REVIEW OF A NOVEL: SAN RAFAEL
By Leila Noel-Rispens
Published by 8Letters Bookstore & Publishing
CEBU CITY (MindaNews / 11 January) — Whether it is in plays, novels or films – Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, Love in a Time of Cholera, The English Patient, Dr. Zhivago, Titanic, Maruja, Tatlong Taong Walang Dios, Relasyon – love stories unfolding in a conflict situation are always riveting.
Those where the characters do not live happily with each other are often heart-breaking, leaving the reader or viewer forlorn and sad long after spending time following the ups and downs of the love story. Those that end on a bright note provide us with a deep sense of satisfaction that all is well in the world and we can then carry on with our lives. Either way, they enrich our lives in a manner, making us constantly finding the time to read novels or watch plays or movies.
After all, story-telling is as old as humanity. Today there are a lot of evidence proving that pre-historic humans told stories to each other even as they sought to survive the wilds, seeking food and making sure they were not devoured by beasts also roaming the face of the earth. In many caves in various parts of the globe, archaeologists have discovered drawings of human beings and animals. Were the figures representing characters of stories told by the ancient storytellers?
Year after year, tens of thousands of books are published all over the world and many of them are short stories or novels that deal with love. Apart from action and horror films, the movies that draw mass audiences are those of love stories. The recent break-up of KathNiel only showed how we Filipinos get attached to popular love teams, whose love stories both on and off the screen are followed by fans in a manner that these celebrities have become part of their everyday lives.
Now comes San Rafael, Leila Rispens-Noel’s debut novel. Earlier, Rispens-Noel co-edited an anthology about the experiences of OFWs in Hongkong (Diaspora Journey: Stories of Philippine Migraiton to Hongkong) and published her memoirs – Beyond the Bansalan Skies. With San Rafael, Leila-Rispens joins a growing number of Mindanawons who are venturing into fiction writing, the content of which are partly based on their own personal experiences and true historical events as well as the imagined scenarios of the lives of Mindanawons.
San Rafael, the setting chosen by the author is a vast sugar cane plantation owned by the Navidads. Following the love story archetype of Romeo and Juliet where the two characters from conflicting backgrounds fall in love despite the odds, the scion’s son Gabriel falls in love with Isabel, the daughter of a poor peasant (a hornalero). The story brings us first to Isabel’s home in Buenavista in a small farming village. In the late 1960s when the Barracuda-Ilaga conflict spread to various parts of southern Mindanao, Buenavista was attacked by a band of Moro rebels. Houses were burned, residents were killed, among them Isabel’s parents. In the evacuation center, were Isabel and Glenda sought refuge, both got conscientized and were then recruited to join a group of young activists including Ezra and Bastian.
Fast forward to when Isabel and Glenda were assigned to work as peasant organizers among the sugar came workers of Hacienda Navidad in San Rafael. One day while hiking to another village, Gabriel chanced upon Isabel along the road and offered her a ride on his Land Rover. Gabriel was studying Electrical Engineering in Cebu and was on home vacation. He had a dispute with his father who didn’t want him to continue with his studies but to help manage the hacienda. This first meeting would be followed by a few more, as their paths would converge in the hacienda. Eventually they fell passionately in love, and one night they found the occasion to make love.
Don Raul Navidad, who wanted Gabriel to marry a rich heiress, found a way to separate them and forced his son to move to the United States. Unable to resist his father’s wish, Gabriel had no choice but leave San Rafael. Meanwhile, Isabel got pregnant and with the help of an aunt, raised her son. Convinced that a brighter future was ahead of her and wanting to provide for her son, she left her organizing work in San Rafael and tried her luck in Davao City. There she found a job working in a department store. Having finished high school, she found a way to take up Social Work in college. Meanwhile she left her son Jason, to the care of her aunt.
After finishing college, she applied to be an intern for an exchange program under an NGO in Ghana where for five years, she rose from the ranks and became a top leader in this agency. After five years in Ghana, she resigned and took up the job offered by the Trust Foundation as head of the fundraising department based in Manila. She returned to the Philippines but on her way home, she passed by Europe and visited Amsterdam, where earlier Gabriel had settled down and finished his studies in Management, Economics, and Consumer Studies at the University of Wageningen..
Unbeknown to both, they were on the same KLM plane returning to the Philippines for a chance meeting. Having been separated for eleven years, they hardly recognized each other. Having finished his studies, Gabriel was returning to the Philippines to work for his father’s investment firm, Vidasystem. Eventually Gabriel and Isabel met and recognized each other at a fund-raising event organized by Isabel at the Manila Hotel. Vidasystem had pledged a big donation to Trust Foundation. Jason had grown to be a young man and escorted his mother. There, both father and son met for the first time without knowing their blood relationship.
So I do not commit a spoiler alert for the readers, I leave it to them to buy a copy and find out how this love story ends. It is, indeed, a riveting story with its twists and turns. Rispens-Noel makes an effort to make a sense of the convoluted dealings and circumstances involving Gabriel’s family and Isabel’s relatives and associates. The story unfolds from small villages at the border of Davao and Cotabato to the universities in the US, NGOs in Ghana, tourist sites of the Netherlands and offices in Manila during the tumultuous years from the late 1960s to the collapse of the Marcos regime.
The author has traversed these settings based on her own personal experiences growing up in rural Bansalan, her activism involving peasants’ organizing during her youth, engagement in NGOs and funding agencies, her visits to various parts of Africa in line with her development work, her long stay in the Netherlands after she got married and in Hongkong for a few years and her engagement in fund-raising activities. It is from these vast experiences through the years, that Rispens-Noel has collated facts and information to write this novel.
A critical reviewer of this novel may find the plot echoing the Viva-produced movies of Sharon Cuneta and Gabby Concepcion or those that go back to the days of Gloria Romero and Luis Gonzales. The story line has been unchanging in Philippine movies and teleseryes – the poor girl falling in love with the rich boy (or vice versa) and the lovers valiantly fighting the odds so they can live happily ever after. The differences have been how the story ends, the setting and circumstances of the characters in the story and the obstacles they face. Oftentimes, they are made glossy by a travelogue and rich settings.
Rispens-Noel in a note at the end of the book is unapologetic about how she came up with the plot. She writes: “My goal was to write a book that pays homage to the Philippines during the difficult martial law period until the EDSA revolution of 1986. To make sure my narrative was historically accurate, I consulted various online resources for names and dates necessary for this tale. The people and places in this story are mostly fictional, though some were inspired by real events. San Rafael used real-life events as a foundation for the novel. I did not intend to retell or redo history… This book is narrated by ordinary people whose lives were connected by those historical events, though fictitiously – a mere product of my imagination. The conclusion I wrote in my novel is intentional. Despite what some people think, I still have faith that things can change for the better in our country.”
San Rafael may not be classified as historical fiction – in the same genre as Lualhati Bautista’s Dekada ‘70 and Desaparesidos and John Bengan’s Armor – but the literary world is represented by a wide range of genres. Just as there are viewers of films and teleseryes who prefer imagined scenarios like those of Sharon-Gabby films, on one hand, there are also those who prefer the gritty, realistic films of Lino Brocka and Lav Diaz, on the other hand. In this context, Rispens-Noel carves her own niche in Mindanawon literature!
What matters most is that San Rafael makes a contribution in terms of providing readers with a book that they might enjoy reading as they follow the travails of a love-struck couple and at the same time provide them a glimpse of what took place across the nation – from the farm villages of southern Mindanao to the highway along EDSA – at the dawn and ultimately the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship!
(Everyone is invited to the book launch on January 27, 2023 at 3 to 5 p.m. at the BauHaus along Dona Vicenta Road, across NCCC Mall VP (old name: Victoria Plaza) in Davao City. The author will be around to sign the books on sale.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Redemptorist Brother Karl Gaspar is Mindanao’s most prolific book author. Gaspar is also a Datu Bago 2018 awardee, the highest honor the Davao City government bestows on its constituents. He is presently based in Cebu City.)
