AustLit

The Philippines was colonised by Spain for nearly four hundred years (1521-1898), then by America for forty years (1901-1945). As a writer primarily in English, Merlinda Bobis has always 'sensed' that her sensibility has greater affinity with literatures of Hispanic/Latin-American rather than of English/American origins. Is this literary affinity a late ripple of colonisation? On reading Bobis's short stories for the first time, Herrero sensed them as 'so familiar', evoking Spanish writers. This recognition may well reinforce that late ripple, now a liminal space for productive-subversive cultural production, where the creative arc is both disruptive and expansive. Bobis and Herrero explore this liminal space by collaboratively examining and translating (from English to Spanish) Bobis's short story 'Fish-Hair Woman', while referencing its writing as, in fact, the earlier process of 'translation' of a Philippine story of militarism into an English text. They argue that these processes not only employ decolonising strategies, but also extend beyond the postcolonial into a transnational enterprise. [from Kunapipi 32,1-2, Abstracts, pp. 245]