美国国家公共电台 NPR An American And Her Filipina Translator Exhume A Massacre In 'Insurrecto'

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Gina Apostol's new novel, "Insurrecto," is about two women on a trip to make a film in the Philippines who wind up seeing different films in the same characters. Chiara Brasi is an American, a daughter of a filmmaker who once shot a Vietnam War epoch 1 - you may already be thinking Coppola - who wants to make her own film. She hires an interpreter named Magsalin, who takes her to the island of Samar and the town of Balangiga where Philippine rebels were massacred in a retaliation 2 for an attack on U.S. forces in 1901. Gina Apostol uses an array of literary and cinematic techniques - memoirs 3, jump-cuts, close-ups and reveries - to set a story in Duterte's Philippines that shows us that though victors often write histories, survivors 4 and artists can revise them. Gina Apostol won the PEN Open Book Award for her last novel, "Gun Dealer's Daughter," and she's won the Philippine National Book Award and joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.

GINA APOSTOL: Thanks so much for having me. It's such a huge honor.

SIMON: So these two women look at so much of the same landscape and see different films, don't they?

APOSTOL: Yeah, yeah. I'm very interested in that concept of multiple ways of looking at things, you know, this notion that in all of us there are multiple identities, you know, and we don't recognize the simultaneity of them. I'm like I'm a mom, I'm a daughter, I'm a teacher, I'm a writer, I'm a Filipino, I'm an American. And I really like this kind of seeing things from various points of view.

SIMON: Chiara focuses on Cassandra Chase, a photographer - an American photographer, who shoots portraits of the U.S. military. Magsalin sees something more personal, doesn't she? A Caz, a Filipino schoolteacher who knew what is probably Chiara's father. Tell us about that.

APOSTOL: Well, what I wanted was a kind of confusion of their ways of looking at these matters because as a story - I mean, the story of the Filipino-American war, you know, you have that seeming binary 5, the colonizer 6 and the colonized 7. But, for instance, myself as a Filipino, I recognize the colonizer in me. And I speak English. I mean, I grew up learning in English. And I thought it was very important also for the colonizer to have also - have that recognition of the voice of the colonized in it. I think it's important, for instance, for an American to recognize its multiple histories, you know, this history of wanting to be the liberator 8 in the Spanish-American War period but also recognizing the inhumanity that came from that war. So there's this tension of the two.

SIMON: Tell us about Casiana Nacionales, the insurrecto...

APOSTOL: The insurrecto, yeah.

SIMON: ...For whom the book is named, a woman whom history barely knows.

APOSTOL: History barely knows. And I would say even when I went to Samar to ask about her, there was very little known about her. But I think the figure of Casiana Nacionales - I think she resolves that dilemma 9 of multiple seeing because just because we need to see in multiple ways does not mean we don't take a side, that there's - that this confusion of empathy that ethics 10 sometimes is problematic because, yes, as a writer, I empathize with my character, the U.S. soldier - Army soldier. I empathize with the white woman photographer. But I also recognize that for my novel, Casiano Nacionales is the heart of the story, that we need to in some ways side with her revolutionary rage because I think atrocity 11 happens - this war happened because of the inability of, let's say, the invaders 12, the U.S. Army soldier, the white woman photographer - all of whom I empathize with - could not imagine the agency and aspirations 13 of Casiano Nacionales. So the way she's put into that story, which is through spirals, through layers and layers of narration 14, I think is - was for me a way to resolve my own dilemma about empathy and ethics.

SIMON: I was expecting the novel to be dense 15 and detailed 16 and inspiring. I wasn't expecting it to be so funny and a lot about Elvis.

APOSTOL: Yeah, yeah. Because the thing about Elvis is that I - you know, I didn't like him because he was my mom's favorite. But it was only a few years ago that I realized that all these songs that my uncles when I was a kid - this was in the '70s - would sing for, like, long, long, long, guitar strumming fests were actually all Elvis songs. So I actually thought Elvis was Filipino (laughter) for a long time.

SIMON: You mean he wasn't?

APOSTOL: Yeah, I know. No, he's not. What? Anyway so I really started thinking about what does that mean that I think Elvis is in me also? You know, what does that mean about this history of colonization 17? What does that mean about all of us that we're not just one thing? We're so many different things. Like, I have Frank Sinatra, I have Elvis, I have Virginia Woolf, I have Dante, I have also Balengiga. I have the, you know, Illuminado Lucente, the Waray writers, I have Jose Rizal. And just like - we're all so many things. And it was that Elvis recognition - I go, OK. So I put him in.

SIMON: You're a teacher there in New York. How does that fit into your writing life?

APOSTOL: It does fit in very - I mean, I just taught Frederick Douglass' "What To A Slave Is The Fourth Of July?" I just taught the Constitution to my little 15-year-olds. And I teach the Filipino-American War to my students because - the way I talk about it with my students, you hold these tensions in your country, and it is good for you. It is good for you to recognize the liberatory aspects of the saving principles, as Frederick Douglass called them, and it is good for you to recognize that there was inhumanity in our original Constitution, that there was a three-fifths clause, that there was a normalizing of genocide against Native Americans and to hold those together and to confront that daily - it's really very difficult - but to hold those tensions together is a way to be a healthy American. And I think that's why a book like "Insurrecto" would be useful because you can see all these different sides. And so it's a Filipino book, it's an American book and to recognize that these are all part of this nation.

SIMON: Gina Apostol - her latest novel, "Insurrecto" - thank you so much for being with us.

APOSTOL: Thank you so much. I'm hugely honored.