Hello

I WAS BORN IN THE PHILIPPINES and emigrated to the US with my family when I was a baby. I grew up listening to the stories of my father, who was a child during World War II, and have always been inspired by his tales of surviving in a small barrio, escaping to safety in the mountains, and minding the elders' stories of the many monsters and mythical forces that inhabited the landscape.

 

I'M KINDA OLD. I am a retired English instructor and college dean. I began writing creatively for publication late in life and feel blessed to finally live my passion. My message to anyone who loves to write but has reservations about putting your writing out there due to fear or self-doubt is this: Aside from your personal diary, writing is for sharing. It's a communal activity from which you can grow and learn. As for aging, exercising your creativity only makes your brain and spirit stronger and your dreams potentially realized. You're never too old to embrace your artistry!

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THE MONSTER IS MY HERO! By my tag name, you've guessed by now that I'm fascinated with the mythical monster manananggal, called mana for short. I've mostly read about the mana (usually depicted as a woman) as a gruesome, demonic creature. True, she splits herself at the waist, grows fangs and leathery wings, and feeds on human flesh, her favorite food being unborn children. But, to me, she is a centuries-old projection of people's fears of women. Historically, the mana has gotten a bad rap, so I write to vindicate her, as well as other monsters that human beings created to push their fears into the dark. In my writing, the mana is fierce and scary but has an unmistakable spirit. She embraces her human side (as she can shift to blend in) and is trying to survive in a world that shuns and shames her. This website is about celebrating the monsters!

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MY FATHER'S INFLUENCE 

When I was a child, my father told stories of growing up in the Philippines during the war. How he climbed trees to gather fruit and took his water buffalo out to graze. But also how he and his family fled to the mountains when the Japanese invaded, and how his father, a soldier, survived the Death March after the Filipinos and their American allies lost the Battle of Bataan. As I got older, I got more interested in playing with friends than listening to my dad’s stories. So he made them more interesting. There was the story of local boys who murdered a Japanese officer, whose body went missing, replaced by banana trunks. And the story of his youngest brother who died in infancy coming back as a ghost. One time he talked of the “aswang”—a creature who splits in half at the waist and flies into the night to feed on humans. The next day when I asked my dad to tell me more about this aswang, he brushed it off, saying, “Oh, there are lots of mumus out there.” He’d replaced the term with one that sounded playful—a safe word for monster. I never heard him say “aswang” again.

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As an adult when I visited the Philippines, I became nostalgic for my dad’s old stories. He obliged to retell them. Again, when I asked him about the monster he mentioned in my childhood, he simply said, “Those are just old wives tales about mumus.” I understood then that the belief, the myth was taboo. Naturally, I became obsessed with learning more.

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In my research, I found that “aswang” is an umbrella term for a variety of Philippine monsters that feed on humans—weredogs, witches, vampires, ghouls, and the woman who splits in half. In Ilocos Norte, the region my family is from, she’s specifically called "boroka" or “bruja,” Spanish for witch, while the more common term in the mainland is “manananggal” or “mana” for short. I learned this mythical monster was most likely introduced centuries ago by the invading Spaniards, including priests, who suppressed many Philippine traditions and practices and oppressed its native people, including important women such as midwives, herbal healers and shamans, who, for centuries, had much power in their villages. The churches shunned these women and drove them deep into the jungle. Demonizing women allowed the colonizers to take their power away and control the people. The creature in the myths is one of the most horrific I’ve ever read, and artists’ renderings depict their vile features—long tubular tongues, hanging entrails, knife-like talons and broad leather wings. No wonder my dad could barely speak her name! 

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Today, the mana is often the main character of my fiction, which is largely influenced by my father’s childhood experiences but infused with the richness of Philippine myth and folklore. While I stay true to her monstrous characteristics, it’s the spirit of the real women on which the mana was based that inhabit my creatures. In my stories, they are both fierce and heroic, re-born to wreak havoc and exercise the talents, cunning and power denied them so long ago.  

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