A memoir of an Asian woman’s coming of age years against political upheaval in her homeland weaves the daily struggles of teenage life in the 1980s with the backdrop of political change, reminding the reader that though the larger world may be troubled, life does go on.
Cover by Lorina MapaWritten and Illustrated by Lorina Mapa
The death of her father brings author Lorina Mapa back to her Southeastern Asian homeland. This journey home prompts memories of her childhood and teen years in the Philippines, years set against the backdrop of the transition from the martial law implemented in the early 1970s to the democracy of the 1980s. Mapa weaves the greater changes in her country into the fabric of the awkward teenage years. From bad haircuts to new wave rock to the dawn of the Philippines’ Fourth Republic, this is change seen through the eyes of a teenage girl, a nostalgic missive to people, to country, to herself.
Outside of perhaps our current times and the 1960s, the late-1980s to early-1990s could be one of the most significant periods of human history, mainly for the fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe. I still have vivid memories of Christmas Day Jeopardy viewing at my uncle’s house interrupted by the dead body of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu on the TV screen, and Boris Yelstin atop a tank in Moscow on the TV in the orthodontist’s waiting room, a coup in the Soviet Union taking place while I was waiting to get my braces removed. While I had a luxury of viewing these world-changing events safely on a TV in America, Lorina Mapa had a front seat to the early 1980s changes in her country (called today the Fourth Republic): the end of martial law in the Philippines and the dawn of the return of democracy – – all this about three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Singing Revolution, Ceaușescu’s corpse cutting off Alex Trebek’s contestant banter.
However, this isn’t a tale of a teenage girl standing in front of tanks or running down a barricade to the Marcos compound. Mapa doesn’t present herself as a hero, just an ordinary girl trying to fit in at school and spending an listening to a certain Duran Duran song 27 times in a row. The revolution occurring around her touches her family, but only so much. To her, it’s more of a social event (as she comments, quite appropriate for Filipino culture), weaving itself in and out of daily life, part of it but not all of it. Grandparents and aunties gather around a radio to hear the latest news, classmates and friends become polarized over who is the best candidate to lead the nation (sound familiar?), but the day-to-day minutiae of life goes on, much uninterrupted.
This is not to say that this particular revolution is viewed solely through vignettes; there are several pages devoted to the protests after the assassination of Benny Aquino Jr. at Manila International Airport in 1983, panels that show the breadth and depth of the anger that ordinary citizens had over this death and the suspected involvement of the Marcos regime, as well as several pages on the 1986 EDSA Revolution (the People Power Revolution) that led Marcos and his wife Imelda (she of the 3,000 pairs of shoes) out of office and to exile in Hawaii. Reading these over the weekend of the March for Our Lives here in the United States provided a fascinating parallel to our current times. History, indeed, does repeat itself.
It’s a smart choice by Mapa to keep the art in black and white, save for one page of color. There’s a great deal of text on each page, insights into her own life, Filipino culture, and the larger history of the country. Using color runs the risk of the art taking away from the prose on the page, prose necessary to understanding the larger world of this country in this era. Is there too much prose? At times, it was dense on the page, and I was left wondering if this story was best served as a prose memoir rather than a graphic novel. With this narrow focus on one period of Mapa’s life, a prose novel would have probably been too short. We would also be denied such charming moments as her attempt at a Simon Le Bon haircut, several pages explaining “Why Religion Hasn’t Turned Filipinos Into Angry, Scary Fundamentalists” (with guest appearances by Yoda, Dennis Miller, and Henry VIII), and family stories that are expressed best in a visual medium: a monsoon that gives kids the gift of finally being able to use their thrifty grandmother’s swimming pool, Mapa’s “rabbit hole” exploration of American culture, a depiction of the lead-up to the 1987 elections that looks like the opening of The Brady Bunch. It’s those moments that balance the text-heavy pages and cement the choice of the graphic novel as the best medium for this story.
Continued belowMapa’s flat cartooning style serves well here for a story told through memories; these are those times in one’s life when the action is more important than the details on someone’s face. When that detail does come in – – a poster at a protest over Benny Aquino’s death, a statue of Marcos, Corazon Aquino’s inauguration and “Woman of the Year” cover of Time magazine – – it’s an iconic, internationally recognized scene, one that millions over will remember in exact detail due to its omnipresence. As mentioned earlier, this is a black and white graphic novel, save for one page of color. Much like Spielberg chose the little girl’s red coat in Schindler’s List to represent anything from hope and innocence to the blood of death, Mapa uses canary yellow throughout a spread of the campaign for Aquino and her running mate Doy Laurel. This yellow was the official color of their campaign, and seeing a page splashed with it shows the breadth and depth of the support for this campaign, the hope that the people had for a possible end of martial law.
Finally, Mapa’s paneling work is perfect throughout; this is an artist who knows the subtle art of juxtaposition and uses it well. It serves for both the humorous and emotional moments: her grandmother’s wrath over a lack of respect for the rosary, comparison and contrast in the aforementioned “Why Religion Hasn’t Turned Filipinos Into Angry, Scary Fundamentalists” – – and one scene that rang an emotional chord with me as a daughter who has buried a parent, a memory of the elder Mapa’s love of surprise contrasted with Lorina’s viewing of her father in his casket for the first time. In that final scene, the longing that Lorina had for her father, wanting him back just one more time (a theme that will carry throughout the rest of the work), leaps off of the page and right into your heart.
Within this memoir you will find everything from parallels with the current geopolitical climate to familiar familial drama. You’ll certainly share the footsteps Mapa left behind when writing this work. And like her, perhaps you’ll even find a little bit of yourself.
