THE CONVERSIONJ. NEIL GARCIA

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:J. NEIL GARCIA was/is

earned his A.B. Journalism, magna cum laude, from the University of Santo Tomas in 1990; 

M.A. in Comparative Literature in 1995, Ph.D. in English Studies: Creative Writing in

2003 from the University of the Philippines Diliman.

currently a Professor of English, Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at the College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines Diliman,

serves as an Associate for Poetry at the Likhaan: U.P. Institute of Creative Writing.

author of numerous poetry collections and works in literary and cultural criticism:

o Our Lady of the Carnival (1996), o The Sorrows of Water (2000), o Kaluluwa (2001), o Slip/pages: Essays in Philippine Gay

Criticism (1998),o Performing the Self: Occasional

Prose (2003), o The Garden of Wordlessness (2005),o Misterios and Other Poems (2005).

groundbreaking study, Philippine Gay Culture: The Last Thirty Years (1996),

awarded a National Book Award by the Manila Critics Circle in 1996.

editor of the famous Ladlad series of Filipino gay writing,

edited for the Likhaan, the following anthologies: The Likhaan Book of Philippine Criticism (1992-1997) and The Likhaan Book of Poetry and Fiction (1998 and 2000).

latest critical work, Postcolonialism and Filipino Poetics: Essays and Critiques, is a revised version of his very provocative Ph. D dissertation. The book examined Filipino poetics from the perspective of post-colonialism consisting of the author’s own critical and personal reflections on poetry-both as he “reads” and “writes” it.

sought to answer a specific and difficult question: just how do the dominant poetic theories in the Philippines address the problems and debates of postcolonialism

led Garcia to confront the issue of Filipino nationalism. Garcia

addressed the assumptions and consequences of Filipino nationalism 

engaged with the poetics of National Artist Virgilio Almario and eminent poet-critic Gemino Abad, whom Garcia referred to as “the foremost commentators on Filipino poetics.”

currently working on a full-length book, a post-colonial survey and analysis of Philippine poetry in English.

won several literary awards including the Palanca and the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle. He

has also received grants and fellowships to deliver lectures in Taipei, Hawaii, Berkeley, Manchester, Cambridge, Leiden and Bangkok.

6’11’’ legitimized homo “The Bearded Lady”

INTRO: GENDERS:

o maleo femaleo lesbiano gayo transvestite

gender fuck gender bend u don’t need to be opposite

o transsexual knife

o transgender girly clothes

POEM:It happened in a metal drum.They put me there, my familyThat loved me. The waterHad been saved just for it, that day.The laundry lay caked and smellyIn the flower-shaped basins.Dishes soiled with fat and swillPilled high in the sink, and grew flies.My cousins did not get washed that morning.Lost in masks of snot and dust,Their faces looked tired and resignedTo the dirty lot of children.

All the neighbors gathered around ouropen-aired bathroom. Wives peered outfrom the upper floor of their housesinto our yard. Father had arrived boomingwith cousins, my uncles.They were big, strong men, my uncles.They turned the house inside-outLooking for me. Curled up in the deepest cornerOf my dead mother’s cabinet, father found me.He dragged me down the stairs by the hairInto the waiting arms of my uncles.Because of modesty, I merely screamed and cried.Their hands, swollen and black with hair, bore meUp in the air, and touched me. Into the coldOf the drum I slipped, the tinglingToo much to bear at times my kneesFelt like they had turned into water.Waves swirled up and down around me, my headBobbing up and down. Father kept booming,Girl or boy. I thought about it and squealed,Girl. Water curled under my nose.When I rose the same two words from father.The same girl kept sinking deeper,Breathing deeper in the churning void.In the end I had to say what they allWanted me to say. I had to bring down this diversionTo its happy end, if only for the pot of riceLeft burning in the kitchen. I had to stopWearing my dead mother’s clothes. In the mirrorI watched the holes on my ears grow smaller,Until they looked as if they had never heardOf rhinestones, nor felt their glassy weight.I should feel happy that I’m nowRedeemed. And I do. Father died within five yearsI got my wife pregnant with the next.Our four children, all boys,Are the joy of my manhood, my proof.Cousins who never shed their masksPlay them for all their snot and grime.Another child is on the way.I have stopped caring what it will be.Water is still a problem and the drumIs still there, deep and rusty.The bathroom has been roofed over with plastic.Scrubbed and clean, my wife knows I like things.She follows, though sometimes a pighead she is.It does not hurt to show who is the man.A woman needs some talking sense into. If not,I hit her in the mouth to learn her.Every time, swill drips from her shredded lips.I drink with my uncles who all agree.

They should because tonight I own their soulsAnd the bottles they nuzzle like their prides.While they boom and boom flies whirrOver their heads that grew them. Though nobodyRemembers, I sometimes think of the girlWho drowned somewhere in a dream many dreams ago.I see her at night with bubblesSpringing like flowers from her nose.She is dying and before she sinks I try to touchHer open face. But the water learnsTo heal itself and closes around her like a wound.I should feel sorry but I drown myself in gin beforeI can. Better off dead, I say to myselfAnd my family that loves me for my bitter breath.We die to rise to a better life.

ANALYSIS: Why “CONVERSION”?

o Dahil dun sa tubig= baptized Lots of allusion- Bakit TUBIG SA DRUM?

o dahil daw natatanggal yong dumi sa katawan

o oldest form of tortureo sets situation