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Sunday, July 27, 2003
The eyes of Nanay Linda (more than anything else)
By CORA M. ALMERINO
The eyes, to begin with, resemble simple cameras. The lens of the eye forms an inverted image of objects in front of it on the retina, like film in a camera. But her eyes, though femininely charming, move beyond perception of minute variations of shape, color, brightness, and distance.
Her eyes do more than just translate vibrations of light into nerve impulses traveling to the brain.
Her eyes do more than just seeing.
Such are the eyes of Erlinda Kintanar-Alburo, director of the University of San Carlos (USC) Cebuano Studies
Center. Quick eyes. Deep eyes. Bisdak eyes. And these are, indeed, the same eyes, which saw what needed to be explored in her proposal for a Fulbright research grant.
Not every scholar is blessed enough to achieve a Fulbright. The Fulbright scholarship is intellectually competitive, this means one can’t help oneself from gritting teeth while waiting for the results of the screening.
Nanay Linda got the Fulbright grant. And off she went to the United States last Jan. 26 holding close to her heart her research on “Exploring Frontiers in Philippine Folklore Studies.” She stayed for a month in Northern Illinois University to read researches (field notes) by Donn V. Hart, a folklorist who came to Cebu for his dissertation: The Cebuan Filipino Dwelling in Caticugan, Negros Oriental. In this month-long research in Illinois, Erlinda also gave a lecture on “Folklore as Alternative Source in History: The Maria Cacao Legends of Central Philippines” in the Spring 2003 lecture series held in the Campus Life Building of the university.
She spent her two months of research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, looking for sample material which she could use in her proposed folklore studies. On March 7, on a Friday afternoon, Erlinda had a talk on “Women’s Literature and Phillippine Society” under the lecture series program of the university’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. The venue was the International Institute/School of Social Work building.
She also lectured at the State University of New Mexico and the University of Texas. But after the grant, Erlinda was also invited to do a lecture at the California State University in San Bernardino and at the Balak-Hudyaka of New York.
“Most of the Filipino-American students are very interested in Cebuano Literature and Language. Here, they just take for granted our literary resources,” says Erlinda.
But more than a Fulbright scholar, Erlinda is foremost a poet who mothers young Cebuano writers, endlessly inspiring them to write in their mother tongue, to help them see the elegance of their own language.
These young writers lovingly call her “nanay” for the typical and atypical nanay that she is. Erlinda has a sharp sense of humor that puts everyone in a light mood during literary conferences or poetry readings. But she can be sharp, too, when her philosophy is on the line, as shown in her article in Sanghaya 2002. She goes: But when a respected literary historian and critic assessed Cebuano literature as dying, the local writers looked at each other and asked “How do we get noticed?” then added arrogantly, “Do we need it?” Thus the wit of Erlinda.
In poetry, Erlinda’s postmodern spirit prevails even in an old woman’s voice found in her poem, “Sa Pagtungtong Nakog Singkuwenta”. Here’s the last stanza of the poem:
Gai ko diha’g dili makakanser nga hamonada
Padungga kuno ko’g mananoyng ave maria
Unya tamni ko’g malandong nga banaba
Ug sa dili pa ko mopiyong, patagamtama
Intawon kon unsay lami anang marijuana.
Erlinda also writes poems in English. One of her powerful poems speaks of death, a poem written after the flash floods of Ormoc. In this poem, one sees death hiding in the gesture of rain.
Proverbial Rain:
(after the flash floods of Ormoc)
someone said
from long ago
was it Longfellow
that into each life
some rain must fall.
did he think at all
of such rains as drown
the hillside loam
and flush away
the corpses to sea?
and did he imagine
rain like acid fallout
that can twist
bone sinew soul
blister any-color skin?
maybe he meant only
ungentle showers
cat-and-dog rains
that bite and bark
into one’s favorite dream—
we can surely show him
a thing or two now
like the dark gray river
and say instead into each rain
some life must fall.
Given her spirit both in writing, Nanay Linda has indeed been a wonderful model for young Cebuano writers who are yet exploring their voices, and needless to say, walking on a tightrope between their mother tongue and a colonial language. |
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