Portia Wynona G.

Soriano March 9, 2016

LIT193.34 Essay 1

Ninotchka Rosca’s Generations as Trauma Literature

Starting with Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, Filipino writers are known to

take political stands in their equally creative works (Mendible 354). This duality of being political and

creative at the same time “came of age during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship” (Mendible 354).

One of the known writers of that period is Ninotchka Rosca.

Born in 1946 in Manila, Ninotchka Rosca went to University of the Philippines for her

college studies (Casper). It is in this university where she started pursuing her political and creative

works and stances becoming an activist (Mendible 354). Rosca brought her being activist in Graphic

magazine where she was a managing editor focusing on controversial issues which include the

Vietnam War and the military bases of the United States in the Philippines (Mendible 355). She lost

her job in the said magazine for organizing a union (Mendible 355). With the proclamation of Martial

Law, she was detained in Camp Crame for six months for organizing protests (Mendible 355; Casper).

After her detainment, she self-exiled herself to Hawaii where she taught for a while and then moved

to New York for opportunities in the publishing industry (Casper). She flew back to the Philippines

during the last days of Marcos but immediately went back to New York where she remained until

today (Casper).

Her detainment in Camp Crame inspired her to write nine short stories which comprise her

publication in 1983, the Monsoon Collection. According to Doreen Fernandez (477), the collection

tells the “life underground or in a detention camp”. Among the stories, only Generations was set in a

rural area (Fernandez 477). Casper claimed that in the stories of the collection, Rosca described the

parallels between military detention and a nation under an authoritarian rule. In parallel, therefore, if

Generations emanate trauma during an authoritarian rule, Rosca also found her detention traumatic.

As such, this paper aims to analyze Rosca’s Generations under the lenses of trauma studies  as
opposed to a socio-political approach often used to analyze Rosca’s works  to realize if trauma is

indeed present.

As mentioned earlier, Generations was set in the rural countryside of the Philippines. It was

about a farming family composed of a grandfather, a mother, a father, two grandsons, and a

granddaughter. The grandfather was Old Selo who could only mumble and a right hand that looked

like a claw of a bird. His right hand looked this way because his wife saved his life by heating a silver

coin to disfigure his tattoo, a sign of membership in a peasant organization, before the men of their

landlord came after killing most of the members of that organization. Selo could not remember the

death of his wife but according to the narrative, his wife died because of tuberculosis. After the

flashback, the story continued with the grandsons accompanying their sister who would take a bath in

the river. Upon their return at home, they heard some screaming coming from their father who had

become alcoholic. Later that night, their drunk father return and threatened again the family but went

back outside. The mother was worried because it was already curfew and the daughter volunteered to

bring home their father. The daughter found her father in a military barrack already detained by the

soldiers. The soldiers promised that she could bring back her father home in exchange of sexual

favors. In the morning, the daughter got her father but on their way home, the daughter killed his

father. Her brother saw this and just suggested that the girl should clean up in the river before going

home. The story ended with Old Selo and the mother talking while waiting for their family members

to arrive.

The first characteristic of a trauma literature that the short story exudes is the non-linearity of

its narrative. It started in the present where Old Selo was sitting in their front ladder while the boys

were playing. After which, a temporal disruption happened wherein a flashback on the death of Old

Selo’s wife was described. The narrative claimed that Old Selo could not remember that night when

his wife died of tuberculosis then gave out the details of that night. Aside from that flashback, another

flashback happened in relation to the death of his wife. For Selo, his wife saved her and so the event

when his wife saved her from the landlord’s men flashbacked in the story. It was only then that the

story went back to the present.

 Second, aside from the non-linearity, there is also a repetition of concepts in the structure of

the text. The story in fact started and ended in the same way: Old Selo was sitting outside on the front

ladder. Another statement that was both in the beginning and ending of the story was “It was summer,

but enough water remained in the irrigational canal to feed the seedbeds.”

Other than that, there were also concepts that were repeated throughout the story. First, the

occurrence of a circle repeated a couple of times in the story. At the beginning while Old Selo was

outside, the boys were also outside playing marbles. It should be noted that a marble is a three

dimensional circle. While playing marbles, one of the boys drew another circle on the ground.

Furthermore, during the night, when the rest of the family was sleeping, the drunk father, just went

home, went circling in the room and ranting on the rights of man as stated by the law. With his

misery, he balled  another form of a circle  his fist and hit his wife. It can also be noted that

somehow, the shape of a circle connotes repetition or a cyclicality since it has no sides and could go

on forever if drawn. Second, the sentence, “We have to hang on”, was also repeated a number of

times. It was said first by the mother who was encouraging her children to stop their father from

leaving the house because it was already curfew time and the soldiers might caught the father. The

second instance was when the boy saw his sister killing their father. The conversation went as

provided below:

(Source: The Likhaan Anthology of Philippine Literature in Engish by Gemino Abad)

Last, as shown also in that conversation, there is also a repetition of the word “Whoreson” or in

Filipino, anak ng puta, as a description by the boy on their father. Even before, the boys called his

father son-of-a-whore when his father hit her mother during the night when the father went home
drunk and ranting about the rights of man. During the same night, the daughter also called his father

son of a bitch, synonymous to whoreson, when his father kicked her.

Third, the characters themselves emanate some characteristics of a trauma patient. For Old

Selo, his mumbling can be looked at two different ways. First is that mumbling can be seen as a form

of working through for the old man. The story began with the sentence: “Mumbling calmed the soul”.

Mumbling calmed Selo and he mumbled about stories, his surroundings, or the mere movement of the

sun as he watched it. By mumbling about the stories of the past and his present surroundings, he was

able to distinguish between past, present, and future and it might be the reason why mumbling calmed

him. Second, his mumbling can also signify the insufficiency of language to describe the trauma he

experienced. He wanted to talk about the pain or complain about it but language was not enough and

it was like he did not have a voice to do so. He could not fully express himself. Old Selo also showed

how trauma made him feel like a liminal being. Old Selo’s belief is shown below:

(Source: The Likhaan Anthology of Philippine Literature in Engish by Gemino Abad)

For him, the difference of the dead and the living was that the dead was just doing nothing. For him,

basically, the dead and the living were the same except the living was just doing something. This

instance show the feeling of being a liminal being of Selo.

On the other hand, the father’s trauma is exhibited by him being alcoholic. His alcoholism

may be rooted from depression and cynicism which are forms of post-traumatic disorder as discussed

in class. This depression and cynicism were caused by the feudal system and military authoritarian
experienced by the character and this was signified in the story by the family being always oppressed

by the landlord and the father’s rant on law and rights of men.

The trauma of the girl or daughter was seen in the part where she followed her father in a

military barracks to bring him home. This moment is shown below:

(Source: The Likhaan Anthology of Philippine Literature in Engish by Gemino Abad)

This moment shows the girl doing some working through. It could be that the girl was able to enter a

military barracks before and reminding herself that she already knew the place and there was no

reason for her to get scared. It could also be that she was imagining that the room was familiar so she

should not be scared. Either way, both instances exhibit a distinguishing of the present.

Moreover, the mother’s trauma on one hand caused her to be helpless. Despite her husband

committing domestic violence on her, she stayed. Her trauma is somehow connected to the trauma of

one of his sons. The son repeated “We have to hang on” from his mother as mentioned earlier in the

paper. On one hand, the son also somehow repeated his sister on describing his father as a whoreson

for it was his sister, who was older than him, who first stated this description. These manifestations of

trauma being connected or sprang from his family members show the transmissibility of trauma in the

family.

The most critical moment in the story was when the girl killed her father. The girl was able to

retrieve her father from the military barracks by performing sexual favors asked by the soldiers. On

their way home, she killed her father. This moment shows the girl from being a victim to a

perpetrator. As opposed to a more common scenario where the perpetrator becomes a victim of

trauma, this happening in the story shows a victim of trauma becoming a perpetrator.

Indeed, trauma is present in Rosca’s Generations. Therefore, Rosca found her detention in

Camp Crame traumatic. Furthermore, the parallels also say something about the general conditions of
the country during the Martial Law. If Rosca aimed to show the parallels of detention with a nation

under an authoritarian rule, it can also be said that the nation, the Republic of the Philippines, during

the Martial Law experienced trauma. Doreen Fernandez (477) confirms this by stating “The Monsson

Collection is valuable as a folio of snapshots of the Philippines in 1970s  some in sharp focus, some

softly impressionistic, some fuzzy…”

Works Cited
Abad, Gemino H. The Likhaan Anthology of Philippine Literature In English From 1900 To The
Present. pp. 297-306: [Diliman, Q.C.]: University of the Philippines Press, 1998
Casper, Leonard. "Ninotchka Rosca." Salem Press Encyclopedia Of Literature (2015): Research
Starters. Web. 6 Mar. 2016.
Fernandez, Doreen. “Philippines”. World Literature Today 58. 1984: p477
Mendible, Myra. "Literature As Activism: Ninotchka Rosca's Political Aesthetic." Journal Of
Postcolonial Writing 50.3 (2014): 354-367. Humanities International Complete. Web. 6 Mar.
2016.