Notable Filipina-American novelist and educator Gina Apostol is on campus to explore what nationhood means and to dive deeper into indigenous issues.
Apostol was invited to the University of Hawaii at Manoa, as the Spring 2024 Dan and Maggie Chair of Democratic Ideals. She teaches the AMST 690 graduate research seminar class on Narration and Nation: Building Novels, Constructing Nation, focusing on texts written by Philippine national hero Jose Rizal, among others.
Throughout her stay in Hawaii, Apostol hopes to learn more about indigeneity and indigenous ways of learning by talking to scholars that specialize in Native Hawaiian rights.
“I’ve been doing work on the history of the Philippines, but I’d like to go way back and think about the 1500s, 1600s, and that indigeneity, and how, in the history of the Philippines, you can understand it better through time, through indigenous learning,” said Apostol.
She explains that knowing more about indigeneity helps with writing her next novel, which is set during the Philippines’ Propaganda Movement in the late 19th century and told from a servant’s perspective.
“It’s interesting to be in Honolulu, to start doing the writing of it, ‘cause I did all the research, because there’s a weird, interesting physical conflation in the tropical space of Hawaii with the Philippines,” she said.
Apostol’s work on campus is not limited to her work as a novelist and inside the classroom. She also participates in various events, like her recent Brown Bag Biography session on February 8th.
“As a Filipino, to have a scholar of this level to be able to be in this, in this position, to represent our history and the underbellies of our history. In the context of democracy, actually awesome,” said Patricia Halagao, a professor and chair of the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa College of Education.
She was at a colloquium on “Women in War: Bodies and Minds as Sites of Resistance in Novels” on March 8th.
Alyssa Francesca Salcedo is a junior at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa majoring in Journalism.
