Honoring our local writers

January ended with a  significant activity honoring our local writers. The Carcar Lecture Series featuring  writers of Carcar City took off last January 26 at the Audio Visual Room of St. Catherine’s College.  A project of the Cebuano Studies Center of the University of San Carlos headed by Dr..Hope Sabanpan-Yu, the lecture series will run for six months with each month featuring two writers with the teachers of the Department of Literature of the University of San Carlos as researchers and presenters. The first lecture featured Marcel Navarra and Maria Kabigon.

Marcel M. Navarra (1914-1984),  called the father of the Modern Cebuano Short Story, was born in Tuyom, Carcar (the barangay next to Valladolid) and was most prolific from 1930 to 1955.  He was literary editor of Bisaya (1938-1941) and of Lamdag (1947); associate editor Bulak (1948); literary section editor of Republic Daily (1948-1952); editor-in-chief of Bag-ong Suga (1963-1967) and Bisaya (1967-1972).  According to literary scholars, he was “the first Cebuano fictionist to delve deep into the problems of the marginalized peasantry in Cebu at a time when sentimentalism and didacticism were the dominant modes of writing.”

The lecture  entitled “Wars Within Without:  Social Neurosis in Marcel M. Navarra’s Short Fiction”  was  well  presented by Sam Harold Kho Nervez who made  Tuyom in the 1940s and 1950s come to life.  He shared Navarra’s  portrayal of Tuyom “rife with images of shrill silences, anxious nighttimes, dreadful dreams, and confused consciousness that haunt his characters who, in spite of insistent longing for respite, are doomed not to see the light of day.”  Plagued by war, poverty, and moral decay, Navarra’s fiction is occupied by a neurotic social order which, in fact, is a powerful representation of the anxiety and depression that his characters struggle with deep within them.

For Nervez, Marcel M. Navarra sets his fictional Tuyom in the context of a social upheaval that has been forgotten only because our collective memory is often afflicted with historical amnesia.  Nervez finds Navarra’s brand of social realism outstanding “because it is a reminder that, in life, even in times without the promise of hope, the most important wars are those we wage and win within.”

The second lecture was on the lighter side.   Entitled “Pasumbingay sa Gugma:  Deciphering  Love in Manding Karya’s Advice Column in Bisaya , it was presented by Cindy A. Velasquez.  Manding Karya was the pen name of Maria A. Kabigon who gave advices to letter senders and the letter and advice were run by Bisaya magazine after the war.  She received an average of 20 letters per day (most of the letter senders were male).

She was known for her practical, thoroughly sensible, straightforward, and even humorous advice.  But behind the wise words she used, she is known for her talent in creating metaphors in giving advices.  The themes and subjects of her columns were on love and relationship.  The study of Velasquez centered on the relationship between nature and metaphor and she used the Bisaya materials from Jan. 21, 1948 to Dec. 28, 1949).

Pasumbingay is the Cebuano term for metaphor and the lecture centered on nature as metaphor since Manding Karya used nature metaphors in her columns.  Manding Karya used the sea as a direct comparison in preserving integrity.  Example is her advice  to a suitor, “Hulata nga molantong na ang dagat, basin inig hunas, hikinhasan mo ang mga isda nga ginganlag palad.”  She used nature’s cycle and reality in defining values.  Example is her advice to a suitor who was told to wait for twenty years before he could get an answer:  “Pasagdi siya nga malagas.  Ang bunga sa kahoy kon imo lang pasagdan, mobulag man gayud sa iyang pungango busa nganong lugson man nimo pagpupo.”

She also used animals and plants in confirming individual rights, personal experience and beliefs.  Example is a man who was courting a girl with many suitors: “ Dili kahukman ang bulak kon naunsa na ang iyang gihay tungod lamang kay daghan nang alibangbang nga misangkop.”  The lecture was very animated where members of the audience were made to read the letter and advice.  Based on  the study of Velasquez,  three concepts are commonly addressed by Maria Kabigon in her advice using nature metaphors – restoring Christian religious teaching, preserving the individuals freedom and integrity, and defining human purpose and higher values.

I congratulate the Cebuano Studies Center especially its director Dr.  Yu for such a trailblazing project, the presenters Sam Ronald Kho Nervez and Cindy Velasquez.  The lecture was very significant to me because I was born, grew up and nurtured in the mold of the cultural and litrerary heritage of Carcar.  Tuyom was the first excursion site when I was in Grade Three in St. Catherine’s School, Carcar.  Maria A. Kabigon was a cousin of my paternal grandmother.  Ten more writers from Carcar will be featured in the coming months.  I hope more Carcaranons will attend the forum and relish the literary heritage of Carcar.