March is the womyn's month. And there should be one to diagnosticate their contributions in nation-building. They get comeuppance as most of our key posts in the government and private offices nowadays are held by womyn.
Well, womyn these days have been holding key roles in our society. They are respected as men. They are entrusted because womyn like men are also shining at and competent or more than men, I must confess. But of course some do not because of the belief that men are suprahuman than they are. Men, they believe, are overlying to them.
In literature just for, amongst male national artists, there is Edith Lopez Tiempo. Her works are beyond compare: her poetry and fiction are collective—yet singular, too. One can find explicit emotions because her works have fathomage which I look for a literary piece. Her writing presents a dissimilar purple prose and her legendary theories are so sound. I mean she is level-headed of how to capture the microfiche of today's world and fossilise it into humanities. As fictionist, she is as honourably insightful. Her novels consist of A Blade of Fern, His Native Coast, The Alien Corn, The Builder, and The Jumong.
I take pleasure in reading Jessica Zafra, too. She writes with ardour though delicate because of her synthetic words. She dredges novel words and dumps them into her readers' common sense. I mean if one were Jessica's bookworm, it wouldn't be considerable to him/her if she used bare words. It should be too big for one's britches yet with verbiage on the ball. She has a lot of reads at bookstores. Jessica wrote Driven: How to Make It in Philippine Business and Fruitcake.
I also love Rosario Cruz Lucero's history-based fiction. Speculations and real stories of the past are given life in her fiction which most of its locales are during those times of sugarcane cutters in Negros. Being used to inner-city stories, other young writers and I have to see the sights of her fiction. She is like dredging out antique-like stories and saving it to young readers' wits. She authored two collected works—Feast and Famine and Herstory.
Lakambini Sitoy's stories are focussed on the urbanites and urbanism. She is one of the voices of today's generation. She has neoteric styles. I like her phraseology, too—it's planate. She has published two collections of short stories in the Philippines—Mens Rea and Other Stories and Jungle Planet.
I moon over Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo. I like her Sojourns, Skyscrapers, Celadon and Kimchi, I Remember, and The Path of the Heart. They are extraordinary kinds of autobiographical/travel writings. She has been writing for Philippines newspapers and magazines since she was all of fifteen. She has worked as a writer, editor, and teacher in many countries. Her attractive daily life, the corollary of her husband's fifteen-year tie with UNICEF, is revealed in her writing. Her critical essays replicate her concern in fictional writing by Filipino womyn. They provide a much-needed involvement to a just beginning body of feminist letters in the Philippines these days.
Merlie M Alunan is a great name in Philippines writing. She is all there. Her poetry is intellective. She edited the anthology Fern Garden: An Anthology of Women Writing in the South. Her book Amina Among the Angels is out-of-sight. She serves as a panelist in respected writing workshops like the Iligan National Writers Workshop.
Zenaida B French's poetry is highly wrought and tender. She is forbearing of her ideas, yet she does not close the eyes to literary conventions. Have you read some previous issues of Free Press and Busay? Then you can say that she is, undeniably.
The 2001 presidential service awardee, Dr Maria Jade B Catalan, a past dean of the ISCOF graduate school in Tiwi (Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo) is another great woman I know. She is full of life and always rushes for a result. She is altruistic: a lot in the government now have their master's because of her programmes. It is because she has innovated courses which fit to the modern societal setting—and wasn't afraid to sell her ideas though the school has a so unlikely geographic location. On the other hand, she transcends for brilliance. These days, she manages ISCM where one can review for his/her TOEFL, TOEIC, and IELTS. She has an affordable package, too, to those who want to enrol a course in Spanish or French. (For more information, call ISCM at 5094498 and look for Rallyn.)
Well, the country's CEO is a woman, too. She is a whiz at economics and government administration. I know she is so professional in dealing with our country's crises in many slants. The economy has been the centre of her presidency. The tax measure has boosted buoyancy in the government's fiscal power and helped buttress the Philippines peso, making it the East Asia's best performing legal tender. Consistent with international mission, president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a member of the Council of Womyn World Leaders, an international net of present and former womyn presidents and prime ministers whose undertaking is to mobilise the highest-level womyn leaders worldwide for communal action on issues of serious importance to womyn and evenhanded growth.
In TV industry, newscaster like Jessica Soho is ever reputable and well-loved by her viewers compared to her other male counterparts. And her programme Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho is proving out. Too, Ces Drilon who was held for ransom for nine days after being abducted alongside two ABS-CBN cameramen while in Sulu. She is so courageous a woman.
At university, I apple polish my female professors save the three, because they are so detailed and clear-cut. They are artistic yet particular.
There are a lot of womyn that are worthy of to be lauded in this column yet of course I need a sizeable room in this paper—and a biro full of ink.
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P.S.
Being a feminist, I choose "womyn" instead of "women" because I want to replace the "men" thing into something that differentiates womyn as another entity equal to men. I hope this variant spelling will earn currency and will become a popular variant. My basis is Oxford Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, 2002 p. 616.
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