came back to fetch her, to offer her an American dream, an American ticket to the States. She had to fight her own way to America, and it was through countless failed marriages, countless cruel lovers, and it wasn’t until she married my uncle, my father’s cousin, did she find someone she could trust, marry, and let go. The mother’s words, when she finally meets her old American lover again, haunt me, and they reflect the ostensible shame that imbues Hilda’s dreams, my own nightmares, and the collective Filipino psyche: “I was so happy when you came with your tanks and guns. I trusted you. I let my own savior fool me.” In Insiang, the mother is fierce and ruthless, her Tagalog spitfire, as if they were my own lola’s tirades. I saw every mistake and sin impressed upon the mother’s lips as she blamed her daughter, Insiang (played by Hilda) for every thing that is wrong with her life:
the father’s absence, for living as a squatter in the Tondo slums, for Insiang even existing. The silences and the emotive Tagalog gripped me, reminding me of my own childhood in Los Angeles, of the expressive lines that came across my father’s crossed face or my lola’s tirades, when I couldn’t understand their angry, Tagalog tongues but knew, in my body, every ounce of rage and emotion they spoke of. Whenever the mother screamed, whenever Insiang pleaded, “Tama na, tama na,” I broke down: to me, the film was a cascading wall of sound, a remembrance of something my body knew, this brokenness of home and language. The mother pays to sleep with a younger man, Dado, a pig butcher that owns the slums like the back of his hand. He eventually moves into their bamboo hut, and in turn, he cons Insiang’s boyfriend to stay away from her, claiming he owns both daughter and mother
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Plural | 91