cololonial

Essay by pageartistUniversity, Bachelor'sA-, March 2012

download word file, 23 pages 0.0

: An AffectiveReading of Marcelino A. Foronda, Jr.'s "The Avocado Tree"

Recently, diaspora has been explored by writers. While it may be true that there is an extensive body of work on the departure and re-settlement of her people, what the Philippines has produced are either fictions or biographies, and very little criticism. It can be observed, as a trend, that most Filipino novelists have been writing about the unsettlement of the Manongs, or the first wave of Filipino migrants to the United States. Nearly a century has lapsed since the earliest documented works, and diaspora remains to be a social reality (primarily for economic reasons) impressed upon the Filipino people. It is notable that however imminent the displacement-movement is, the migrant's understanding, and more so the understanding of their fellow countrymen they have left behind, are distorted (i.e. incongruence between expectation and reality). This study will center on the short story situated in the United States between the years 1920 and 1930, "The Avocado Tree," by Marcelino A.

Foronda Jr. The displacement of a people, as the story suggests, oftentimes not only high hopes but also ugly feelings. This paper aims to investigate the memory and affect of the characters in the short story. Attention will be given to the memory of the diasporic of their homeland, their affect of the present, both compounded by possibilities of the past and visions of the future.

Love as the counterculture of remembrance:

"Love is the gift that keeps on giving when people can rely on re-experiencing their intimates' fundamental sympathy with the project of repetition and recognition, no small feat since the terms of that sympathy are constantly shifting internally just as they are renegotiated in the world." - Lauren Berlant, in The Female Complaint

The story begins...