Diwata
Barbara Jane Reyes
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
Tagalog is a language spoken by about 22 million people in the Philippines. Diwata is a Tagalog term meaning, "muse." Diwata is also a term for a mythical figure or being who resides in nature, and whom human communities must acknowledge, respect, and appease, in order to live safely, harmoniously, and prosperously in this world. In her book Diwata, Reyes uses such Filipino oral tradition devices as meter, repetition and refrain, call and response, incantatory verses which verge on song, and the pantoum (which has Southeast Asian origins). She frames her poems between the Book of Genesis creation story, and the Tagalog creation myth, placing her work somewhere culturally in between both traditions. Also setting the tone for her stories is the death and large shadow cast by her grandfather, a World War II veteran and Bataan Death March survivor, who has passed onto her the responsibility of remembering. Reyes' voice is grounded in her community's traditions and histories, despite war and geographical dislocation
Product Details
Price
$17.00
$15.81
Publisher
BOA Editions
Publish Date
August 31, 2010
Pages
88
Dimensions
5.9 X 8.8 X 0.3 inches | 0.3 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781934414378
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About the Author
Barbara Jane Reyes: Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Reyes is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including 2nd Avenue Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal, Boxcar Poetry Review, Chain, Crate, Interlope, New American Writing, Nocturnes Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon West Review, Shampoo Poetry, Tinfish, Versal, as well as in the anthologies Babaylan (Aunt Lute, 2000), Eros Pinoy (Anvil, 2001), InvAsian: Asian Sisters Represent (Study Center Press, 2003), Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx, 2003), Coloring Book (Rattlecat, 2003), Not Home But Here (Anvil, 2003), Pinoy Poetics (Meritage, 2004), Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area (Avalon Publishing, 2004), 100 Love Poems: Philippine Love Poetry Since 1905 (University of the Philippines Press, 2004), The Lambda Award finalist Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts (Arsenal Pulp, 2005), Graphic Poetry (Victionary, 2005), The First Hay(na)ku Anthology (Meritage, 2005). She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Mills College, and she lives with her husband, the poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, CA. Her website is: http: //barbarajanereyes.com
Reviews
"We are offered Reyes' own version of oral history, the history of her split heritage, the story of survival, and myths of Reyes' own creation that add an additional emtional truth despite their deliberate inaccuracy. We leave this book both shellshocked and empowered, reborn and rib-torn."
-- Coal Hill Review "These retellings of myths and folk tales become a modality through which ahistory is rendered into history, history itself is investigated, and variations of diwatas, their quarries, and their hunters are revealed as inhabiting multiple narrative, linguistic, and cultural sites."
-- Lantern Review "Triumphant and plaintive, Diwata is a living document, offering both succor and claws."
-- Rain Taxi "Myth and story, telling and retelling, the claiming of an indigenous history and also a dislocation from that history form a thematic crux in this gorgeous text..."
-- American Poet
"We are offered Reyes' own version of oral history, the history of her split heritage, the story of survival, and myths of Reyes' own creation that add an additional emtional truth despite their deliberate inaccuracy. We leave this book both shellshocked and empowered, reborn and rib-torn."
-- Coal Hill Review "These retellings of myths and folk tales become a modality through which ahistory is rendered into history, history itself is investigated, and variations of diwatas, their quarries, and their hunters are revealed as inhabiting multiple narrative, linguistic, and cultural sites."
-- Lantern Review "Triumphant and plaintive, Diwata is a living document, offering both succor and claws."
-- Rain Taxi "Myth and story, telling and retelling, the claiming of an indigenous history and also a dislocation from that history form a thematic crux in this gorgeous text..."
-- American Poet
