Filipino female writer

The history of Filipino women writers is an account of how Philippine women became literary “mistresses of the ink” and “lady pen-pushers” who created works of fiction and non-fiction across the genres. Writing in English, Spanish, Filipino and other local languages and native dialects, female writers from the Philippine archipelago utilized literature, in contrast with the oral tradition of the past, as the living voices of their personal experiences, thoughts, consciousness, concepts of themselves, society, politics, Philippine and world history. They employed the “power of the pen” and the printed word in order to shatter the so-called "Great Grand Silence of the Centuries" of Filipino female members, participants, and contributors to the progress and development of the Philippine Republic, and consequently the rest of the world. Filipino women authors have “put pen to paper” to present, express, and describe their own image and culture to the world, as they see themselves.

Among the principal influences to the Filipina image of herself and to her writings we include four women in Philippine history, namely: Gabriela Silang, Leonor Rivera, Imelda Marcos and Corazon Aquino. Often mentioned in Philippine literature, these four represent the struggle, perception and character of how it is to be a woman in Philippine society. Gabriela Silang was a katipunera or a revolutionary – a representation of female bravery – who fought against Spanish colonialism in the 18th century. Silang was a contrast to the chaste and religiously devout image of the Filipino lady as portrayed by Jose Rizal through his Spanish-language novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Within the pages of these 19th century novels, Rizal depicted Leonor Rivera - a girlfriend of his - through the fictional character of Maria Clara as the epitome of virtue, i.e., the ideal Filipina. Then there was the arrival of Imelda Marcos – the “beauty queen and dictator’s wife … a power-seeking type of woman…” – after that, the country saw the advent and rise of Corazon C. Aquino, the first woman president in Asia and the Philippines – the elected 1986 replacement of a male despot, Ferdinand Marcos. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, after two male presidents (Fidel V. Ramos and Joseph Estrada, respectively), followed in the footsteps of Corazon Aquino to become a leader and political figure of an Asian nation.

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Wikipedia