiring mystery writer returning home after spending years away from the country of her birth. Her story is tinged with guilt and grief, centered on the deaths of her mother and husband, and marked by a sense of placelessness. Where, Magsalin seems to ask, can she ultimately belong? Chiara, meanwhile, is the (white) daughter of an American film director, Ludo Brasi. A kind of fictionalized Coppola, Brasi has famously directed The Unintended, a film about the Vietnam war shot largely in the Philippines. In its mismatched choice of locale, however, the film has inadvertently invoked the reallife tragedy of the Balangiga massacre, an act of imperialist terror that occurred during the Philippine-American War. Chiara decides to follow in her father’s footsteps and make a film about the history hidden beneath celluloid Vietnam, and recruits a (dubious) Magsalin to work for her as a translator and guide. Both women are storytellers, and over the course of the novel, both create their own conflicting versions of Balangiga’s story. This, of course, produces more stories and more storytellers, among which number Cassandra Chase, a (white) American photographer living in the Philippines during the massacre; and Casiana Nacionales, the ‘Geronima of Balangiga,’ who led the uprising that spurred the (vastly disproportionate) American response. Other characters and narrators include Prank – sorry, Frank – Betron, Captain Thomas Connell, Caz (Brasi’s Filipina mistress), and Virginie (Brasi’s white wife, Chiara’s mother). As the novel progresses, the reader is exposed to many versions and many pieces of multiple stories, of which Insurrecto is the jagged, infinitely complicated result. Along the way, narratives overlap, realities collapse into one another, and Apostol revels in the multiplicity of it all. The United States’ history of imperial violence against the Philippines is an infrequently-mentioned aspect of its national narrative. Insurrecto is notable

for the power with which it drives this history – and the brutality of its character – home: “Filipinos will slaughter forty-eight Americans, then Americans will slaughter thirty thousand Filipinos,” Apostol writes, “Tit for tat” (254). She provides readers with the specifics: which guns were created for what purposes, who was court-martialed and why. Who Jacob “Howling Wilderness” Smith was, and the sheer horror embodied by his command to slaughter “everyone over the age of ten.” As the reader, I am made conscious not only of the numbers of this atrocity– thirty thousand Filipino lives – but also of the opacity of the history that swallows up this narrative and continues to digest it: “The extant published records of the Philippine-American war are,” Apostol writes, “as you know, in the words of the colonizer” (48). Insurrecto offers not only the what of history, but the why – and it explains, for good measure, just how that ‘why’ came into being. At one point in the novel, the narrative dwells upon the agony of the PhilippineAmerican war. This kind of pain, it says, leaves a stain, dark and ineradicable – “At least,” Apostol reflects, “until 1944, and all is forgotten… It is easy for a reader to overlay this calamity with others, in which the notion of arriving as liberators turns out to be a delusion or a lie” (90). I think, immediately, of So Proudly We Hail, a 1943 Hollywood film featuring American nurses stationed at Bataan. Made during and about World War II, the film is American propaganda, pure and simple, and set – notably – in the Philippines. When I later looked up the cast list, I found that the doctor had been played by a white American. I couldn’t find any information on the nurse – but I thought she’d looked like my Auntie Christine. I think about my love for Old Hollywood, and what it means to have never seen someone who looked like me – or my mother, or my Aunties, or my Lola – in the twenty-one years I have loved it. I love it – but does it love me back? I think about what it means to the people who watch these movies, and to the world in which these movies are released – with whose stories they mix, and mingle, and (eventually) consume. If storytelling is, as Apostol proposes, the way we shape our history, what does it mean that our biggest and brightest stories – those writ, almost inevitably, in celluloid – are created by one nation? I think, also, about taking Japanese as a language elective in the eighth grade. It had been the only non-European option available, and all of my friends had enrolled in it. When one of my Korean friends told her mother, she’d been furious. When I’d told my Lola, the whole family standing around a table piled high with Lechon and Lasagna, Turon and Turkey, Puto and Pumpkin Pie (Happy Thanksgiving!), she’d told me that that she knew a little Japanese herself, from when she’d been a little girl and had to bow to Japanese soldiers at street corners. She remembered the Japanese national anthem in full, from when she’d been taught it in school, and could still sing it perfectly in-key. I think about the time when I’d admitted to my Filipina mother that I hadn’t known about the Philippine-American war at all until about a year and a half ago, and how she’d admitted to me that she hadn’t heard of it, either – until I’d asked her about it a minute before. My mother moved to America at the age of twelve, but she still calls the Philippines home. She remembered, from her childhood, that there had been a Filipino hero named Jose Rizal – might he, perhaps have been involved? “It is a very American invention,” Apostol has one of her characters say, “We have manufactured how to see the world” (160). How are we taught to see this world? Through whose lenses do we look? History is the product of the stories we tell, and the stories we tell are the product of how we are allowed to see, how we are allowed to experience the world. Who is allowed to tell the story of the Philippines? Storytelling, in Insurrecto, becomes a battle in itself. The pen is mightier than… the sword? Than the Colt .45? Than the KragJorgensen rifle? A cliché, perhaps, but one that is (and maybe must be) allowed to prevail. In one of the most memorable lines in the novel, Casiana Nacionales reflects upon those who must raise the revolution she has nursed: “And so it is up to them,” – rebellion, revolt, reclamation – “the women” (204). At one level, this is reflective of the centrality of women to much of Filipino culture: Datus, Baylans, and the Tabon (wo) man. At another level, however, it speaks to what Apostol herself is doing: retelling the story of the Philippine-American war, and in doing so, reclaiming it. Storytelling is a revolution, and Apostol

is as much an insurrecto, in her own way, as the characters she creates. Within the history, what does it mean that our pages of her novel, she brings to life a battle that ended long ago, and she fights it on her own terms – translating it into her own biggest and brightest stories – those language, one that her readers are made to understand. Her words are not those of the writ, almost inevitably, in celluloid – colonizer – not, at least, on the colonizer’s own terms – but her own. It is stitched, with all the rest, into the messy, painful tapestry are created by one nation? that we call History: a thing that belongs not only to the Philippine-American War and Apostol, but to all of us, everywhere. There is no ‘The End’ to be found to this story, in the form of a title card or otherwise. There

I think, also, about taking Japanese is not even a final reel, or a last page – not really. Instead, Insurrecto reminds us that history is alive, in us and around us, and as a language elective in the eighth that even as we are created by it, history is also created by us. It is never complete. It is never limited to a single narrative. It is, grade. It had been the only non- instead, of us and for us, all of us, and we are left to write and rewrite it as we will. European option available, and all of my friends had enrolled in it. When one of my Korean friends told her mother, she’d been furious. When I’d told my Lola, the whole family standing around a table piled high with Lechon and Lasagna, Turon and Turkey, Puto and Pumpkin Pie (Happy Thanksgiving!), she’d told me that that she knew a little Japanese herself, from when she’d been a little girl and had to bow to Japanese soldiers at street corners. She remembered the Japanese national anthem in full, from when she’d been taught it in school,

“It is a very American invention,” Apostol has one of her characters say, “We have manufactured how to see the world” (160). How are we taught to see this world? Through whose lenses do we look? History is the product of the stories we tell, and the stories we tell are the product of how we are allowed to see, how we are allowed to experience the world. Who is allowed to tell the story of the Philippines?”

Award winning author Gina Apostol GINA APOSTOL grew up in the Philippines and we are allowed to lives in western Massachusetts and New York, where she writes her novels on revolution and language, power and translation, storytelling and experience the world. history. Her most recent work has focused on the Philippine-American war and acts of narration as forms of invention and liberation. Her fourth novel, Who is allowed to Insurrecto, was named by Publishers’ Weekly one of the Ten Best Books of 2018. Her third book, Gun Dealers’ Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book tell the story of the Award. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine Philippines?National Book Award). Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She teaches at the Fieldston School. Storytelling, in Insurrecto, becomes a battle in itself. The pen is mightier than… the sword? Than the Colt .45? Than the Krag-Jorgensen rifle? A cliché, perhaps, but one that is (and maybe must be) allowed to prevail. In one of the most memorable lines in the novel, Casiana Nacionales reflects upon those who must raise the revolution