Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo

Birth Date: August 21, 1944

Birth Place: Manila

Her mother was one of the first Filipino women journalists.

Married to Antonio Hidalgo

Mother of three daughters

an award-winning fictionist, critic

and pioneering writer of creative

nonfiction. She is currently

Professor Emeritus of English &

Comparative Literature at the

University of the Philippines

Diliman and Director of the

University of Santo Tomas (UST)

Center for Creative Writing and

Literary Studies

High School

High School Valedictorian at St Paul College, Quezon City

Started off as a staffer then literary editor before becoming editor-in-chief of the school paper

On her junior year, she wrote an article published in The Filipino Home Companion

On her senior year, she was invited to join the staff of Young World Magazine

College

Graduated Magna Cum Laude in Bachelor of

Philosophy (Faculty of Philosophy and Letters)

in the University of Santo Tomas (UST)

Apprenticed under Joe Burgos in The Blue Quill

(PhiLets College Paper)

Sophomore year, applied to The Varsitarian

She was invited to write a column for the Youth

section of Manila Chronicle

Taught an undergraduate literature course while

studying at the UST Graduate School, working as

assistant editor for women’s section of The

Graphic Magazine, Editor-in-Chief of

Varsitarian

Finished MA in Literature at UST Graduate

School in 1967

Received a Ph.D in Comparative Literature from

the University of the Philippines Diliman in 1993.

At 25 or 26 y/o, she wrote her first story, “The Ghost”, published on Graphic by the young Ninotchka Rosca

Married to Antonio Hidalgo, a teaching staff of PUP and a political writer for Graphic

She and her husband lost their jobs during the martial law

Travelled abroad for 15 years, where she wrote autobiographical travel books, after her husband accepted a job with UNICEF in 1975

Valuable lessons:

an awareness of the existence of specific readers with their own tastes and biases

an awareness of the importance of clarity & economy, a respect for facts and a respect for deadlines

Valuable lessons:

She has five story collections one of which is Ballad of a Lost Season & Other Stories (1987) which contains 6 stories

Went back to the Philippines by the year 1990

Wrote Tales of the Rainy Night(1993)

Where Only the Moon Rages: 9 Tales (1994)

conventions of the tale were implied by the narrator - the telescoping of time, the dreamlike ambiance, and the blending of fantasy to reality.

Catch a Falling Star (1999)

The book is made up of 12 stories -- the idea of the first story her childhood diaries.

Two novels: Recuerdo (1996)

and A Book of Dreams (2002)

5 characters search for faith through dream narratives interwoven with straightforward narration & pages from the notebook of one of the characters, consisting of tales, sketches and fragments of poetry etc.

Wrote a literary criticism entitled Over a Cup of Ginger Tea: Conversations on the Literary Narratives of Filipino Women (2006)

"mongrols of a sort"--part personal essay and part literary commentary or criticism.

Writer and co-editor of

several anthologies, literary

criticism, non-fiction

stories and literature

textbooks

Credentials

Past Vice President for Public Affairs of the University of the Philippines and an associate of the UP Institute of Creative Writing

Associate for Fiction at the U.P. Institute of Creative Writing

Member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC)

Past Director of the U.P. Institute of Creative Writing

Past Director of the University of the Philippines Press

Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at the U.P. Department of English and Comparative Literature, College of Arts and Letters

Hidalgo's critical essays, which reflects her interest in fictional

writing by Filipino women, serves a much-needed contribution to a

developing body of feminist scholarship in the country today.

Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Short Fiction, Essay and the Novel

Philippine Graphic Awards for Fiction

Philippines Free Press Awards for Fiction

Focus Awards for Fiction

National Book Awards from The Manila Critics' Circle

British Council Fellowship to Cambridge

U.P. President's Award for Outstanding Publication

U.P. Gawad Chancellor for Artist of the Year

U.P. Gawad Chancellor for Outstanding Teacher (Professor Level)

Ellen F. Fajardo Foundation Grant for Excellence in Teaching

Outstanding Thomasian Writer Award

U.P. Gawad Chancellor Hall of Fame Award

U.P. System International Publication Awards

Henry Lee Irwin Professorial Chair in Creative Writing, Ateneo de Manila University

Chapter 1 of “Filipino Woman Writing: Home and Exile in the Autobiographical Narratives of Ten Writers”)

In this country, autobiographical writing

a) is not quite recognized as a literary

genre

b) not included as a category for literary

awards

c) not a separate division in library

catalogues

d) did not even find its way into academic

curricula

Until World War II, autobiographies

were studied chiefly as sources of

information on the lives of the

authors. (History, not literature.)

With the “waning of formalism”…

critics began to see autobiography in

a new light.

“Genre assumptions” of classical autobiography

theory:

1) the self is the center of interest

2) objective is the “imposition” of a pattern on life to

make a coherent story, specifically the establishment

of a certain consistency of relationship between the

self and the outside world

3) the life is to be viewed from a standard point

which emphasizes the autobiographer’s actual social

position and acknowledged achievement

4) the best autobiographies suggest the power of the

personality over circumstance

Today, theorists and critics of the

autobiography can no longer be

comfortable with these assumptions,

as these have been seriously

undermined by contemporary

theories of knowledge and language.

Today, the autobiographical text has come

to be regarded simply as a narrative which

privileges an identity or subject which is

no different from a fictional character but

which does not exist outside of language

Autobiography in our time is increasingly

understood as both an act of memory and

an act of imagination (Eakin 1985, 6)

Women writing their autobiography

is one way to address the

marginalization of women in

literature and in life.

“In writing of her life, woman gives

this life form and meaning; she

rescues it from confusion or oblivion.”

Linda Anderson:

“The woman who attempts to write

herself is engaged, by the nature of

the activity itself, in re-writing the

stories that exist about her…. She is

resisting or changing what is known

about her…”

“The act of (re)writing herself,

therefore, is both protest and means of

empowerment.”

Even today, criticism of

autobiographical works persists in

either erasing or marginalizing the story

of woman. When it is taken seriously at

all, it is analyzed and judged according

to masculine standards, which insist on

fitting women within the tradition of

male autobiographical writing. –

Jelinek 1986

the author’s self-image is often of a

person searching, groping, rewriting

as much as writing herself, trying to

define her space, her positionality, and her role in society

the focus is often on personal

relationships and details of domestic

life, rather than on social or political

forces, historical events and so on.

there seems to be a preference for the

discontinuous forms, and the

episodic, cyclical, fragmentary

structure, rather than the linear,

chronological, unified development,

which is seen as possibly reflecting

the author’s life pattern and perceived roles and goals.

the tone or attitude toward the

reader tends to be ambivalent. There

is a tendency to be self-deprecatory,

defensive, or apologetic about the

author’s divergence from the

traditional roles, even while

asserting, through the very act of narration, her right to be different.

there is an apparent awareness of

the author as a representative of

women, rather than as a mere individual

For Filipino women writing, they do

not just have to contend with being

marginalized, excluded from the

center, and regarded as “minority”,

they also laso have to contend with

the fact of having come from a “Third

World”, ”Post-Colonial World” or

“Neocolonial World”.

Deterritorialization of women –

displacement of identities, persons,

and meanings that is endemic to the

postmodern world system (Kaplan

1990)

1. more than for men, the home for women

is the center and focus of existence

2. romantic love continues to occupy a

large part of her dreams

3. despite the more flexible arrangements

arrived at by many modern couples most

girls know that they will have prime

responsibility for that home, as they will

have prime responsibility for the children

so, when she writes, HOME will loom

large

4. responsibility for providing for its

material stability may be chiefly her

husband’s, but the responsibility for its

respectability, its beauty, its ability to

withstand emotional stress is hers

so, for the Filipino women,

DETERRITORIALIZATION may

mean

* Physical banishment from home

* Psychological alienation from it

* Both

Dislocation of Alfon and Nakpil – result of

Japanese occupation as actual

displacement

Gonzalez break-up of marriage – results in

her leaving home

Cecilia Manguerra-Brainard – permanent

removal from her childhood home (to

study, and to get married)

Chapter 1 of “Filipino Woman Writing: Home and Exile in the Autobiographical Narratives of Ten Writers”)