THE MONSOON COLLECTION

by Ninotchka Rosca ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1983

Nine brief stories of sad, violent lives in the Philippines--by a Manila-born writer who interleaves the stories with one-page vignettes of her own 1972 experiences in a martial-law detention camp. Only one of the tales deals directly with detention-camp life: ""Earthquake Weather,"" with female prisoners refusing to give in to paternalistic/ militaristic manipulation. (""This is your daughter, Anna, who has offended you, a man in power. This smile vows that I will not abdicate my share of this world. I will not be defined by you. . . ."") There's anti-male rage, too, in a story of a daughter's revenge on her ne'er-do-well father (whose behavior leads to her rape) and in ""The Goddess""--about a young woman, molested at age seven, doomed to affairs involving sex-as-power. And this sense of fractured, permanently disordered lives extends into more broadly political/social areas in other stories: ""The Epiphany of Teban the Terror,"" a postal clerk jolted from passive misery to active, self-destructive terrorism; ""Our Apostle Paul,"" with a young seminarian recalling his old friend, a bright, rich youth who became a rebel guerrilla, with fatal results; and ""The Neighborhood,"" a litany of decay striking at a middle-class community, culminating in monsoons and invading worms. Unsatisfying stories for the most part, both overdrawn and murky, social situations and psychological disturbances too blurrily combined--but the Philippines setting (even if underplayed) is intriguing, with images and incidents that are occasionally arresting.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press (5 S. Union St., Lawrence, MA 01843)

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1983

Categories: FICTION