at asianamlitfans. An excerpt of my review at Zoland Poetry:
Bino Realuyo begins his ambitious, sweeping, and tightly directed, awardwinning book of poems, The Gods We Worship Live Next Door, with a dedication, “For the Filipino People,” and immediately, we understand this book is a project against a peoples perceived invisibility and silence.
“If I became the brown woman/ mistaken for a shadow, please tell your people Im a tree,” he begins his opening poem, “Filipineza,” whose deliberately sobering epigraph reads: “In the modern Greek dictionary, the word Filipineza means maid.
” At the onset of this collection, we are made acutely aware that the Filipino is defined and named by others, determined by the function the Filipino fulfills in others contexts.
Filipinos therefore enter a European lexicon, a canon of Western language, as embodiments of domesticity, less than human, as indicated by his use of “tree” and “shadow.
” This opening poem begins the books first section, entitled, “Diaspora, ”
Beginning sharply with the present day Filipino Diaspora, Realuyo presents us with the global phenomenon of the Filipina Overseas Contract Worker OCW, for the Philippines exists in a state of economic ruin in the aftermath of a colonial past and postcolonial present.
Predominantly women,
the OCWs represent remittances “back home,” and are therefore valued for boosting the GNP, If the OCW is merely a remittance, then in this global economy, the OCW is a voiceless commodity, But here, each of Realuyos speakers is a sharply pronounced “I,” underscoring the voice of one who speaks for herself, rather than be spoken for.
Alternately, his speakers address the OCWs directly as “you,” rather than speaking about them, as statistics, remittances, disposable and replaceable womens bodies, Two of these constantly spoken about women are Flor Contemplacion and Sarah Balabagan, whose horrific but not uncommon stories as OCWs in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates respectively, thrust them into the center of mass media as rallying figures for Filipinos internationally, for these were women who fought back against their abusive employers and suffered the consequences for doing so.
But even this worldwide media attention dehumanizes the OCW, and so Realuyo brings us in closer in “A Night in Dubai,” we hear the voice of Balabagan:
I will be lashed a hundred times.
If it means that for every lash, I will remember less, then let them do it, I will not ask for forgiveness I will only ask for a moment to hold my mother,
Read the rest here: sitelink com/reviews/realu The Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry was inaugurated into honor the late poet, a nationally recognized writer and a former professor at the University of Utah, and is sponsored by the University of Utah Press and the University of Utah Department of English.
The Gods We Worship Live Next Door is theprizewinning volume selected by this year's judge, Grace Schulman, distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York.
Inspired through the words of the late National Artist Bienvenido Santos, A glimpse of Philippine History and it's colonizer, The modern living of Filipinos and OFW's Bino A, Realuyoʼs The Gods We Worship Next Door is a lyrical treasure, though it is one of the many of postmodernismʼs mishaps.
Musical, readable in its vocabularizing first person perspective with many unforgettable lines, Realuyo can be envied soif only he didnʼt overkill or misclick his scholarship on this poetry collection.
With relying much from news resources, not so diverse from all the muses he could consider, Realuyo, as Grace Schulman said, “has that rare gift of transforming modern horror into art.
” He explored almost all the imperial liabilities of the Philippines never with a white prejudice, but full of lament and lyrical rupture, the imagination tries hard to meet him halfway.
On mere news as good poetry though, is the most questionable, How far can a poet be new with this kind of scholarship Realuyo sinned so hard when he said, Jose Rizal is an American sponsorednational hero.
Wasnʼt Emilio Aguinaldo the one in between the Siberians and Americans were vying at the onslaught of sorrowed sovereignty Mere assumption did Realuyo had.
Rizal was shot down before the U, S. troops began their imperial parade on our brown soil,
Moreover, I find the first personperspective on peculiar and mundane characters abusive, Can an author be that roughly assuming to speak what others had experienced, if he himself was only a tabloid reader
Again, a lyrical treasure, but a contemporary mishap.
Loved it. Just loved it. Bino A. Realuyo is a Filipino American novelist, poet, community organizer and adult educator, He was born and raised in Manila, Philippines but spent most of his adult life in New York City, He is the author of a novel, The Umbrella Country, a poetry collection, The Gods We Worship Live Next Door, and the editor of two anthologies.
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