"for I am the keeper of our words"...

"i birth them and care for them, and when these words grow strong,/a bridge"

Barbara Jane Reyes' book Diwata is a riveting and remastering account of the power of Filipino/a folk tales of creation, spirits, and the weaving in and out of history that they entail. I am struck by her telling, and retelling, and re-retelling, of these important indigenous tales that shape so much of The Phillipines, and also the colonization that has sought to destroy much of this. What, really, is the power inherent in placing "A Genesis of We, Cleaved", in the same thread as "Eve Speaks", or telling the story of "Diwata" and later, "Again, She Tells the First Story"?

SO much of history has been lost, literally carved out of our brains through the history of colonization and war, that some folks in the 21st century don't even acknowledge the legitimacy of these stories. Barbara's tales are rife with the shapeshifting nature of these tales, and also the power of the women who created them. In "The Fire, Around Which We All Gather", I imagine in part two that she gives voice to the Diwata herself, labeled as "a strange deity...because few strove to know her", to tell her own story (Reyes 14):

Poet, yes. A conjurer of words, some have said, for I am the keeper of our
words. I birth them and care for them, and when these words grow strong,
a bridge       [...]    Those who come to listen to my stories, 
they fall into a waking dream, hovering between the very earth upon which
they stand, and the place where the spirits dwell. (Reyes 42)

I was most struck by this poem, and its retelling of the power of the Diwata, how "she is the first woman, baring her breasts to feed a poisoned land." She is also a wolf, a shark. These animals who have been revered as sacred for so long, all encompassed in the deity.

When she calls forth Eve in "Eve Speaks", a nod to the Spanish Catholic colonization of the Phillipines, the story is nevertheless as powerful as the Diwata. To give Eve voice is inherently revolutionary -- she is only, in our minds, cut from the flesh of Adam, and mankind was formed. Not here. Eve takes matters into her own hands, and speaks this tale, which made me "MMMM" out loud without shame because of its beauty and fearlessness:

Let this be the natural law -- Lover, I will break you and compose a symphony
with your bones. Of what remains, I shall grind into dust and mix with 
rain. Lover, do not come near, for I see story in your broken parts. Lover,
do not promise, for when you do, I come to loathe words. Lover, do not 
speak, for what you say is vapor.

And finally, this last line. Collapse.

...Lover, did you not know I wrote my own creation story? Did you not know we all do. (Reyes 47)

BEAUTIFUUUUULLLLLL.

To address "Adam" directly, especially pertaining to the power he thinks he holds, by stating she will BREAK  him??? What???? There's no truer tale to the power that we have, that has been beaten down successfully only by conquering and colonizing our bodies and lands. Hence, Reyes also vividly paints tales of the "pale faces" who came to do just this, and takes us through the history of The Phillipines without the markers of years per se; still, their presence is forceful and painful to receive, and she inserts them strategically into the book to conjure this emotion in the reader. My idea is this is what emotions also took place for Filipinos upon their arrival. In "Duyong 3", Reyes outlines the onslaught of white men to to the island:

I hear of men who love the sea cow. Pale skinned men, long delirious upon
the balmy sea, they crawl ashore hungry, engorged. At the sight of them,
she cries, and they think this is a siren song.

They ravish her stinking skin, her fleshy teats, with so many groping man
hands and wet, open man mouths. One by one, they enter her body and 
spill so much seed. (Reyes 31)

Yeah, I'm gonna stop there. It's just...so hard for me to read again. But nevertheless, so necessary of a story to tell. Each and every time white men appear in the book, t'is no good news. Her continuous weaving in, however, of tales of the Diwata's arrival, and folk tales telling of her spirit surrounding them ("Crossing" is a notable example), calls forth the reverence and beauty of her, despite the reputation she still has to some as evil or strange.

I love that she ends with poems such as "Why Girls Do Not Speak" and "Aswang", after an entire retelling of women's power throughout herstory. She brings us back to the present, the unspoken pain inherent in being born only because the fathers wanted sons, repeatedly. Repeatedly. Repeatedly, and being passed onto white men to marry, and the wives who "could no longer sing" (Reyes 71). I would not have known what Aswang was referring to (which is perfectly fine), but then, the notes were an eye-opener into more stories of Filipino history, and the dealings with Spanish colonization, deeming Aswang demonic, a god of evil. Surely, this is not the place the story started, but this is where it ends. I also love Reyes' decision to not translate the Tagalog into English -- what is English anyway but the oppressor's language? Why does it need to be the authority to make readers comfortable?

With that said, I need to reiterate this line:

Lover, did you not know I wrote my own creation story? Did you not know we all do.

...as it speaks to the power of this book, and the power of Reyes as a writer, who understands that if we do not tell our stories, some one else will, and it will most likely be grossly inaccurate. This is the people's history of The Phillipines, before it was even known as "The Phillipines", courtesy of King Phillip II. More importantly, this is the herstory of it, told from the perspective of the women and female embodied spirits. SO much love for the crafting of such beautiful words, forms, and tales!